Re:A researcher's response to people pointing out 150 errors...
by nonbel on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @01:57PM
(#13988881)
So how large do you think such a diagnosis effect may be? That other paper reported only 7% of clinical diagnoses were lab positive for measles in Singapore.
And yet another effect to deal with is that people used to spread measles on purpose:
“Before the introduction of measles vaccines, measles virus infected 95%–98% of children by age 18 years [1–4], and measles was considered an inevitable rite of passage. Exposure was often actively sought for children in early school years because of the greater severity of measles in adults.” http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/189/Supplement_1/S4.fu...
I think for these reasons it is clear the effectiveness of measles vaccines has been overstated, it is only a matter of how much.
Since measles is very contagious, there's a lot of effort putting into identifying and isolating cases. This necessarily involves screening many cases where the disease is only weakly suspected. On top of that, the current protocols cast a really wide drag net. Australia, for example, tests every susceptible patient who shared a waiting room with a measles patient, as well as those who entered less than two hours after the index case left. In a busy hospital or practice, this could be a lot of children.
Thus, the high ratio of tested to confirmed cases doesn't mean doctors are bad at diagnosing measles; they may just be cautious.