Measles

I remember when I had the measles. I don’t remember the sickness part. What I remember is staying in bed in my parents’ bedroom because it was darker than mine. You were supposed to stay in a dark room with the shades pulled down. The disease left me with the loss of half my hearing in my left ear (listening to a phone with my left ear is pretty much useless). Many weren’t so lucky.

I was born in 1936. The measles vaccine was introduced in 1963. My kids were all vaccinated (the oldest was born in 1959). Measles became a reportable disease beginning in 1912. In the first decade of reporting, an average of 6,000 measles-related deaths were reported each year.

By 2000, the U.S. had eliminated measles, meaning that for one year no one had been infected. Now, as you know, measles has made a comeback, thanks to the reluctance of parents to have their children vaccinated (“vaccine hesitancy”). (The notion that measles vaccine causes autism has been thoroughly debunked.) According to the CDC, nearly 700 cases of measles has been confirmed in the US this year, more than any year since the disease was eradicated. World-wide, it claims more than 100,000 lives each year.

 Measles is a highly contagious disease, being transmitted primarily by tiny respiratory droplets that can remain viable in the air for up to two hours. Each person with measles may go on to infect 9 to 18 others. Plus, if you’re not immune and have been exposed, you have a 90% chance of contracting the disease.  Because measles is so contagious, near-perfect vaccination coverage (herd immunity of 93 to 95%) is needed to protect against a measles resurgence. Vaccine hesitancy has been identified by the World Health Organization as one of the top 10 threats to global health and is a serious hurdle to the global eradication of measles.

I guess you have to be old to appreciate the value of vaccinations. For one thing, most of us old people knew someone who either died from or was crippled by polio. Maybe polio will be the next disease resurgence.

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