Mumps And Measles Breaking Out

Diseases are picking up. Mumps is breaking out in Washington:

Cases of mumps in an ongoing outbreak in Washington state have continued to rise, with at least 298 likely or confirmed mumps cases, according to the state health department and the Spokane Regional Health District…

Approximately a two-thirds of those infected were vaccinated, but the mumps vaccine can wane over time…

Mumps cases rose dramatically in the U.S. in 2016, with approximately 5,311 cases reported, according to the CDC. Eight states have reported an outbreak of 100 people or more.

and Colorado:

Mumps — that old-timey viral infection causing swollen cheeks and jawlines — is making a strong comeback in Colorado in 2017, mirroring a national trend…

Nationally, there were more than 5,300 cases in 2016, a massive increase over the previous five years when annual cases hovered around 1,000…

Herlihy said the latest outbreak in Colorado is among a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated people.

Meanwhile Measles is taking the PATH Train in New Jersey:

The case of a Hudson County man who came down with the measles has prompted state health officials to warn residents of the possibility of exposure at more than a dozen locations.

The alert, issued late Friday afternoon, said the man had visited many Jersey City locations between Jan. 16 and Jan. 24, including multiple PATH stations, a drug store, a restaurant, and the Newport Mall…

Measles is highly contagious, spreading through coughs or sneezes. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the virus “can live for up to two hours in an airspace where the infected person coughed or sneezed.”

“Measles is so contagious that if one person has it, 90% of the people close to that person who are not immune will also become infected,” its website warns.

Measles can be serious in about of fifth of cases, hitting the young and the old particularly hard. It can also cause birth defects if a pregnant woman becomes infected.

Already these seem to be adapting to overcome vaccination. Expect this to appear at some point with the flu if it becomes a bad enough strain that people take flu vaccination seriously, and we are stupid enough to let in enough immigrants to make exposure a regular occurrence regardless of vaccination.

I have always assumed malnutrition plays a large role in disease adaptation to exacerbate an outbreak, but I think I have grossly underestimated the extent of the role of r-strategist migration.

We have excellent public health systems and essentially free resources to bolster immunity, and yet we are still seeing outbreaks on a regular basis, and these frequent outbreaks appear to be increasing opportunities, and incidences for adaptation to vaccination. This is almost certainly due to the recent surge in both external immigration, and internal acceptance of the migrants. Both are highly unusual historically, and probably hallmarks of the incidents of peak-r throughout history.

On the bright side, a pandemic would clean out the rabbits very quickly, without any of the normal discomforts that would otherwise accompany the Apocalypse. On the downside, it could always spiral horribly out of control.

Spread r/K Theory, because we can’t pin all of our hopes on a pandemic