Updates On Your Favorite Infectious Diseases

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to know how to track infectious diseases in the US. For my entire career, I’ve counted on the CDC website to give me up to date, accurate information about ongoing outbreaks, current vaccine recommendations, treatment protocols, and other vital information. This is no longer a sufficient strategy. I find myself looking at various reliable website from public health experts, state health departments, and health journalists. Then I synthesize what I’ve found and try to come up with what’s really going on.

So, here’s a summary of some of the things going on in infectious diseases.

Measles

The measles outbreaks across the US continue to grow, especially the outbreak centered in West Texas.

Cases are still on the rise, and given how far we’ve let our vaccination rates fall, it’s hard to say where this will end (although the predictions we do have are dire). There have been three deaths so far (deaths that were completely preventable); there will likely be more.

The solution is vaccination and not fake treatments and cures. Vaccination worked well enough to eliminate measles as a threat in the US in 2000. It will work again if we get on top of it immediately.

Whooping Cough

Pertussis (whooping cough) has been a vaccine-preventable disease for well over one hundred years. The vaccine is usually given in combination with tetanus and diphtheria, two other horrifying diseases.

Pertussis is deadly for infants. (You can look up videos of babies with pertussis if you need to.) Before vaccination about 9000 kids died from pertussis every year in the US. Between 2000 and 2017, 307 deaths were reported.

Pertussis is on the rise for a number of reasons. Decreased vaccination is a big problem, but we are also better at diagnosing the disease. We’ve also changed the way we vaccinate. The current acellular vaccine was introduced in the 90s due to side effects from the whole cell vaccine. The trade-off is decreased efficacy. It works great preventing the disease in kids, but immunity wanes over time which is why re-vaccination in adults is so important. Adults serve as a reservoir for the disease—they usually have cold-like symptoms and that’s that. But they can pass it on to kids, and when young kids get it, they get very, very ill. It’s vital to make sure all kids are vaccinated. Adults, who can pass the disease on to kids, should receive a Tdap shot at least once. They should also get the shot if they are going to be around infants or if they are pregnant.

Rubella (German measles)

Like me, you’ve probably never seen a case of rubella. Like measles, it has been eliminated from the US. If MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccination rates continue to fall, we will see a rise in cases. It’s often a mild disease, but in pregnant women it’s devastating. “Congenital rubella syndrome” is a horrific disease and is completely preventable.

Influenza

During the most recent flu season 216 kids died of flu—so far. This is the highest number of pediatric flu deaths since the H1N1 pandemic in 2009-2010. There’s probably a lot of reasons for this, and we can do better of course. But we’re in danger of doing worse.

The committee that normally determines next season’s flu vaccine was not allowed to meet as usual this year. Instead the FDA (eventually) announced the makeup of next years vaccines with little information released to the public. The NIH, amid cancellations of program after program, has announced an enormous investment toward creating a “universal flu vaccine”—using technology that has been largely abandoned. It’s been replaced by vaccine technology that is more effective, safer, has fewer side effects, and is easier to make.

The reasons for this—like just about everything else coming out of Kennedy’s HHS—are bizarre, unscientific, and dangerous. Or maybe it’s just someone’s pet project. Who knows? It’s not like we haven’t been looking for a universal flu vaccine. This is just the wrong place to look, and all the experts know that—but they’ve been pushed out.

We are dealing with unprecedented threats to our nation’s health, and these are just a few examples. Much of the destruction of our public health and research infrastructure will take decades to repair. Please, reach out to your representatives and demand they defend our public health.

Stay well.

-pal