A child’s death from measles has sparked urgent calls from British public health officials to get children vaccinated, as the UK faces an onslaught of misinformation on social media, much of it from the US.
Measles is a highly infectious disease that can cause serious complications. It is preventable through double measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination in early childhood.
British Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Wes Streeting on Monday last week confirmed to parliament that a child had died in the UK of measles. No details have been released, but the Sunday Times and Liverpool Echo newspapers reported that the child had been severely ill with measles and other serious health problems in Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool.
Photo: AFP
Anti-vaxxers quickly posted unconfirmed claims about the death on social media.
One British influencer, Ellie Grey, who has more than 200,000 followers on Instagram, posted a video denying the child died from measles.
“Measles isn’t this deadly disease... it’s not dangerous,” she wrote.
Grey criticized Alder Hey Hospital for posting a video “really, really pushing and manipulating parents into getting the MMR vaccine.”
Her video was reposted by another British influencer, Kate Shemirani, a struck-off former nurse who posts health conspiracy theories.
“No vaccine has ever been proven safe and no vaccine has ever been proven effective,” Shemirani falsely claimed.
Liverpool Director of Public Health Matthew Ashton attacked those spreading misinformation and disinformation about childhood immunizations in the Echo, saying “they need to take a very long, hard look at themselves.”
“For those of you that don’t know, measles is a really nasty virus,” he said in a video, adding that the vaccination is a way of “protecting yourself and your loved ones.”
Alder Hey Hospital said that it has treated 17 children with measles since last month.
It posted a video in which a pediatric infectious diseases consultant, Andrew McArdle, addresses measles “myths,” including that the MMR jab causes autism.
This false claim comes from a debunked 1998 study by a British doctor, Andrew Wakefield, who was later struck off, but it sparked an international slump in vaccinations.
Benjamin Kasstan-Dabush, a medical anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said that there are still “lingering questions around the Wakefield era.”
He talked to parents who had delayed vaccinating their children, finding reasons included life events and difficulty getting health appointments, but also misinformation.
“We’re obviously talking about a different generation of parents, who might be engaging with that Wakefield legacy through social media, through the Internet, and of course through Kennedy,” he said, referring to US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who has promoted anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.
Kennedy fired all 17 experts on a key vaccine advisory panel and appointed a scientist who warned against COVID-19 jabs.
In the US, “misinformation is being produced in the highest echelons of the [US President Donald] Trump administration,” which “circulates across the Internet,” Kasstan-Dabush said.
In a sign of how narratives spread, a Telegram group airing conspiracies called Liverpool TPR, which has about 2,000 members, regularly posts links to anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense once chaired by Kennedy.
In the past few weeks the UK Health Security Agency has amplified its social media coverage on vaccinations, a spokesman said.
In a video in response to the reported death, Vanessa Saliba, a consultant epidemiologist, explained the MMR jab protects others, including those “receiving treatment like chemotherapy that can weaken or wipe out their immunity.”
Take-up of the MMR jab needs to be 95 percent for herd immunity, according to the WHO. The UK has never hit that target.
In Liverpool, uptake for both doses is only about 74 percent and below 50 percent in some areas, Ashton said, while the UK rate is 84 percent.
After Wakefield’s autism claims, confirmed measles cases topped 2,000 in England and Wales in 2012 before dropping, but last year cases soared again.
The same trend is happening elsewhere.
Europe last year reported the highest number of cases in more than 25 years; the US has recorded its worst measles epidemic in more than 30 years.
Canada, which officially eradicated measles in 1998, has registered more than 3,500 cases this year.
“You’re fighting against the wall of disinformation and lies,” Ontario infectious diseases doctor Alon Vaisman said.
STEPPING UP: Diminished US polar science presence mean opportunities for the UK and other countries, although China or Russia might also fill that gap, a researcher said The UK’s flagship polar research vessel is to head to Antarctica next week to help advance dozens of climate change-linked science projects, as Western nations spearhead studies there while the US withdraws. The RRS Sir David Attenborough, a state-of-the-art ship named after the renowned British naturalist, would aid research on everything from “hunting underwater tsunamis” to tracking glacier melt and whale populations. Operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the country’s polar research institute, the 15,000-tonne icebreaker — boasting a helipad, and various laboratories and gadgetry — is pivotal to the UK’s efforts to assess climate change’s impact there. “The saying goes
FRUSTRATIONS: One in seven youths in China and Indonesia are unemployed, and many in the region are stuck in low-productivity jobs, the World Bank said Young people across Asia are struggling to find good jobs, with many stuck in low-productivity work that the World Bank said could strain social stability as frustrations fuel a global wave of youth-led protests. The bank highlighted a persistent gap between younger and more experienced workers across several Asian economies in a regional economic update released yesterday, noting that one in seven young people in China and Indonesia are unemployed. The share of people now vulnerable to falling into poverty is now larger than the middle class in most countries, it said. “The employment rate is generally high, but the young struggle to
ENERGY SHIFT: A report by Ember suggests it is possible for the world to wean off polluting sources of power, such as coal and gas, even as demand for electricity surges Worldwide solar and wind power generation has outpaced electricity demand this year, and for the first time on record, renewable energies combined generated more power than coal, a new analysis said. Global solar generation grew by a record 31 percent in the first half of the year, while wind generation grew 7.7 percent, according to the report by the energy think tank Ember, which was released after midnight yesterday. Solar and wind generation combined grew by more than 400 terawatt hours, which was more than the increase in overall global demand during the same period, it said. The findings suggest it is
TICKING CLOCK: A path to a budget agreement was still possible, the president’s office said, as a debate on reversing an increase of the pension age carries on French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday was racing to find a new prime minister within a two-day deadline after the resignation of outgoing French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu tipped the country deeper into political crisis. The presidency late on Wednesday said that Macron would name a new prime minister within 48 hours, indicating that the appointment would come by this evening at the latest. Lecornu told French television in an interview that he expected a new prime minister to be named — rather than early legislative elections or Macron’s resignation — to resolve the crisis. The developments were the latest twists in three tumultuous
RSS