A bright honor student in a Utah middle school leaves one classroom with other students on their way to their next classes. Each makes it to their destination – except the honor student. He is found wandering the halls not knowing where he is going.
As time goes on his mental and physical capacities diminish. Eventually, he is diagnosed with a degenerative neurological condition called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE). Eighteen months later he is dead.
The real cause of death was not SSPE. It was a disease the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) originally said had been eliminated from the Americas in 2016. That disease was measles.
SSPE can surface 7 to 10 years after a child contracts measles. There is no cure for SSPE and the only way to prevent it is by avoiding measles through vaccination.
Subsequently, an outbreak of measles sprung up again in New York from 2018 to 2019. However, PAHO’s 2024 year in health report declared the region again measles-free.
2025 Outbreak
The ink barely dried on the PAHO report when measles cases began showing up. In late January both Texas and New Mexico reported outbreaks. Subsequently, 13 other states reported isolated cases. Ohio became the 13th state when a case was confirmed late yesterday afternoon.
The resurgence of the disease this year has already put confirmed cases ahead of last year’s total. At this writing, there are 301 confirmed cases of measles so far this year. The total was 285 for all of 2024.
One of the Texas cases resulted in death late last month. An unvaccinated school-aged child was the victim, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Meanwhile, the death of an unvaccinated adult earlier this month is under investigation in New Mexico. Tests by the state’s scientific laboratory found the measles virus present in the deceased.
“We don’t want to see New Mexicans getting sick or dying from measles,” said Dr. Chad Smelser, Deputy State Epidemiologist. “The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine is the best protection against this serious disease.”
Children Most Susceptible
Like most outbreaks, the current measles cases are highest in children. So far, 34% of cases have occurred in children under age five. Another 42% have been in young people aged five to 19, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
The vast majority (95%) of confirmed cases have occurred in individuals who were unvaccinated or whose vaccinated status is unknown.
One dramatic contrast between this year’s outbreaks and last year’s measles cases is the decrease in hospitalizations.
Of 2024’s cases, 40%. or 114 of 285, resulting in hospitalizations. This year, only 17%, or 50 of 301, have been hospitalized.
Measles Triggers Immune Amnesia
In addition to causing SSPE, measles can reduce or wipe out some of your immune system’s defenses. The effect is called immune amnesia. This phenomenon results in the immune system losing its memory of how to fight off diseases it previously encountered. Consequently, It has a similar effect on vaccines.
“So whenever you get measles, you lose some of your immune memory. And the more severe your case of measles is, the longer it lasts, the more of your immune system is destroyed.” Stephen Elledge, professor at Harvard Medical School told NPR.
One study determined that unvaccinated children who contracted measles lost 11 to 73% of antibodies that fight viruses. Further research found that it can take two to three years for an immune system with immune amnesia to fully recover.
Public Cost of Measles Treatment
The widespread use of vaccines to almost eliminate measles might lead you to believe the disease poses little financial impact. However, that assumption is wrong.
A review published by the National Institute of Health (NIH) covering 11 measles outbreaks in the United States from 2004 to 2017, highlights the cost.
The median total cost per outbreak was $152,308 with a median cost per case of $38,805.
A report on the 2019 measles outbreak in Clark County Washington put the total cost at $3.4 million dollars. That report was published in the American Academy of Pediatrics publication Pediatrics.
How Bad Can It Get
The Clark County study contained only 72 confirmed cases of measles. The disease spreads easily through airborne droplets. That means a small outbreak could quickly build to a much larger one.
“We haven’t yet seen signs of the outbreak slowing down,” William Moss, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University told Nature.
Those droplets carrying measles can linger in the air for a couple of hours. As a result, an infected person could spread measles just by walking through an empty room that someone else enters later.
“I think it could get to thousands and thousands of cases,” says virologist Paul Offit at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania.
The Vaccine
Measles is one of the most contagious diseases, according to the World Health Organization. Before a vaccine was developed, 30 million people contracted the disease each year with 2 million dying worldwide.
The vaccine was originally approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1963. Further advances called for an extra dose to improve immunity. Today, the standard regime is for two doses of the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine. The CDC reports that a double dose is 97% effective against measles. Even the vaccine administered between 1968 and 1989, when only a single dose was used, is 93% effective.
Do You Need A Shot
The current vaccine is good for life. As a result, most people do not need a booster. However, there are a few exceptions.
The initial version of the vaccine used between 1963 and 1967 was not as effective as the current MMR vaccine.
“Anyone who received an inactivated vaccine between 1963 and 1967 is recommended to receive a dose of the current MMR vaccine,” Dr. Andrew Handel, pediatric infectious disease physician at Stony Brook Medicine in New York told MedPage Today.
Others the CDC recommends get vaccinated are those in regular contact with people who are ineligible for the vaccine, health workers, and those traveling out of the country.
Kennedy Changes His Tune
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. attracted a lot of scrutiny during his confirmation for his long anti-vaccine campaign. However, as part of his confirmation process, he pledged not to block vaccines.
Kennedy arrived late to the MMR vaccine party when he posted an op-ed that appeared on the HHS website March third entitled Measles Outbreak is Call to Action for All of Us. In that piece, he pledges support for the MMR vaccine.
That support for the MMR vaccine is a far cry from what Kennedy wrote in the forward to The Measles Book: Thirty-Five Secretes the Government and the Media Aren’t Telling You About Measles and the Measles Vaccine.
In that 2021 piece, he stated that the American people have been misled “into believing that measles is a deadly disease and that measles vaccines are necessary, safe, and effective.” He also wrote that measles outbreaks “have been fabricated to create fear”.
Unfortunately, in late February, Kennedy referred to the outbreak as “not unusual” when asked about it at a cabinet meeting. He also stated, at about the same time, that patients who were hospitalized due to measles were there for quarantine.
Dr. Lara Johnson, of Covenant Children’s Hospital, in Lubbock, TX. refuted Kennedy’s quarantine misstatement.
“We don’t hospitalize patients for quarantine purposes,” said Johnson. Most hospitalized measles patients are being treated for respiratory issues. Measles patients have a higher risk of developing pneumonia.
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