Subject: Mumps Outbreak Spreads Across the Nation Sat Mar 11, 2017 10:01 pm
This is so upsetting. I encountered a pair of anti-vaxxers on Facebook. They are absolutely delusional. It's not just that they insist that vaccines are dangerous and harm hundreds if not thousands of children every year (all absolutely untrue). They were actually saying completely nuts stuff. There was some court case in Germany which they claimed proved that the measles virus didn't exist. So I (very politely) asked them how the vaccine worked - because if there was no virus, there couldn't be a real vaccine. Oh, it doesn't really work, the reduction in cases was because of better hygiene and better plumbing and stuff like that. So I gave them a link to a fairly impressive graph https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Measles_US_1944-2007_inset.png and argued that there was no huge improvement in hygiene and plumbing in the US in 1965. They tossed a few insults my way, then proceeded to ignore me and continued to post their poison on Facebook.
At least mumps isn't too bad. So I'm told - it was one childhood disease I managed to miss.