33 Comments
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Jan's avatar

JVL, thank you for having Katelyn. I read her substack - she does a fantastic job of making epidemiology accessible to an average reader. I don't have a lot of empathy for these idiot parents who refuse to vaccinate their children. If it was just the adults, I would say let Darwin have his way. But the kids are innocent and they don't deserve to get measles, which could even kill them - because of the stupidity of their parents. One thing we're all going to be facing this upcoming fall and winter is that vaccines will likely be less available in the US.. Kennedy has canceled the annual March meeting where CDC formulates the vaccine for the latest strain of flu as it continues to evolve. So at best, the vaccine will be late. I actually fear that with the reduced uptake there may not be enough market for vaccines in this country that drug makers will even sell it here. Trump plans to deny Federal funding to schools and colleges that have vaccine requirements. And people who lose Medicaid will not have access to healthcare. This all adds up to a lesser demand for flu and covid vaccines. We need to be ready to travel to Canada to get our shots

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Nevin Horace Oliphant's avatar

Thank you, Katelyn Jetelina. Your work is essential to the future of humanity, hang in there.

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Andrew's avatar

In case no one has mentioned this yet, she does a great weekly podcast with Dr Abdul al-Sayed called America Dissected where they discuss public health topics, its excellent!

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Bart Harley Jarvis's avatar

Thank you JVL and Katelyn!

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Taren Johnston's avatar

Great POD - definitely need ROBUST Public Health.

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Erin's avatar

The JVL always bringing us the best conversations.

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elizabeth's avatar

Thank you JVL for introducing me to this woman and newsletter! Thank you Katlyn

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Amanda Nash's avatar

That is not true what she said about being safe if you were born after 1957. If you were born between 1957 and 1968 there is a good likelihood that you did not get the live virus and you need another vaccine. Dang, I would not have expected this misinformation here from you guys!

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Amanda Nash's avatar

This is from npr.org. But the advice is from CDC. It is different from what it says on the CDC website now. 🤷‍♀️ Anyway I got was born in 59 and I went and got an MMR shot last week.

“But public health experts say there are some adults who should consider getting revaccinated. That includes older adults who were born after 1957 and were vaccinated before 1968.

That's because early versions of the measles vaccine were made from an inactivated (killed) virus, which didn't work particularly well, Offit says. That's why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that anyone vaccinated before 1968 get at least one dose of the live attenuated vaccine.”

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Walternate 🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇺🇹🇼🇩🇰🇬🇱🇲🇽🇵🇦's avatar

Why the hell are we spending millions of dollars on maintaining nuclear weapons? It's a terrible return on investment. We've had nukes for nearly a century and we've hardly used them! I haven't seen any nuclear attacks either.

This is the kind of reasoning our society is using to justify driving itself into the ground.

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JaneJ's avatar

I had no idea that measles can wipe out your immunity's memory of other viruses, so you might get very sick with something else like the flu after having had measles. And yet Sec. Brain Worm is suggesting everything'll be fine if people load up on vitamin A, and oh by the way aren't these beef tallow fries delicious?

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Katelyn Jetelina's avatar

Measles can be a nasty virus!

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Katinka's avatar

So I went to the Dr office just after watching this. I asked the Nurse practitioner if I needed to get a MMR vaccine as there is no way for me to know if I had it as a child, she said that when they do my bloodwork they can also look for MMR antibodies.

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Katelyn Jetelina's avatar

I’m glad you brought it up with your clinician. And that’s one option! But be careful because antibodies don’t tell the whole story.

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Rosemary Kopec's avatar

I rely on this newsletter and have passed it on to so many people (because my own brilliant doctor recommended it). THANK YOU, Katelyn.

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LM Rohman's avatar

Is there a way to require proof of vaccination for diseases including measles before allowing people to travel outside and return to the US or to travel into the US from another country? I also think insurance companies should not be on the hook for hospital/medical care for vaccine preventable illnesses - maybe this is the solution?

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Alan Harris's avatar

Inchoate synthesis on several of JVL's items recently: to what degree is "resilient" the opposite of "efficient?" And which would you prefer your crisis response sections of the government to be? And on the research question, how do the venture capitalist tech bros understand taking 100 chances for one big score in the tech world, but literally nowhere else?

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Rick R's avatar

Loved the show and found a new substacker to subscribe to. So, it's all coming more into focus now. Musk hates old people so wants to gut Social Security and Medicare to hasten their demise but why stop there? Cut the funding to NIH and CDC so they can't develop treatments to help them live longer or for younger people to live long enough to become old people. I believe Dickens wrote about people like that. Something about decreasing the surplus population.

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Linda Odell's avatar

Additional data points for me: 1) that elected official in Texas telling old people in 2020 to save the economy by going out and about despite the risk of illness/death in the midst of Covid; 2) Our esteemed vice president apparently believing post-menopausal women are only of value to the extent that they provide free child care for their grandchildren.

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Rick R's avatar

Yes. Dan Patrick, our wackadoodle Lt Governor in Texas. Grandparents should be willing to just die so their grandkids didn't have to learn from home.

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Laura's avatar

Love Katelyn. I’ve been a subscriber since March 2020 too

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