The headlines are full of measles at the moment, in the way that always reeks of coordination.
The measles outbreak in the US has been simmering away for weeks, but was brought back to the front burner in the last few days. The Daily Mail headlining:
America on verge of measles MAYHEM: Hundreds feared to be infected in California and Arizona outbreaks as US suffers year’s worth of cases in two months
It’s not just Arizona and California either. Chicago, Florida and Philadelphia all have “outbreaks” of their own.
An article in the Atlantic headlined “The Return of Measles”, claims there have been measles outbreaks in 19 separate states.
Meanwhile, on our side of the pond, a measles outbreak that started in Birmingham in January has apparently spread north and south. The UK’s total cases are apparently up to ~733.
In Ireland, the scary story is that one person on a flight from Abu Dhabi to Dublin tested positive for measles a couple of days ago. That number has since risen to three! The authorities are desperately hunting down anyone who was on that plane.
That’s three measles scare-stories in three different countries at the same time, with maybe more on the way
To quote Ian Fleming, “once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence and three times is enemy action”.
So what is this “enemy action”? Where is this story going?
First, let’s get this out of the way: This is not a public health scare. Not a real one. Measles is not especially dangerous, with a reported case fatality ratio of about 0.02% in Western countries, meaning for every 5000 people who get measles 4999 will survive.
So what’s with the scary headlines? What’s the endgame here?
To answer that we need to ask “who are the media are blaming?”, and as with most issues these days there are two answers to that.
Yes, it’s another binary.
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