The measles that has returned: what the rise in anti-vaxxers can lead to

Rospotrebnadzor has announced a “cleansing” vaccination, which should correct the shortcomings of the planned one: find those who have not received the vaccine and convince them to use it. Difficult to assess the extent of the problem: department officials say 95% of Russians have been vaccinated, but employees of the Gemotest laboratory, which tested 17,000 people for antibodies, report that they have none found in 72% of cases.

Even if all those who are not protected against the disease are identified, it may not help: according to the head of the department of Rospotrebnadzor for the Republic of Dagestan, Zalimkhan Omariyev, people do not want to come into contact and get vaccinated as part of anti-epidemic measures. This is not the first time that such a situation has arisen: we can say that we have returned to the 90s.

“In the 80s, I studied in Leningrad, and they could not find a single patient with diphtheria to demonstrate to us – everything was so good with it. When I served in the 90s, I saw enough such cases live, ”says Alexei Vodovozov, therapist, toxicologist and science journalist. As the blogger explains, the collapse of the USSR affected: people began to refuse vaccinations, like many other components of Soviet heritage. The results were disappointing: in the 1990s, 150,000 people fell ill with diphtheria in Russia and the CIS, 5,000 of whom died.

It didn’t change anything: the anti-vaccination movement exists and is still growing. “The vaccinated are more likely to get sick than the unvaccinated”, “the vaccine itself can become the cause of meningitis”, “tetanus has always been there, I don’t remember anyone becoming disabled or dying” , “it’s clear how they got infected, the vaccine is alive” – ​​on social networks you can see thousands of such comments. Why do people ignore the victory of vaccines over the most dangerous diseases and don’t they want to protect themselves and their children?

As video blogger Ilya Varlamov (included in the list of people acting as a foreign agent) notes in his video, the anti-vaccination movement is more widespread in enlightened countries than in less developed ones. In the latter, the fear of epidemics is alive: people remember well what measles and poliomyelitis look like, and they have seen with their own eyes how these diseases were defeated thanks to vaccination.

Residents of prosperous states, once protected by vaccinations, are more often refusing to have their children vaccinated. For example, the first generation of Russian anti-vaccinators grew up in Soviet times, when vaccination was practiced for everyone and everywhere. From tetanus, for example, they were vaccinated almost after any injury with a violation of the integrity of the skin, so it is not surprising that the average Soviet citizen did not see anyone become disabled from this disease.

Understanding the parents of the 90s who decided to refuse vaccination is simple: at that time, it was only possible to understand any medical problem by devoting a lot of time to it. No Internet – a mother who decided to find out how vaccines work and what they consist of had to find specialists ready to answer her questions and rummage through tons of specialized literature in the library.

Only a few had the ability to manage their time this way, and even fewer wanted to spend their leisure time this way. At the same time, rumors circulated in society that could not be verified: “And then the girl was taken to the doctor’s office, she lost consciousness there immediately after the injection, and the next day she died in intensive care.” Such stories frightened much more than the mythical poliomyelitis or diphtheria, which no one had seen for a long time.

Now the situation has changed dramatically. You can now find information on everything related to vaccinations: for example, to find out why the situation of 1955 cannot be repeated, when more than 200,000 children were vaccinated against poliomyelitis with an inactivated Jonas Salk vaccine, which Found to be “alive” due to manufacturing error. Found to be a complete virus.

This precedent, as a result of which 40,000 children fell ill with poliomyelitis and 2,400 received more or less severe paralysis, is still cited as an argument by anti-vaxxers. However, it is enough to listen to Vodovozov to find out that modern vaccines are not assembled from live viruses – only “spare parts” are used for them. Composition, complications of testing, manufacturing technology, principle of operation – finding data on all this is very simple.

It is not uncommon to hear anti-vaccine advocates say that pharmaceutical companies promote vaccines, which make huge profits from their production. However, a cold and additional skills are enough to understand that these companies are more likely to benefit from diseases that require many drugs for treatment – from antipyretics to antihistamines.

The confidence of vaccine opponents that they are the ones who have become the people who could not be cashed in is a big mistake. The most famous case where this is exactly what they tried to do is the case of Andrew Wakefield. It turned out that the British doctor who “discovered” the link between the trivalent vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella, on the one hand, falsified the results of his study, on the other hand, the conducted on the orders of a medical claims law firm, and third… filed a patent for its own monovalent vaccines against measles, rubella and mumps.

Over the years, the situation has not changed. One of the current leaders of the Russian anti-vaxxers, Alexander Kotok, is a homeopath, which means he is one of those who sells water and sugar balls for the price of gold. In a society where alternative medicine is viewed with skepticism and traditional medicine with confidence, such an undertaking will be difficult, if not impossible.

By saying, “Doctors don’t believe in vaccines either,” vaccine opponents don’t think that loyal doctors also have their own interests. The trade in discarded unopened ampoules and issued certificates has grown tremendously during the pandemic: Hundreds of advertisements have appeared on the web for the sale of coronavirus vaccination certificates “with registration in the register of services of the ‘State”. Undoubtedly, there are enough enthusiasts among anti-vaccinationists, but at the beginning of the chain of sincere “believers” there is usually someone who gains money or popularity.

What awaits us if the statistics of “Hemotest” are closer to the real situation? “If there are not enough people vaccinated against measles, poliomyelitis or diphtheria, they can come back and it is possible to acquire new properties at the same time, because any virus that enters the operational space begins to change,” says Alexander Vodovozov. .

What will measles be, from which nothing protects us? It remains to this day one of the main causes of infant mortality in developing countries. In a population where no one is vaccinated, a sick person transmits the virus to 12-18 people (for comparison, at the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic for SARS-CoV-2, this figure was 2.5 -3), and the carrier does not know it for the first few days, because there are no symptoms yet.

Now in danger are children and adults who cannot get vaccinated – having not a fake, but a real medical faucet. As soon as such a person finds himself in a room where he caught measles two hours ago, touches the surface where the virus remains, then touches his face, and he will fall ill. Measles is the worst tolerated by the most vulnerable among us, those under five and those over 50.

“Even smokers and drug addicts are not subjected to such unanimous dehumanization as anti-vaxxers,” wrote Dr. Artemy Okhotin in his article a few years ago. At the same time, he gave an example of intimidation: a photo with the inscription “You should not vaccinate all your children. Only the ones you want to keep! “, which many have reposted on the Web. According to Okhotin, such movements make anti-vaccination mothers look like women who don’t care about their children.

Such “demotivators” are really hard to endorse. They are useless: a person who writes on the web “A vaccine is essentially a toxic foreign substance” will not be impressed by ironic slogans. Moreover, they are unlikely to convince skeptics to get vaccinated. Only educational activities can have the desired effect, and today we want to express our gratitude to those who pursue it – science journalists, medical bloggers and doctors who do not waste their time talking with parents.

We hope that these people will continue to do what they are doing, and those who make a choice will fall on their content, and not on the “sounding” books of Galina Chervonskaya or the messages of the homeopath Kotok, and will understand what is really dangerous – a disease or its prevention.