Measles is not just some simple childhood illness that causes an itchy rash. It is a very contagious disease that can result in some serious complications.
How Can You Get Measles?
Measles is extremely contagious. If an infected child or adult coughs, sneezes, or even talks, they instantly spread the virus into the air around them. If you are near them, you will either inhale the virus or pick the virus up from a surface where it landed. The virus can stay alive and well for hours on any surface it lands. About 90 percent of people who are exposed to an infected person will become infected with measles too.
The sneaky thing about measles is, you may have it and not even know because for the first 10 to 14 days you have no signs of illness. So, someone could be spreading measles before they even know that they have it!
What Are The Symptoms Of Measles?
About 10 days after you’re infected, you will get a high fever, a cough, runny nose, and watery, red eyes. Two days after symptoms begin, you will find tiny white spots inside your mouth. A few days later, an irritating rash will spread across your whole body, from your face to your toes. It starts off as flat, red spots then later it may become raised bumps. The symptoms should last only a few days but may take a few weeks to recover from fatigue.
What Happens If Your Symptoms Get Worse?
It’s not common, but one out of every 20 children with measles will get pneumonia and one out of every 1,000 will develop encephalitis or swelling on the brain. Other complications that may occur are ear infections, severe diarrhea, bronchitis, laryngitis, and croup. It’s more likely to develop complications from measles if you’re a child under 5 years old or an adult over 20.
How Can You Cure Measles?
There is no treatment for measles, so the best thing you can do is to drink lots of fluid and get a lot of sleep. Take ibuprofen to reduce the fever and always remember never to give aspirin to a child as it has been linked to the rare life-threatening ‘Reye’s syndrome’.
Is The Measles Vaccine Effective?
The measles vaccine is extremely effective. With one dose of the vaccine, It’s about 93 percent effective at preventing measles and two doses are about 97 percent effective.
Three out of 100 people who have had two doses of the vaccine will still get measles if exposed to the virus. The reason some people still get the virus even after getting vaccinated is thought to be because their immune system didn’t react as expected. Either way, if they are fully vaccinated they will have milder symptoms and they are less likely to be spreading the disease to other people.
What Happened Before They Created The Measles Vaccine?
It wasn’t until 1912 that health care providers in the U.S started reporting measles cases. There was an average of about 6,000 measles-related deaths per year. The measles vaccine became available to the public in 1963, before that, almost all children became infected with measles by the time they were 15.
How Much Impact Did The Vaccine Have?
In 1968 an improved measles vaccine was available – the same one we use today. The measles vaccine is combined with mumps and rubella (called MMR), or with mumps, rubella and varicella (MMRV). By 1981, measles cases dropped to 80 percent fewer than the previous year.
After measles outbreaks in 1989 among schoolchildren who had already been vaccinated many medical groups, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, recommended a second dose of MMR vaccine for all children.
Then in 2000, measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. since there was no continuous measles transmission for over 12 months.
If Measles Has Been Eliminated, How Did It Return?
Even if a disease is considered eliminated from an area, that doesn’t mean it can’t come back again. Travelers can bring it back when they visit other countries where the illness thrives. Once the virus enters the U.S. it spreads, especially in areas where there are large amounts of unvaccinated people.
How Many People Refuse The Measles Vaccine?
In 2016, 91 percent of children got the MMR vaccine. This is almost enough for ‘herd immunity’ which means that enough people in a community are protected to keep others from getting sick. To get ‘herd humanity’ about 93 to 95 percent of people need to be vaccinated.
Unfortunately, there are currently many areas throughout the country where vaccine refusal rates are exceptionally high. This may be because almost all 50 states grant exemptions for people who are against vaccines for religious reasons. Also, 18 states allow an exemption for people who refuse vaccines for personal or moral belief. Only California, Mississippi, and West Virginia do not allow these exemptions.
Consequences have risen from these vaccine refusal rates, health officials have recently declared a state of emergency with dozens of confirmed measles cases. There have been 387 individual cases of Measles within 15 different states from Jan.1 to March 28. Most of the patients are children who have not been vaccinated. This is the second-greatest number of cases reported since Measles was declared eliminated in 2000.
The Measles Vaccine Will Not Cause Autism
Vaccines causing autism is a myth. It came from a study that was published in the medical journal The Lancet in 1998 by Andrew Wakefield. The paper was retracted in 2010 by the editors of the journal because the statements in the paper were false. Andrew lost his medical license, as he was found to have acted dishonestly and irresponsibly. Since then, no studies have been able to reproduce his results that found a link between autism and vaccines.
Over 650,000 children – born between 1999 and 2000 – were followed by researchers until August 2013. More than 95 percent of those children received the MMR vaccine, and 6,517 were diagnosed with autism. There was no correlation found between the vaccine and the diagnosis. Then recently, a 2019 study of over 650,000 children in Denmark, found that the MMR vaccine does not increase nor trigger autism in the children. The study was published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
