More people had measles infections in the first seven months of this year than during any comparable period since 1996 and public health officials blamed growing numbers of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children.
Many of these parents say they believe vaccines cause autism, even though multiple studies have found no reputable evidence to support these claims. In Britain, Switzerland, Israel and Italy, measles outbreaks have soared, sickening thousands and causing at least two deaths.
From January through last month, 131 measles cases were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 15 states and Washington. Fifteen people were hospitalized, including four infants. There were no deaths. Nearly all the cases resulted when people traveling abroad or visiting from a foreign country spread the illness to others.
In Illinois, 30 people were sickened in one outbreak.
Most of those who were sickened were unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status. Sixteen were younger than a year old, too young to have been vaccinated. But two-thirds of the rest — or 63 people — were unvaccinated because of their parents’ beliefs.
Public health advocates have become alarmed in recent years by a growing number of people who contend that vaccines cause illnesses, particularly autism. The number of parents who claim a philosophical exemption to mandatory vaccine laws has grown.
But vaccination rates have remained relatively high in the US. In 2006, 95 percent of school-age children received at least one shot of the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, the CDC said. But such surveys are often years behind vaccination trends and government officials say the growing number of measles outbreaks suggests that overall vaccination rates may be on the decline.
Because it is virulently contagious, measles is often the first vaccine-preventable disease to reappear when vaccination rates decline. In the decade before the measles vaccination program began, each year nearly 4 million people in the US were infected, 48,000 were hospitalized, 1,000 were chronically disabled and nearly 500 died.
Autism and anti-vaccine advocates are unapologetic about the return of measles.
“Most parents I know will take measles over autism,” said J.B. Handley, cofounder of Generation Rescue, a parent-led organization that contends that autism is a treatable condition caused by vaccines.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
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