Look at the rise of measles in England and ask yourself: Have we learned one thing from Covid? | Francis Ryan

ACrossing parts of the country this week, custody workers will work on plastic button and gloves. With more than 500 confirmed cases of a virus that threatens life in England so far this year, and one child died in Liverpool this month, many nurseries provide infection control measures in emergency situations such as personal and far -social protection equipment.

Stop me if you get a rush from Deja Vu. It is amazing how you can describe the current height news in measles, and its early response, easily the Koruna. Except, unlike the beginning of Covid, when our only defense was the lock, it was a safe and effective vaccine – JAB MMR – a long time ago. The problem is that many people at risk – About one of every six children Those between the ages of five years or less – had no dose or both. Watching the nursery role restores Covid’s hygiene protocols while healthy professionals urge more people to obtain vaccination, it seems as if we are blindly heading to an old routine, and it is desperately deficient with antiseptic and denial.

There is already a talker that is brewing again on whether the unintended unit should be allowed to use some public services, as Melanie Bilcher said of the first -year coalition that the nurseries should not be sent to children who were not vaccinated against measles because it is “the choice of parents.” A little movement and you can see yourself practically in your front garden that hits a bowl and generally for NHS.

There was a period, somewhere between the storage toilet lists and the Boris Johnson announced that everything returned to normal, when we had plans to learn lessons from Covid. Creators and vaccine scientists had been praised. The social safety network will be estimated; Finally, NHS employees and the main workers finally appreciate. There was some progress. For example, the Labor Party government brought sick salaries for 1.3 million low -wage workers. But in many ways, good intentions were removed with banana bread, not least when it comes to public health.

The infection control methods that we learned during Covid-did not continue to think about regular acres, testing, air filters and masks in high-risk settings-, at some point, things are worse now. With the absence in the school, the last conservative government Encourage students actively To go to the separation with a moderate (but infectious) cough and sore throat. Meanwhile, the vaccine decreased. Last winter, the number of NHS employees who agreed to the influenza JAB to protect patients to its lowest level since 2010 (37.5 %) – the fourth year in a row has decreased these fortification rates since the epidemic. At the same time, the efforts made to eliminate cervical cancer in England by 2040 are threatened because the number of students who were immunized against the HPV has decreased by 17 percentage points since before the epidemic.

This is partially a clear sign of the “vaccine fatigue” accelerated by the epidemic. In addition to the rise in wrong information via the Internet and lack of confidence in the “elites”, payment for vaccination after it has been legally assigned to stay at home for several months, has always left hatred for – lack of confidence – public health dictates. For some, Covid rules were not a lesson on how teamwork preserved lives, but on how to control the state.

However, it is worth noting that children’s immunization rates were decreasing for several years before Covid beaten, with the United Kingdom now. Failure The goal of the World Health Organization to cover 95 % for the herd’s immunity any Childhood routine.

The problem with absorbing vaccines is not just hesitation but long -term issues with arrival. Many low -income parents cannot spend a vacation at work to vaccinate their children, or they cannot bear the transportation to get there. There is also a lack of GP dates in the first place. Meanwhile, investment seekers and other marginalized groups can hesitate to deal with official health services. This makes it frustrated more that funding has not been preserved for awareness efforts that were effective during the peak of the epidemic, such as translators and community participation.

“The truth is that we failed to learn from Covid about the necessary investment for NHS teams and local authorities to communicate with work methods and maintain them when needed,” Ben Cassestan-Dabush, Assistant Professor and Medical Anthropology at the London School of Health and Equity Medicine. “Modern plans for integrated care councils to reduce their operational costs by up to 50 % will only put other obstacles to vaccine coverage.”

Seeing the role of nursery adopts infection strategies in recent days, so you feel simultaneous Plaster stick. Since the eighties of the last century, we have known that the rapid injection is the real solution to measles research. We also know how to achieve this: a public health campaign for immunization; Community vaccinations (as recommended in the last 10 -year government plan for NHS England); And the culture of collective responsibility to protect each other.

The latter is something that we are not supposed to say loudly, for fear that we would intrude on individual freedoms. However, it is a vital part of any conversation about vaccines. The herd immunity, after all, is at the heart of recognition that “personal choice” about vaccination has severe consequences – Sometimes fatal – For the rest of society. Children with pent -up immune systems, for example, still cannot get sick with measles even if they have Jab MMR. They depend on anyone else who do the right thing and help them maintain their safety. Again, stop me if you hear this before.

The real lesson may not come from Covid but from the long battle against measles. Public health is not a single victory. One day, there is joy in the invention, and the following intellectual responses against it. The great paradox in vaccines is that the population becomes satisfied with a disease and the need to fortify to a large extent because a successful vaccine made it feel as if the threat has been transferred to the past. As a nation, we still remember the patients of Corona virus panting in the intensive care unit. Let’s hope that it does not take more dead children until the audience is reminded of the danger of measles.