Measles is spreading. Are you safe?
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Dr. Alex Yanovich, a pediatrician, is still haunted by the memory of a teenage boy whom she treated at the start of her career. He had contracted measles when he was just seven months old, too young to have been vaccinated. He got the virus from a child in his neighborhood who was unvaccinated. The infection was relatively mild, and the infant recovered and grew up to be a bright, healthy kid. He was an honors student.

And just a charming, delightful kid. But then he started developing troubling symptoms in middle school. He started getting lost between classes. Lost like he couldn't find what class to go to next. Eventually, he was diagnosed with a degenerative neurological condition called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, or SSPE.

It generally develops seven to ten years after a measles infection. The problem is that there is no treatment for it. And he basically became more and more incapacitated over time. And studies suggest that this condition, which is almost always fatal, is more common than once thought.

Since the measles outbreak in remote parts of West Texas and New Mexico began in January, more than 300 cases have been reported. And the communities where measles continues to spread, they're largely unvaccinated.

Consider this. In most of the U.S., vaccination rates are still high enough to stop a major outbreak. But vaccination rates are falling. And if they continue to fall, we could see long-term consequences of measles in the future. Which is why experts continue to say that the best way to protect yourselves and your children from measles... Vaccinate them. Vaccinate your children. Get people vaccinated. An update on measles in the U.S.,

From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang.

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It's Consider This from NPR. As measles continues to spread in West Texas and New Mexico, isolated cases have been reported in about a dozen other states. Now, those isolated cases are largely linked to international travel, not to the Texas outbreak.

And I spoke with NPR's Maria Godoy about all things measles, starting with the difference between the Texas outbreak and those isolated cases. OK, so the U.S. declared measles eliminated in 2000, and that just means there's not ongoing transmission for greater than 12 months in an area. But the U.S. has reported measles cases every year. It's usually unvaccinated people, you know, who are bringing measles back from traveling abroad. We see these all the time. We've seen that this year in Alaska and Maryland, where I live.

An outbreak is different. It's when the virus is spreading locally. And right now, the virus is spreading in remote areas of West Texas and New Mexico. The concern is that you might have someone who is sick and then they travel to another area where vaccination rates are low and they could potentially seed another outbreak there. OK. And at that point, how do you stop that from happening?

So measles is the most contagious infectious disease known to man. It's more contagious than Ebola, than polio, than chickenpox. It's so contagious that in a world where no one's vaccinated, one person sick with measles could go on to infect 18 others on average. Right.

And it's airborne, which means these infectious particles can linger in the air for up to two hours. So if you have a sick person walk into a room, cough, leave, and then an hour later someone comes in, they could potentially get infected and pass it on to others. The other thing is you're infectious from about four days before you develop that telltale red measles rash until four days after. So that's eight days, really, where you could be spreading it to others later.

Now, the good news is the measles vaccine is very safe and highly effective. Two doses of the vaccine is 97% effective, which, yeah, and you need high vaccination rates in a community so that there's no one vulnerable to measles. And so the virus has really nowhere to go and spread.

I had no idea measles lingers in the air for two hours. Wow. Okay. How is the federal government right now responding to this outbreak? It depends on which part of the federal government you're talking about. So the CDC has issued a measles alert and, you know, asked doctors to be on the lookout for people with fevers and the red rashes. It's sent vaccines to Texas. And it says unequivocally vaccination is the best defense against measles.

But when it comes to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services Secretary, he wrote an editorial piece for Fox, and he's been on Fox in an interview. He has said vaccines protect individuals from measles, and, you know, they contribute to community immunity. But he's also called vaccination a personal choice, and he didn't outright urge people to get vaccinated. The other thing he said was that good nutrition is a best defense against chronic and infectious diseases, right?

Which, again, the public health line has long been that when it comes to measles, vaccination is absolutely the best defense. Yeah. The other thing he's done that has puzzled, you know, public health experts I've talked to is he's focused on treatments like vitamin A rather than stressing vaccination. Wait, vitamin A? I mean, can vitamin A actually treat measles?

Okay, so this is not completely without a kernel of truth. Vitamin A does have a role in the treatment of measles in that there are studies dating back decades, usually from low and middle income countries, that show that when you give vitamin A to kids who are malnourished and deficient in vitamin A, it can, you know, reduce the risk of dying from measles.

And it can also help prevent complications like blindness from measles. So the American Academy of Pediatrics does recommend giving two doses of vitamin A to kids sick with measles to help prevent those complications.

But that is not the same thing as saying that vitamin A prevents or protects you against measles. Exactly. Right. It can't do that. But the concern here is that, you know, parents might hear that and think that. And in fact, there is misinformation going around online suggesting falsely that vitamin A can protect against measles. And, you know, there are concerns that parents might be giving kids vitamin A dosage long term to protect them against measles, which you can't do, but it can actually be harmful

because vitamin A builds up in your body and over time it can be toxic. Mm-hmm.

OK, well, another claim that we're hearing is that the vaccine is more dangerous than the measles virus. What are doctors saying about that? That's absolutely false. The vaccine is very safe and highly effective. Again, two doses, 97 percent effective. Meanwhile, measles is still a dangerous virus. It can kill. You know, before we had vaccines, four to five hundred kids used to die in the U.S. each year from measles. And it can cause blindness, deafness, brain swelling.

The virus can also have long-term effects. So after measles infection, to some extent, your immune system's memory can be erased, which means that pathogens your body used to know how to defeat, it no longer remembers how to defeat them. So you're not immune anymore. And this effect can last two to three years. I know. It's called immune amnesia.

And, you know, it can even cause neurological problems years after infection. Wow. Well, given these potentially very, very serious consequences for measles, how worried should people be right now in light of this current outbreak?

I want to stress that there's no reason to panic right now. Vaccination rates are still high enough nationwide in most places to stop a major outbreak from happening. But if vaccination rates continue to fall, as they have been over the last several years, you know, in five to 10 years, experts I spoke with say we might go back to the days when we had measles outbreaks with thousands of cases and, you know, many deaths. Well, how can people better protect themselves right now?

Get vaccinated if you're not already. Make sure you've had two shots of the measles vaccine. And, you know, get your kids vaccinated, too. Parents can talk to their pediatricians about getting younger kids vaccinated early if they're traveling abroad or are in an outbreak area. In fact, the CDC says anybody traveling abroad with an infant six months or older should, you know, get them vaccinated early. It's usually more about 12 months. That's the schedule. If you're not sure about your own vaccination status and you can't check your immunization records, there's no harm in getting another dose. Right.

OK, let's just say you do the right thing. You get vaccinated. Like I was vaccinated as a kid and I think I even got the booster. What are the chances that you could get the measles even though you're vaccinated?

They're really, really low. So no vaccine is 100% effective, but measles is pretty darn high, 97% effective. And you know what? The more people in a community are vaccinated, the more effective the vaccine is for everyone. Absolutely. That is NPR's Maria Godoy. Thank you so much, Maria. My pleasure. This episode was produced by Mallory Yu and Connor Donovan. It was edited by Jeanette Woods, Nadia Lansi, Jane Greenhalgh, and Courtney Dorney. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang. Support for NPR and the following message come from State Farm. As a State Farm agent and agency owner, Lakeisha Gaines is passionate about empowering other small businesses. In the last several years, there are more business owners than we can count.

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