Erica 👀

This is incredibly worrying news. Measles is a highly contagious and dangerous virus. It can cause severe complications such as deafness, brain damage and death – and young children under five are particularly vulnerable. Measles is also one of the most highly infectious viruses. Spending just 15 minutes in direct contact with someone infected with measles is enough to catch it yourself. This outbreak is likely to be linked to low levels of MMR vaccination in the capital – which is itself a tragedy because these patents are trying to protect their children from harm, fearful that the disinformation spread by antivaxxers may be true. If you are a parent who feels worried about the MMR, please, I urge you, read the excellent, evidence-based NHS information on MMR by searching for "NHS" and "MMR". I promise you, as an experienced doctor who cares more about patient safety than anything, that I would never encourage use of a medicine whose safety did not vastly outstrip its potential risks (which, for MMR, are very rare – and, most notably, large scale trials have shown the vaccine to have no demonstrable link whatsoever to autism). Please also consider reading the author Roald Dahl’s heartbreaking account of the death of his daughter, Olivia, aged 7, from measles, which I have shared in the images below in full. In the agony of his grief, all he wanted to do was save other parents from such suffering by encouraging them to get their children vaccinated: “Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old… I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything. “Are you feeling all right?” I asked her. “I feel all sleepy,” she said. In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.” - Roald Dahl Please share. Thank you 🙏

Please know that this is baseless scaremongering from Trump and RFK. There is no good scientific evidence linking paracetamol (Tylenol) to autism. A 2024 Swedish study of 2.4 million births found no relationship whatsoever between exposure to paracetamol in utero & subsequent autism, ADHD or intellectual disability. Likewise, there is no good evidence linking vaccines (of any kind) to autism. Spreading medical disinformation is a disgusting abuse of political power with dangerous real world consequences.