Kennedy plays down the immunity by vaccination when the measles breakout grows

Cnn
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The cases in the ongoing measles outbreak have risen to 258 in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma, and state health departments require more people to maintain the vaccine from measles mump-rubella.

In an interview with Fox News, which was broadcast on Tuesday, the US Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that “people should be able to make this choice for themselves. And what we have to do is give you the best information and to encourage you to vaccination. The vaccine stops the spread of the disease. ”

But Kennedy also played down the security of the vaccine and told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that measles outbreaks could be driven partly by people who weaken immunity from the vaccine.

“When she and I were children, all measles and measles gave you a life protection against measles infections. The vaccine does not. The vaccine is effective for some people, but for many people it disappears, ”said Kennedy to Hannity.

“We have hundreds of these outbursts for a few years. … and part of it is that there are people who do not vaccinate, but also swings the vaccine itself. The vaccine disappears 4.5% per year, ”he said.

But Dr. Paul Offit, director of the vaccination training center at the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, says that measles, if that was the case, would not have been triggered in the United States in 2000.

There are some disputes among experts on how much protection, if at all, can decrease. However, they all agree that the vaccine gives lifelong immunity against the virus in most cases.

The current outbreak “is absolutely driven and started by non -vaccinated people,” said Dr. Michael Mina, Chief Scientific Officer of Telemealth Company Emed and expert in epidemiology, immunology and spread of infectious diseases.

Even those who may have decreasing immunity are not transmitted large amounts of viruses, he said.

The antibody mirrors generated by the vaccine can remove over time. With a virus and measles, the longer incubation period gives the body’s immunogenticals more time to combat infection. This enables long -lasting immunity through vaccination, said Offit.

Since the measles were declared in the USA, an average of around 179 cases were reported every year, many of which have to do on international trips. There were an average of eight outbreaks per year – between 1 and 25 annually – and in most years at least 60% of all reported cases were bound to outbreaks. But even the worst outbreaks usually remain under 50 cases.

This is only the fifth year since 2000, in which an outbreak has led to more than 100 cases and only in the third year with more than 200 cases. The others were in 2014 with a outbreak with Disneyland and in 2019, when an almost one -year outbreak in New York came within weeks after the country’s excretion status was completed.

Some of Kennedy’s statements promoted the natural immunity that was purchased from someone who induced immunity about vaccine.

Two doses of the MMR vaccine are 97% effective against measles. People who were of course infected with measles also have immunity, but not without serious risks.

“The aim of a vaccine is to induce immunity that is a result of a natural infection without paying the price for natural infections,” said Offit.

The infection price can be high: Each of five non -vaccinated people with measles is hospitalized, 1 out of 20 children with measles develop pneumonia, and 1 out of 1,000 children with measles develop encephalitis or swelling of the brain.

According to the US centers, one to three out of 1,000 children with measles will die of complications for the control and prevention of diseases. A non -vaccinating child of school age is one of the two deaths that have already been associated with the ongoing measles outbreak.

Another possible consequence of an infection is “immunamnesia”. If the measles virus infected immune cells, it can delete the body’s memory of other infections.

“So if you want to take the natural immunity path, destroy your previously existing immunogy and expose yourself for any other infection you could receive. And so there is no world in which measles are good for the body, and there is no world in which the infection of measles is better than getting a measles vaccine, ”said Mina.

Kennedy also said that the immunity induced by vaccine may not be guided by breast milk in order to breastfeed infants as natural immunity is.

“He’s wrong. The maternal antibody transfer is a key form of newborn protection against infectious diseases, ”said Dr. Lynn Yee, professor of obstetrics and gynecology on the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine. “Even if a mother had vaccination many years ago, the antibodies are still broadcasting.”

This is particularly important because infants can protect their mother against the virus through the antibodies of their mother in the first six months of life if they are too young to be vaccinated, she said.

Kennedy also incorrectly described unwanted events from the MMR vaccine and said that it “causes deaths every year. … it causes all diseases that massage themselves: encephalitis and blindness etc. ”

Dr. Peter Hodez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for vaccine development and Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, called this “disinformation”.

“The measles vaccine is incredibly safe,” he told Jake Tapper from CNN. “This is what anti-access activists do, they play and try to scare them with the very, very rare side effects and to forget them to tell them about the terrible effects of the disease.”

A measles infection can cause encephalitis and blindness, but only a handful of this type of diseases in connection with vaccination have been reported.

A study in which the US Food and Drug Administration and the CDC reports from the reporting system for undesirable events as well as medical records, death certificates and autop appeals found no evidence that “a causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and death” was proposed.

“The MMR vaccine is extremely safe. The most common side effects that people can maintain are the low -grade fever for a few days, and sometimes people can get this temporary rash, which it usually dissolves within 24 to 48 hours. These are by far the most common symptoms, and there are some more that are much less common, but they are extremely rare, ”said Dr. Vivek Cherian, a doctor based in internal medicine in Chicago.

According to the CDC, more serious side effects of vaccination are extremely rare.

“All of these (frequent side effects) are signs that the vaccine works and your immune system the answers that it should to gain memory in order to protect them later. But many people promote these as important undesirable events, so I think that the devil is really in detail, ”said Dr. Christina Johns, a pediatric emergency doctor at Pediatrics in Annapolis, Maryland.

Deidre McPhillips from CNN contributed to this report.