8 things everybody should know about measles
A 19th-century depiction of measles. UniversalImagesGroup The measles virus is one of the most infectious diseases known to man. A person with measles can cough in a room and leave, and hours later, if you’re unvaccinated, you could catch the virus from the droplets in the air the infected person left behind. No other virus can do that. For anyone born before 1960, there’s a good chance they suffered through a measles infection. They may have lived to tell about it, but they probably had friends who didn’t. In the US, before a vaccine was introduced in 1963, there were 4 million measles cases with 48,000 hospitalizations and 500 deaths in the US every year. Measles was also a leading killer of children globally. The beauty of the vaccine is that people who get the proper doses will never get sick with measles, even if they’re exposed. And by 2000, because of widespread vaccination, the virus was declared eliminated in the US: Enough people were immunized that outbreaks were uncommon, and deaths from measles were scarcely heard of. Javier Zarracina/Vox Yet there are still intense pockets of transmission around the world, especially in low-income countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam. There’s also been an uptick lately in the US, Canada, and across Europe — because too many people are skipping vaccines. In the first half of 2018, Europe recorded more than 41,000 cases , a record high in the post-vaccine era. In the US in 2018, there were 17 outbreaks totaling 349 cases . One of those outbreaks, in New York state, has spilled into this year, with more than 180 cases occurring among ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities . Now, there’s an outbreak of measles in Washington state that has prompted the governor there to declare a public health emergency . As of Friday, there were 41 cases in Washington’s Clark County , which borders Portland, Oregon and health officials were investigating 15 more cases. Most all of the cases involved children between 1 and 10 years old who had not been vaccinated. There’s also one adult case in King County , whose largest city is Seattle. And health officials think this outbreak is going to get a lot bigger, and fast. We’re burdening the health system — and a generation of doctors who have never seen measles — with a disease that could have absolutely been prevented through routine vaccination. Here are eight big questions about measles, answered. 1) How did the measles outbreak in Washington happen? Measles outbreaks in the US typically start when a traveler picks up the virus in another country where measles is still common and brings it back to an unvaccinated community here. We don’t yet know who “patient zero” is in the Washington outbreak, but we do know people with the virus in Clark County had visited public places including health care facilities, schools, and churches, as well as Ikea and Dollar Tree — potentially spreading measles to others. Even more troubling: There are likely to be more at-risk children in those public places than in most of the rest of the country.That’s because Oregon and Washington are more permissive than other states when it comes to allowing parents to opt out of vaccines — and many parents have been taking advantage of that. In Clark County, 7.9 percent of children had gotten exemptions from vaccines for entry to kindergarten in the 2017-’18 school year , according to the Washington Post. And across the river in Oregon, the rate of vaccine exemptions has sharply increased lately , from 5.8 percent in 2015 to 7.5 percent in 2018. That’s much higher than the national average, which suggests 2 percent of children go unvaccinated for nonmedical reasons. These opt-outs have made Oregon and Washington more susceptible to entirely preventable outbreaks, said Peter Hotez, a Baylor College of Medicine infectious diseases researcher. “[They] are now a major anti-vaccine hot spot due to nonmedical vaccine exemptions that have nothing to do with religion,” he said. While Oregon hasn’t seen any cases yet, the geographic proximity of the Washington outbreak is worrisome, he added. And “because this is such a large unvaccinated cohort, this epidemic could last a while.” 2) What does measles feel like, and is it deadly? Measles is a deadly infectious disease that typically strikes children. After an incubation period of 10 to 12 days, measles comes on as a fever, cough, stuffy nose, and bloodshot and watery eyes. Loss of appetite and malaise are common too. Several days after these initial symptoms, an uncomfortable spotty rash begins to spread all over the body, starting on the face and neck and moving downward. The rash usually lasts for three to five days and then fades away. In uncomplicated cases, people who get measles start to recover as soon as the rash appears and feel back to normal in about two to three weeks. But up to 40 percent of patients have complications from the virus. These usually occur in the very young (children under 5), in adults over 20, and in anybody else who is undernourished or otherwise immunocompromised. Children under 5 have the highest probability of death. The most common complication from measles is pneumonia, which accounts for most measles-related deaths. Less frequently, measles can lead to blindness, croup, mouth ulcers, ear infections, or severe diarrhea. Some children develop encephalitis (swelling of the brain), which can lead to convulsions, loss of hearing, and mental retardation. Again, these complications mostly arise in people whose immune systems are already weakened because of their age, preexisting diseases, or malnutrition. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , the horrible mathematics of measles looks like this: One in every 20 children with measles gets pneumonia; one in 1,000 will develop encephalitis (swelling of the brain); one or two in 1,000 children will die. 3) What does a measles rash look like? A measles rash will appear as flat red spots or small raised bumps on top of reddened skin. It usually starts on the face at the hairline and moves down the neck, torso, arms, legs, and feet. Konmesa/shutterstock 4) How do we know the measles vaccine is safe? Measles is prevented through the combination MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) shot. The CDC recommends that children get two doses: The first dose at 12 through 15 months of age The second dose at 4 through 6 years of age Immunity from the vaccine lasts for decades, but you should ask your health provider about booster shots if you’re an adult. The vaccine is known to be extremely safe and very effective: It contains a live but weakened version of the virus, which causes your immune system to produce antibodies against the virus. Should you be exposed to actual measles, those antibodies will then fire up to protect against the disease. Again, side effects are rare and mostly very mild. According to the CDC , for example, fevers after the MMR vaccine occur in one in six people, and mild rashes in one in 20. More severe problems are virtually nonexistent: Serious allergic reactions happen in fewer than one in a million cases. Deafness, long-term seizures, and permanent brain damage are “so rare that it is hard to tell whether they are caused by the vaccine.” So the benefits of the vaccine — the protection of children and the communities they live in — vastly outweigh the harms. 5) How easy is it to get measles? Vials of the combination measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. Sean Gallup/Getty Images If you’re not vaccinated, it’s extremely easy to get measles. In an un-immunized population, one person with measles can infect 12 to 18 others . That’s way higher than other scary viruses like Ebola, HIV, or SARS. (With Ebola, one case usually leads to two others. With HIV and SARS, one case usually leads to another four.) Measles is an airborne virus, transmitted by respiratory droplets from the nose, mouth, or throat of an infected person, so usually through coughing or sneezing. Small-particle aerosols from someone with measles can stay suspended in air for long periods of time after the person has left a room, and the virus can live on surfaces for up to two hours. Whatworries health officials is that the measles virus can spread in a person four days before the onset of the telltale rash, so people with the virus start being contagious before they’d ever know they had measles. (They stop being contagious about four days after the rash appears.) In exceptionallyrare cases, even if you are vaccinated, you can still get measles. In less than 5 percent of vaccinated people, their immune systems just don’t kick in even with the shots. Researchers aren’t sure why. Getting only one dose of the vaccine instead of the recommended two also seems to increase people’s chances of getting measles if they’re ever exposed. 6) Is there a treatment for measles? Unfortunately, no. Doctors can help patients avoid the more severe complications (blindness, pneumonia) by making sure patients have good nutrition and enough fluids. For eye and ear infections that can arise, doctors can prescribe antibiotics. And because measles depletes its victims’ vitamin A levels, doctors usually give patients two doses of vitamin A supplements. 7) How common is it for parents refuse the MMR vaccine for their children? Overall, MMR vaccine refusal is not that common in the US. Across the country, 91 percent of young children got the MMR vaccine in 2016, according to the CDC’s latest data. That’s nearly enough for what’s known as “herd immunity”: In order for any vaccine to be effective, you need to have a certain percentage of people in a population immunized. This means diseases can’t spread through populations very easily, and it protects even those who aren’t or can’t be vaccinated, like newborns and people with vaccine allergies. And for measles, 90 to 95 percent of a population need to get the shot. But hidden in the statistics about state and national averages are geographic clusters of unvaccinated people. They are by no means guided by a singular ideology. They may be the vaccine-hesitant Amish in Ohio or Orthodox Jews in New York, Californians who don’t want to put “unnatural” things in their kids’ bodies or parents who just want to delay immunizing their children . County-level nonmedical vaccine exemption rates in 2016 to 2017. PLOS In these clusters, vaccine refusal rates can be very high. According to a 2018 analysis , published in PLOS Medicine , dozens of counties across the country had nonmedical vaccine exemption rates that were between 5.1 and 30 percent in 2016-’17. Camas County, Idaho, led the nation with a 27 percent opt-out rate. While all 50 states have legislation requiring vaccines for students, almost every state allows exemptions for people with religious beliefs against immunizations, and 18 states grant philosophical exemptions for those opposed to vaccines because of personal or moral beliefs. (The exceptions are Mississippi, California, and West Virginia, which have the strictest vaccine laws in the nation, allowing no philosophical or religious exemptions.) Perhaps unsurprisingly, the parts of the country that make it easier for people to opt out of their shots tend to have higher rates of … people opting out of vaccines . Oregon and Washington are among the 18 states in the US that allow philosophical vaccine exemptions for people who want to opt out because of moral or personal beliefs. In 12 of the 18 states, the number of these exemptions has risen since 2009. 8) Will we ever fully eradicate measles? The measles virus could theoretically be wiped off the face of the planet, never to infect another human again. That’s because it fits the profile of diseases that can be eradicated: People, and not animals, are the only carriers of the virus (so eradication wouldn’t require killing off an entire animal species), we have an effective vaccine, and we have readily available and accurate diagnostic tests to identify the disease. Globally, there’s some good news on this front: In 2017, about 85 percent of the world’s children received one dose of measles vaccine by their first birthday , which is an increase from 72 percent in 2000, according to the World Health Organization . But this isn’t enough for total eradication. While most of today’s outbreaks occur in developing countries, particularly in Africa and Asia, as we’ve seen in Washington and across Europe, measles can take off anywhere as long as there are enough people who did not get the vaccine. In the US, researchers have found that recent outbreaks of measles and whooping cough were indeed closely tied to people who refuse vaccinations. Unvaccinated individuals were often “patient zeroes,” meaning they sparked outbreaks by creating pockets of disease susceptibility that caused others to fall ill. Again, these outbreaks usually take off when travelers with the virus meet groups of people in the US who aren’t vaccinated. To boost vaccination rates, many countries in Europe have been cracking down on vaccine-refusing parents, experimenting with fines and sanctions . In 2015, Oregon state lawmakers made it a bit more difficult for parents to exempt their kids from vaccines — requiring moms and dads to watch an online education vaccine program or talk to a doctor or nurse to get a “vaccine education certificate.” But that hasn’t deterred parents, according to a recent state analysis . After an initial dip in the nonmedical exemption rate, it’s steadily increased over the past few years. “Measles was eliminated from the US in 2000, but it’s been allowed to return,” said Hotez, in part because of “ignorant and cowardly state legislatures, and a failure by governments to mount a pro-vaccine advocacy campaign.” Next Up In Explainers
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