Unbelievable. He should lose his license. His first priority seems to be DOING harm.
Tell your family in FL or visiting FL to get their infants who are 6 -12 months old a dose of the MMR (the way we do for infants traveling to 3rd world countries with poor prevalence of vaccination). It usually is not administered until 12 months old because younger infants’ immune systems are not developed enough to be sure that they will mount an immune response to the vaccine, so in a setting with no measles, it made sense to wait until at least 12 months. However, by age 6 months, 75% of infants do respond and do become immune, so if there is measles in the area, it is better to give a first dose at 6 months old. By 12 months, over 90% respond to one dose, and the second dose (given at least 1 month later) brings the response up to about 98%, although it is preferable to have the second dose given at 15 months or later (but that was when measles was practically unheard of, in the US, not like now, when FL has decided to just let measles sweep through the community, since so many children are unvaccinated, and of course, all infants under 12 months are unvaccinated).
For infants under 6 months, the youngest do have some protection from mom that passed via the placenta, but that is usually gone by 4-5 months old. Breastfeeding can continue to pass some antibodies after that. I don’t think it has been studied, but I believe it makes sense in an epidemic setting (which we will very soon have in FL) for breastfeeding moms to get an MMR in order to boost their antibody titer, so that more antibodies will pass to the baby in the breast milk. It is best not to freeze the milk, and not to expose the milk to heat if defrosting it, since heat will destroy the antibodies in the milk.
This would be a fantastic study to do in FL pediatrics offices right now - to give breastfeeding moms who are in for the 2 or 4 months checkup with their babies MMR boosters, and then see if it decreased the chance of measles infection before the baby was 6 months old (when it should receive a first dose, itself).
Never did I think I would see a time when a state surgeon general would ignore science so blatantly. Measles is usually mild, but not always. Some children will die in FL from this. Others will later develop subacute sclerosing panencephalits, a prolonged and terminal neurological disease that shows up as much as 8 years after measles infection in those under 2 years old. It is due to persistent measles virus infection in the brain. I’ve never seen it. Pediatricians training today, however, will see it during the course of their careers, since so many unvaccinated children or infants too young to have been immunized are about to contract measles in FL (and probably all over the country, as Disney vacationing families bring home an unwelcome souvenir to their home communities).
