the 2008 Christchurch measles outbreak that wasn't.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/thepress/4582670a6009.html (http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/thepress/4582670a6009.html)


Measles outbreak hits Christchurch

By KAMALA HAYMAN - The Press | Friday, 13 June 2008

Health officials will meet this morning to discuss a measles outbreak at a Christchurch preschool.

Two toddlers, aged 14 months and 16 months, were both confirmed with the potentially lethal disease this week prompting immediate action by public health officers.

Canterbury Medical Officer of Health Alistair Humphrey said both toddlers were recovering well. ``They're fine now.''

Parents of 21 children who have been in contact with the two affected children were being contacted by health staff and offered immunisation advice. Officials were meeting again at 9am today.

Humphrey said individual cases of measles were not uncommon but it was ``very unusual'' to have two cases linked in time and place.

One of the infected toddlers had not been vaccinated against measles, the other had received the first of two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) jabs, usually given at 15 months and four years of age.

Humphrey said the MMR vaccination was the best way for parents to protect their children against measles.

Nationally, only 82 per cent of children were fully vaccinated against measles, though Canterbury's rate was higher at 88%. Rates of 95% were required to prevent outbreaks.

Measles is a highly infectious disease that can spread through the air by breathing, coughing and sneezing. It can cause a rash, high fever, a runny nose and sore, watery eyes. It can lead to pneumonia, ear infections, brain damage and can occasionally be fatal.

Humphrey said many people had forgotten the potential severity of the illness. "In 1933 my grandmother came back to school after the holidays to find one-third of her class were dead from measles.

"Measles is not like chickenpox where pretty much everbody survives. It does kill people.''

The incubation period for the disease is seven to 18 days and people with the disease can be infectious for up to four days before the first symptoms occur.
No cases of measles were reported in Canterbury last year.


My comment posted to stuff.co but they didn't put it up:

Canterbury Medical Officer of Health Alistair Humphrey's grandmother must have had some incredibly unlucky classmates, given that there were only 17 deaths in New Zealand from measles in 1933, none in 1932 and 46 in 1934. What are the chances that most of the deaths in 1933 occurred in her classmates?

By the way, this information comes from official mortality data published in the New Zealand Official Yearbook and verified by the Department of Health in a personal letter to be accurate.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

My letter to the Christchurch Press, likewise not published:



Dear Sir,

Dr Humphrey's "it's moments like these you need minties" throwaway comment that, "In 1933 my grandmother came back to school after the holidays to find one-third of her class were dead from measles." ranks up there with a 21 year old myth spread by another paediatrician, Dr John Newman, in his column in the New Zealand Herald((Section 2, Page 2, April 7, 1987,"Ignoring Immunisation is Asking for Trouble). He said, "Most of us will also have at least one childhood acquaintance who died of lock-jaw (tetanus)." That too, is a load of bollocks. The Health Department's own data proves that.

Please thank Dr Humphrey for proving to those with all the New Zealand Health Department data from 1872 in front of them, that you can never trust doctors whose attempts to provoke irrational hysteria and fear are based on incorrect anecdotal memories of a grandmother.

[MinorityView]

I cannot imagine why they didn't publish your letter.

One of my aunt died of measles when she was around 3 years old. It was in 1914 and she and several hundred other people were sailing on a ship packed with immigrants from Russia and other such places. There was an outbreak of measles and my aunt was the only one to die. Considering the situation, this is pretty amazing, right? My grandmother was afraid to take her to the doctor because he was a German (this is the story I heard, but I it doesn't really make any sense). As I understand it, the only treatment the doctor was using was a laxative.

Anyway, I don't recall my mother being frightened of her children dying of measles. Measles were more of a nuisance than anything else.

Fearmongering has no limits when it comes to infectious disease. I bet that 30 years from now some doctor will be telling the same story about outbreaks of chickenpox in the 1980s.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Here's the really funny part though.

In this bulletin it (http://www.cpublichealth.co.nz/Files/PHIQ2008-3.pdf) says:

In May-June there was an unusual association in a Christchurch preschool of a case of measles with a possible case. The first case was a 16 month old boy who developed a maculopapular rash, conjunctivitis and coryza along with positive measles IgM and IgG three and a half weeks after receiving an MMR vaccination. A non-communicable fever and rash is occasionally seen 1-4 weeks after MMR, but in this instance, an unimmunised 13 month old boy who attended the same sessions developed a fever, maculopapular rash, coryza, cough and conjunctivitis 12 days later. Serology was positive for measles IgM.

There was no follow up in the last report for last year (http://www.cpublichealth.co.nz/Files/PHIQ2008-4.pdf), and the first one for this year isn't yet available.

so why would you be asking a whole district to brush up on their vaccination when the index case probably got it from the vaccine, and the second case, fulfills the time line for getting it from the vaccinated child, who probably got it from the vaccine?

I wonder if they will even tell us what the Melbourne testing showed...

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Now here's the really interesting thing:

Here is the yearly tally by District health boards. (http://surv.esr.cri.nz/PDF_surveillance/MthSurvRpt/2008_2nd/200811NovDHB.pdf)

But notice that the 2 cases in Christchurch and whether or not they were wild or vaccine, don't rate a mention in the end of year Public Health Surveillance Unit data (http://www.surv.esr.cri.nz/PDF_surveillance/NZPHSR/2008_2/NZPHSR2008Q3Dec.pdf). Or the one before that (http://www.surv.esr.cri.nz/PDF_surveillance/NZPHSR/2008_2/NZPHSR2008Q2.pdf).

so the yearly tally was 5 cases.

However, what the Health Department didn't know, was that there were far more measles cases than that. More than that, I will not say. :D

[MinorityView]

In the old days there was an underground railroad and nowadays there is an measles transmission subway? Or something like that.

So measles can be developed by the vaccinated and then transmitted on? I thought this NEVER happened.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Pray tell me you joke, MV :p. Both my children got measles, not once, but TWICE from recently vaccinated children. It was bad enough they got it once, but getting it twice?!!!! And you should have heard what the paeds at the hospital had to say. I was really pissed off, until another doctor "confessed" to me that she had, over 15 years done specific Ig's on all her patients who got measles and had quite a few who had had measles more than once; and three who had had them three times.

What makes that story worse, is that she had presented an article based on the laboratory data, to a medical journal twice, and both times it was turned down :chair:

So much for the story that you can only get measles once.