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Elsewhere...

By tsmith on April 2, 2008.

Sent off yet another grant, so I'm still (once again) catching up on everything. Meanwhile, some posts for you to check out:

I thought I was self-sacrificing by submitting myself to Kentucky's creation museum for your amusement. Guess I could have stayed home and wasted 2 1/2 hours of my life as Drek did, live-blogging an anti-vaccine movie he was challenged to watch.

Or, if you've had it with vaccine naysayers (and oh look, CNN gave more space to Jenny McCarthy to gush about how chelation and diet allowed her son to recover from autism), head over to Mike's place for a refreshing post on how evolutionary biology is used to understand the human microbiome.

Tags
General Epidemiology
infectious disease
public health
Skepticism

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Hey, Tara...did you see that Arizona has several cases of measles, also imported from Switzerland? There have been 9 cases so far, all in non-immunized persons:

April 3, 2008

This is an official

CDC Health Advisory

Distributed via Health Alert Network

April 02, 2008, 20:55 EDT (08:55 PM EDT)

CDCHAN-00273-08-04-02-ADV-N

Measles outbreaks in the United States: Public health preparedness, control and response in healthcare settings and the community

A measles outbreak linked to an importation from Switzerland currently is ongoing in Arizona. The first case, with rash onset on February 12, 2008, occurred in an adult visitor from Switzerland who was hospitalized with measles and pneumonia. This hospital admission prompted verification of the measles immune status of approximately 1800 healthcare personnel and vaccination of those without evidence of immunity. Through March 31, 2008, nine confirmed cases have been reported to the Arizona Department of Health Services, and there are two suspected cases (one in a Colorado resident) and hundreds of contacts under investigation. The nine case-patients range in age from 10 months to 50 years. All but one were infected in healthcare settings, one of the five adult case-patients is a healthcare worker, and all cases were unvaccinated at the time of exposure.

I'm glad that a) I don't live in Arizona and b) that all my family and I have had our immunizations (especially since I am a non-responder, even though I HAD measles as a child)

Your "Creation Museum" link isn't working. And here I was all excited about reading it...

Apologies; accidentally added some extra code. The link should work now.

Dawn, I did see the Arizona measles story. I have so much in my drafts box to blog about, just not enough time to get to everything (or anything, at the moment!)