Was the Unvaccinated Child Who Died With Measles Given the Wrong Antibiotic?
Or did she die because she was unvaccinated and had measles.
Why do anti-vaccine influencers want everyone to think that the unvaccinated child in Texas who died with measles was given the wrong antibiotic?
It’s because they are pushing any and every narrative besides the simple fact that the child died because they weren’t vaccinated and protected against measles.
So first they said she died because she had been given an MMR vaccine while already sick with measles.
Next, it was that she had RSV, and only got sick with measles after being admitted to the hospital.
Or she had co-morbidities and multiple life-threatening conditions that caused her to die.
Then it was that she wasn’t given budesonide breathing treatments, remember that one?
They even blamed that they put the child on a ventilator for causing her death!
And now, it’s because she wasn’t given the right antibiotic…
Was the Unvaccinated Child Who Died With Measles Given the Wrong Antibiotic?
Of special note, none of the health care providers that are ever interviewed by anti-vaccine influencers about the child who died with measles actually take care of kids.
None actually take care of sick kids in a hospital setting.
This is very apparent when you understand that they don’t realize that the child received care that follows the guidelines from the Infectious Disease Society of America for children hospitalized with community acquired pneumonia.
“Empiric therapy with a third-generation parenteral cephalosporin (ceftriaxone or cefotaxime) should be prescribed for hospitalized infants and children who are not fully immunized, in regions where local epidemiology of invasive pneumococcal strains documents high-level penicillin resistance, or for infants and children with life- threatening infection, including those with empyema (Table 7).”
The management of community-acquired pneumonia in infants and children older than 3 months of age: clinical practice guidelines by the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society and the Infectious Diseases Society of America
Guidelines that recommend the use of cefriaxone and vancomycin for an unvaccinated child with severe pneumonia, which are the antibiotics she received.
“Vancomycin or clindamycin (based on local susceptibility data) should be provided in addition to b-lactam therapy if clinical, laboratory, or imaging characteristics are consistent with infection caused by S. aureus (Table 7). “
The management of community-acquired pneumonia in infants and children older than 3 months of age: clinical practice guidelines by the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society and the Infectious Diseases Society of America
What about coverage for Mycoplasma?
The guidelines do suggest adding a macrolide antibiotic, like zithromax, but only if M. pneumonia and C. pneumoniae are “significant considerations.”
When did Mycoplasma become a significant consideration for this child?
Probably not until her test came back positive.
Until then, she was likely being treated for a presumed secondary bacterial pneumonia that was a complication of her having measles.
“Studies that included culture of blood, lung punctures, or tracheal aspirations revealed bacteria as the cause of 25%–35% of measles-associated pneumonia. S. pneumoniae, S. aureus, and H. influenzae were the most commonly isolated or- ganisms.”
The Clinical Significance of Measles
But why not just give every child every available antibiotic if it might help them get better?
Because that would just lead to more resistance, and eventually none of these antibiotics would work.
And anyway, studies have already shown that when more kids hospitalized with community acquired pneumonia got empiric treatment for Mycoplasma pneumoniae, it didn’t improve outcomes!
What does work?
Getting vaccinated and protected with two doses of the MMR vaccine so that you don’t get measles in the first place!
Pneumonia is a serious, life-threatening complication of measles.
References
Bradley JS, Byington CL, Shah SS, Alverson B, Carter ER, Harrison C, Kaplan SL, Mace SE, McCracken GH Jr, Moore MR, St Peter SD, Stockwell JA, Swanson JT; Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. The management of community-acquired pneumonia in infants and children older than 3 months of age: clinical practice guidelines by the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Clin Infect Dis. 2011 Oct;53(7):e25-76. doi: 10.1093/cid/cir531. Epub 2011 Aug 31. PMID: 21880587; PMCID: PMC7107838.
Sanyukta Desai, Matthew Hall, Susan C. Lipsett, Samir S. Shah, Thomas V. Brogan, Adam L Hersh, Derek J. Williams, Carlos G. Grijalva, Jeffrey S. Gerber, Anne J. Blaschke, Mark I. Neuman, Lilliam Ambroggio; Mycoplasma Pneumoniae Testing and Treatment Among Children With Community-Acquired Pneumonia. Hosp Pediatr July 2021; 11 (7): 760–763. https://doi.org/10.1542/hpeds.2020-005215
Robert T. Perry, Neal A. Halsey, The Clinical Significance of Measles: A Review, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 189, Issue Supplement_1, May 2004, Pages S4–S16, https://doi.org/10.1086/377712
Thank you for this. It more or less echoes what I said yesterday to a rabid antivaxer I am debating on line.
If she’d had the MMR, she would not have got measles (or any measles complications).
This is reminiscent of the antivaxer influenza stance… they don’t die from influenza, they die from pneumonia!
All the twisting themselves into pretzels to come up with a reason she died ignored the obvious: Thus could have been completely prevented by one simple action—the MMR vaccine. The extremes they will go to in order to deny the benefit of vaccines would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.