75 deaths reported by the 18th December, 2019.
The death toll is still expected to rise as the reported cases of the measles outbreak has risen to 5331 from a total population of 201,000 this is 2.65% of the total population infected. Of that infected number 75 confirmed deaths. 75 deaths is 0.037% of the Samoan population who have died from the measles.
Crunching the numbers.
2.65% of the Samoan population infected with the measles is comparable to 662,500 of the Australian population being infected with the measles. Comparably speaking, 0.037% of the Australian population is 9,250 Australians having perished from the measles to date.
The anxiety during the 2019 festive season is vire moribund and gloomy for an entire Nation.
The sins of false science and a proselytising conspiracy theory by the proponents for the anti-vaccination campaign over the past three decades in Samoa has exacerbated the problem. The Tongan and Fijian outbreak of the same measles epidemic had next to no casualties due to the effective vaccination programs from their respective health authorities which was countermanded by the Samoan anti-vaccination campaign which had reduced the vaccination roll out throughout the sparsely populated Nation of Samoa to only a 34% (wikipedia) in 2018. A crucial period since the number of deaths from the measles were for babies under the age of four.
The anti-vaccination program would become a powerful campaign which would include celebrity visitors to Samoa, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of Senator Robert F Kennedy assassinated in 1968, and brother of assassinated President John F Kennedy; and most recently, the NRL WAG wife of Frank Winterstein, Taylor Winterstein, amongst the notable Anti-Vaxer Celebrities, who had impressed a seemingly gullible Samoan Nation.
The outcome would be the greatest misinformation campaign engineered by Populist Celebrities, at the expense of an entire National Health Campaign of Samoa.
Alas, with the success of the Anti-Vaxer Celebrities upon Samoan National Health Policy, as you sow, so shall you reap. The outcome ineluctably has been the vulnerability of the unvaccinated to the preventable diseases such as the common Measles which was almost wiped out with the advent of the anti-measles vaccine half a century ago.
In a biblical told you so...
"This is what the LORD says: "About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again."
— Exodus 11:4–6
The measles epidemic is likened to the instructions for the Passover process with the Samoan villages having to place red flags for Health authorities to arrive and vaccinate their unvaccinated members of the family.
The lessons learnt from the Samoan measles epidemic seems very frank and blunt.
1. Do not trust or adhere to unqualified Medical and Health advise from people ill qualified to proffer esoteric medical advise that would be detrimental to the health of the individual, their families and the community at large. Or, as in the case of Samoa, the National Health Policy of the Samoan Nation.
2. Trust the Medical science advances throughout Medical history. Whilst there has been some hit and misses insofar as medical breakthroughs are concerned there have been some isolated cases of vaccination failures, but, in such instances these health failures are isolated to individual medical conditions of the patient which may not be universally applicable to the community at large.
18th December, 2019.
Timoteo Tufuga
Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Samoa_measles_outbreak
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Winterstein
3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/11/26/deadly-measles-outbreak-hits-children-samoa-after-anti-vaccine-fears/
