what is it with disease having the worse form waaayyyy later.
Many diseases are organisms that want to procreate. So it makes sense to let you get on with life for a while, so you can infect others (thus procreate themselves).
If they kill you too fast, they die, too.
Once you’ve spread them, it makes little difference how horribly they kill you.
I don't understand how both these things can be true:
it affects like 1 in 5,000 people who contract measles (vaccinated)
It’s preventable by getting the measles vaccine.
There are numbers missing: the vast amount of people who don’t contract measles because they were vaccinated isn’t identified here – just those who contract it despite being vaccinated (which is a much smaller amount of the population). Of those, 1 in 5,000 will get Dawson disease.
This is why it jumps so much in unvaccinated populations.
The 1 in 5,000 number is of people who do contract measles even though they were vaccinated, which is very small compared to unvaccinated numbers.
There are 2 sets of numbers here, and it’s only talking about that subset. Does that make sense?
jumps to 1 in 609 in the unvaccinated.
I know what odds I'll take. I'm also assuming a vaccinated person has much lower chances of contracting measles in the first place.
Yes, that’s the point.
Contrary to my sibling’s comment, the point here is that it’s 1 in 5,000 people who get measles despite being vaccinated, which is rather rare. This is why the number jumps so much in the unvaccinated (nothing to do with infants – it’s just that infants are when we normally give this vaccine; the disease usually happens in children and young adults who weren’t vaccinated as infants).
OP misquoted. It's 1 in 609 unvaxxed infants.
Still better to fucking vaccinate, though.
I didn’t misquote. This disease doesn’t usually happen in infants – it happens in children and young adults who weren’t vaccinated as infants.
The wording may be confusing, but the point is you have a near exponential chance of getting this if you weren’t vaccinated as an infant, which is when we typically give this vaccination.
I went back and checked. That 1 in 609 was about children under 12 months who contracted measles.
From the wiki source:
Among measles cases reported to CDPH during 1988–1991, incidence of SSPE was 1:1367 for children <5 years, and 1:609 for children <12 months at time of measles disease.
Everyone should still get vaccinated for measles to prevent any of it!
That 1 in 609 was about children under 12 months who contracted measles.
Yeah, and the larger number was in a largely vaccinated population.
The 1 in 609 number is in unvaccinated populations.
It’s kind of apples to oranges, where the oranges are very stupid and never get protection and the apples are protected.
It’s a bit hard to compare these ratios in progressive populations where some are really dumb.
They can’t. OP should have said that the chances can be mitigated by getting the measles vaccine.