Madagascar and Measles

The heading of The Sydney Morning Herald article screamed:

More than 900 dead in Madagascar measles epidemic

Geneva: At least 922 people have died in a measles outbreak in Madagascar, the majority of them children, the World Health Organisation said on Friday.

I haven't even read the article yet but I thought it would be an interesting article to dissect as its clearly sending a message, namely that measles is a very dangerous disease and you'd better make sure your children are protected against this threat. The actual article is very short and continues:

Since the beginning of the outbreak in September, more than 66,000 people in the African island nation have been infected with the highly contagious virus, the WHO said. Measles is easily preventable through vaccination. The WHO has launched a campaign in collaboration with local authorities to vaccinate more than 6 million children in Madagascar. The campaign also includes efforts to educate the population and counter negative perceptions about vaccinations.

In a report released last week, the WHO wrote that the outbreak was "unprecedented" and "occurred in a context of poor performance of routine vaccination." That report listed 300 deaths and 53,000 infections. The dramatic increase in such a short time is due to a more complete collection of data in Madagascar, a spokesman said on Friday.

There were 229,000 reported measles cases worldwide in 2018 - double the number of the previous year, according to preliminary WHO figures. WHO experts say the actual number of cases is likely to be many times higher. The former French colony of Madagascar has a population of about 25 million and is one of the 30 poorest nations in the world, according to the United Nations.

In a slightly lengthier article from Reuters, there is an inadvertent allusion to the real reason behind the deaths:

Madagascar has Africa’s highest children’s malnutrition rate, at 47 percent. The condition can increase the risk of serious complications and death from measles infection, the WHO says. 

Malnourished children are what made measles such a killer in the 19th century and that is the real killer here. Once the poverty, poor sanitation and crowded living conditions are reduced, a measles infection is easily shrugged off by a healthy immune system. The statistics quoted in the article are largely meaningless because they don't differentiate between vaccinated and unvaccinated children. The assumption is that everybody who was infected was unvaccinated and this assumption is not justified. Measles outbreaks can occur in vaccinated populations. The impact of the vaccination on the already compromised immune systems of these malnourished children is also not taken into account. The money spent by governments in Madagascar and elsewhere would be far more profitably spent in improving public health infrastructure but of course this doesn't generate any money for the pharmaceutical companies.

Meanwhile, the headlines and hysteria continue. For example, this editorial from The Sydney Morning Herald warns:

NSW must not drop its guard against measles

It's not worth the space in this blog post to quote from the nonsense contained in this editorial but it's just one of many examples of the unrelenting media message to the masses: vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate! Movies and television series about pathogen-induced zombie apocalypses reinforce this further and possibly more deeply. A worldview is being promoted of a planet full of potentially lethal pathogens that its human inhabitants need to protect themselves against. How? By regular vaccinations of course. If the vaccinations sometimes prove ineffective as children become adults, then this indicates a need for booster jabs at regular intervals throughout adulthood.

Perhaps every age has been an Age of Propaganda but it seems that the propaganda is intensifying in terms of us getting us to accept that vaccinations are good for us. When persuasion fails there is always legislation like preventing unvaccinated children from entering schools and kindergartens and withholding child support payments from parents who don't vaccinate their children. In the Australian state of New South Wales, the following describes the flu vaccine schedule for children under five:

To develop strong protection, children who are aged from six months to under five years are recommended to have two vaccine doses in the first year they receive a flu vaccine, with at least four weeks between doses. Children who have been immunised against flu previously will only require one dose each year. Source

These shots are free so if this schedule is followed by responsible parents, the child will have six flu shots (all containing Mercury of course) by the time she or he turns five years old. This is in addition to all the other vaccinations containing aluminium and all sorts of other additives. There is a nice synergy in the toxic effects of mercury and aluminium.