How bad could the measles get in the US?
Vaccination status and spread of measles in the United States: evidence from Denmark and implications for immune amnesia
The United States is feared to not remain so for much longer. There is an outbreak of the disease in Texas. It was detected in late January and, about a month later, an otherwise healthy but unvaccinated six-year-old died from the disease — the first person in a decade to lose their life to measles in the United States.
It is often said that the first responsibility of any government is the safety and protection of its people. It should be enough for policymakers to encourage people to get themselves and their children vaccinations. Vaccines save lives, and casting doubt on their safety could have dangerous and far-reaching consequences.
In one landmark study, for instance, researchers in Denmark recorded the vaccination status of more than 650,000 children born in the country from 1999 to 2010. They combined those data, on measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines, with data on autism spectrum disorder diagnoses. There wasn’t a difference in the incidence of autism between vaccine and unvaccinated children. Ann. It is an internship. Med. 170, 513–520; 2019).
Another long-term effect is ‘immune amnesia’. The body has a memory of how to fight diseases, and can be wiped out by measles. There’s evidence that measles could leave the immune system more susceptible to other diseases for some 2–3 years after infection1.
Measles can kill: between about one and three cases in every 1,000 unvaccinated children is fatal. Young children with measles have a higher chance of dying from pneumonia than any other infectious disease. Measles can also cause blindness or hearing loss.
Measles is virulently contagious partly because the dose needed to infect someone is very small. Measles can spread through airborne droplets if a person is too sick to breathe. If a person with infectious droplets passes through a room, they can hang in the air or leave traces on surfaces for two hours.
Measles is so contagious that in 1991, a single athlete with measles in a sports stadium infected 16 other people, including 2 sitting at least 30 metres away (about the length of a gymnasium).
That’s hard to predict. Moss says that a forest fire produces sparks when it erupts. If a spark lands in a state such as Maryland, which has a 97% measles vaccination rate, it will just fizzle out. But “if the sparks from this initial fire land in communities where vaccination rates are low, then we’re going to have multiple large outbreaks”, Moss says.
The epidemic hasn’t yet slowed down, according to William Moss, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the University of Baltimore.
The US has reported its first case of measles in over 10 years after a six-year-old girl died from the disease, which is known to spread through airborne droplets if a person is too sick to breathe. Measles can spread through air droplets if a person is too sick to breathe. “If sparks from this initial fire land in communities where vaccination rates are low, then we’re going to have multiple large outbreaks,” a researcher said.