Admit your ignorance - things you've only just realised/learned

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ColinJ

Puzzle game procrastinator!
Apparently, measles wipes your immune system's memory, so you lose immunity to all the other diseases you'd already acquired it for.
Yikes - I didn't know that either!!

I just found this article about it on the BBC website.
 

keronmp

Member
Apparently, measles wipes your immune system's memory, so you lose immunity to all the other diseases you'd already acquired it for.

That is really horrifying.
 
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presta

Legendary Member
I just found this article about it on the BBC website.
That's a bit more readable than the one I found on a university website.

In a similar bit different vein: according to this, if you screen a population for a disease, the screening reduces the mortality rate for that disease, but not the all-cause mortality. The reduced risk of dying from one thing is offset by an increased risk of dying from something else.
 
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Widnes
That's a bit more readable than the one I found on a university website.

In a similar bit different vein: according to this, if you screen a population for a disease, the screening reduces the mortality rate for that disease, but not the all-cause mortality. The reduced risk of dying from one thing is offset by an increased risk of dying from something else.

Don;t tell the religious extremists

it makes it sound like God - or some God anyway - has decided you will die of something and thwarting Him (or Her - or It or whatever) is pointless as you just die of something else

which is rather screwed up by the vacines stats but they ignore that sort of thing
 

Punkawallah

Veteran
Apparently, measles wipes your immune system's memory, so you lose immunity to all the other diseases you'd already acquired it for.


That is really horrifying.

Yes. But also no. When we talk about ‘immunity’, it means that our immune system has been ‘primed’ to recognise a disease early, and has a better chance of defeating it. It does not mean we are protected from infection. Diseases recognised by our immune system produce different strains over time that may be less (or more) ‘visible’ to our immune system, and this will affect it’s ability to defeat them. See the common cold.
The measles virus can oblige our immune system to start again on its ‘library’ of diseases, it does not mean we would have no immune system at all.
 
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