Here is Dr. Klotman’s Week 283 video address. My synopsis follows.

Vaccines and Autism

  • This whole disinformation campaign began with the discredited work of British physician Andrew Wakefield that was published in 1998 and subsequently retracted.
  • Wakefield’s paper was based on fabricated data. He had been paid by attorneys engaged in lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers
  • Since then, there have been many more studies of a potential link between vaccines and autism. The majority of the best studies show no link. Fewer, low-quality, studies have attempted to link the two
  • Two-thirds of the studies suggesting a link were published by the same team and heavily criticized for deceptive research techniques and flawed data

Measles

  • The Texas Measles outbreak has been officially declared over
  • The rub is that as long as our vaccination rate is less than 95%, all we need is one traveler to bring the virus back into the general population and we’ll have another outbreak
  • In the Americas, we’ve had >10K cases, 18 deaths due to Measles this year. The case count is Canada>Mexico>USA>South America

COVID

  • Wastewater levels of COVID are rising rapidly – as are positive COVID tests and ER visits for COVID
  • The CDC has recently identified five states as likely to experience large COVID outbreaks; Texas is #1

Influenza

  • The season will probably begin during or after October
  • Flu vaccine is recommended for everyone >6mos of age
  • Flumist (live attenuated nasal spray) will be available this year
  • The optimal vaccination for older adults continues to be high-dose Fluzone or the new quadrivalent DNA recombinant Flublock

In other news, there are large outbreaks of Chikungunya in South America and China. I mention it in case you are thinking about travel in those areas. Chikungunya causes a severe arthritis – the disease is known as “breakbone fever.” There is also a lot of Dengue activity in South America. US cases of both viral diseases have been almost entirely among travelers to the regions named above.

I know you didn’t ask, but this is a good time to start wearing your N95 type mask in public spaces. Be careful out there because the updated COVID vaccine will probably not be available until after mid-September.

By: llcPosted on