Measles? No no, OUR-asles. We're in this together.
Measles is an airborne viral infection, and the genus is of morbillivirus.
This is the one RFK Jr (my arch nemesis, I’ll be writing about him soon.) thinks isn't a big deal. As in the United states it's only killed 3 people in the last 2 years. Yet he forgets it hospitalized over 4,000 people in that same time. Many of whom will potentially suffer life long consequences. Most of these hospitalized people are children under 5, who will suffer some sort of complications related to their infection. Not to mention the fact that worldwide it kills upwards of 100,000 people each year, affecting places with high population density and/or less access to health care the hardest. Places such as the middle east, Asia, Africa, and India.
“But fae, isn’t 4000 people something like only 0.00118% of the United States population?” Yes it is, and it’s 3750 more people than you know personally. Imagine if over the course of two years, everyone you’ve ever met became horribly ill, and then everyone in your town who you’ve never even met. 4000 is a LOT of people, not by percentage sure, but people are more than numbers, that’s something important to remember when talking about public health.
Thankfully we have a vaccine for measles now, and have had it for quite some time. It was invented in 1963, and before then measles was such a bigger deal. Every three or so years it would return to cause another epidemic, killing nearly two million people every year. However since the vaccine was made easy to access, that number has gone down drastically. In the year 2000 it was down to 780,000 deaths world wide. 2024 saw only 95,000 deaths, a steep reduction in fatal infections.
Measles mainly spreads through water droplets expelled from the host by coughing and sneezing. The virus can survive in an area for up to two hours after being expelled from the body. Leaving surfaces infected long after the infected person has left the area. This is why it’s important to wash your hands, and not touch your face. This also demonstrates how face masks are effective. If you cough or sneeze while wearing a mask, it goes into your mask instead of every surface around you. This slows the spread of infection, potentially saving lives and sparing misery.
An infected person is contagious during the 4 days before the rash appears, while the rash is present, and 4 days after the rash subsides. During this time that person should remain as isolated as possible. If they must interact with others, they should wear a mask, and use hand sanitizer frequently.
The most common symptoms of measles include a runny nose, coughing, red watery eyes, white spots inside cheeks, and most prominently a very itchy rash. This rash typically starts around the eyes and mouth, migrating downwards. However, there exists a separate set of symptoms, though they may be better described as complications. This list includes things like diarrhoea, dehydration, encephalitis (brain tissue inflammation), and pneumonia. Of course this list is not exhaustive, there exists some more niche complications like ear infections and blindness (due to the brain swelling, ya know, the thing that processes everything you see ever). It's that second list of complications that end up killing people.
There’s not many treatment options for measles, but as with most pathogens, it starts and hopefully ends with prevention. In most places the measles vaccine is part of a larger catch all vaccine known as MMR. It stands for “measles, mumps, and rubella”. However it also comes in the MMRV pack, which is the exact same except it also protects against varicella (which is the fancy name for chickenpox). It’s often dealt out in two doses, the first dose ends up granting an average of 93% effectiveness against measles. The second dose boosts the effectiveness to roughly 97% effectiveness against measles.
We break it into two parts, this is because the first dose you receive as a baby is when you are under 5 years old, and as such are part of the highest risk group for measles. Both parts provide your immune system the ability to fight measles, but the first dose doesn’t stick with you forever, thats why you get the second dose.
The first of these vaccines are administered at the ripe age of 12-15 months old. The reason it’s not given sooner is because at 12months old there’s been time to tell if the baby has any allergies to the medications within the mmr vaccine. Or if they have any other fragile medical conditions like a weak immune system. We wait until they’re twelve months old because if the child receives the vaccination too early; they can actually have stunted immunity to measles, and may require additional vaccination.
The second dose is the exact same as the first dose, but now at 4-6 years old. There’s no bit, it’s a copy/paste of the vaccine.
Vaccines aside, there’s not actually much to be done for measles once someone is infected. Not to say they’ll die for certain, but in most cases you should focus on alleviating the misery caused by the symptoms. You should also ensure you do your best to avoid causing further complications, this is done by drinking plenty of water, avoiding strenuous activity, and eating a healthy diet. In more extreme cases where pneumonia or other infection begin, doctors will treat that secondary infection with antibiotics.
Typically measles will run its course over 10-14 days, typically a person only receives measles once in their life. HOWEVER, that is not for certain, some people may have compromised immune systems. Making them more vulnerable to diseases, and making it impossible to build any sort of immunity to the disease. The people in their life should be vaccinated against measles (well really they should be vaccinated for everything they safely can. But this post is about measles.). This helps prevent measles from ever reaching them in fhe first place.
