Dr. Meru Sheel

Because it's an airborne virus, so essentially measles, if somebody is breathing, is contagious and breathing measles virus, the particles in the air will pick it up and they'll linger for about... up to two hours after a person has been there.

So if I went into a bar being infectious and I left within half an hour and then someone came in an hour later, it's possible that they might get exposed to that air and they can still potentially catch it.

So essentially, it's almost close to 100%. Yeah. It's a pretty amazing vaccine against measles.

I don't think leaky is the right way to describe it. There is a little bit of emerging evidence that there is some decline in your antibody levels over the years from vaccination, but it's so minuscule. So it's not like you're going to zero after that. There might be a little drop in your antibody levels.

Yeah, that's right. So most of the cases globally and in the US are in unvaccinated people.

Yeah, absolutely. So when you think about, say, rabies virus, much more difficult. Dogs carry it and they can infect humans. But measles, on the other hand, is humans are the only natural host for this virus. And if you get infected and if you are vaccinated, you get an immune response that protects you your entire life, by and large. Measles virus is quite a stable virus.

It's not mutating like COVID is. Right.

50 years. And out of last year, there was a study that showed vaccination has prevented or averted 154 million deaths over the last 50 years, most of which are attributed to measles. Wow. And so the vaccine works.

It is a similar red rash. Oh, interesting. But it's very weak. It's not like it doesn't spread across the whole body. It's not as deeply red. It might just be a few spots. It might be a milder rash as well.

Absolutely. But that is pretty self-resolving and it'll go away in a few days.

Yeah, I think it's tricky to know at the moment where we're headed. But I suspect that with those coverage rates that you've just talked about, Wendy, the outbreak has spread from Texas to multiple states. It's likely that we're going to keep seeing this increase in number of cases until there is some very quick vaccination.

It's the only way to stop this outbreak is to vaccinate at mass and at speed. It's rapid fire. And remember, after you vaccinate, you need about three to four weeks for the immune response to kick in.

Vaccination is the only way to control this outbreak.

Sadly, measles has been going up for a fair few years now.

2018, 2019, there were large outbreaks across Europe as well, more than 90,000 cases.

Yeah. Jeepers. Huge, huge outbreak. So from the year 2022 to 2023, Three, so a year and a bit ago, measles cases increased worldwide by 20%. So from about 8.5 million to about 10 million in 2023.

Yeah, Vietnam, 40,000 cases in the most recent outbreak. That's what they're reporting at the moment.

I mean, who are we kidding? We're not done with measles. We should be and we could be done with measles, but we're not there yet.

So pneumonia is basically when you get really bad infection in your lungs and you can't breathe. The breathing becomes so hard, you just, you can't get oxygen into your body. And it's probably the most common cause of death as well from measles in young children.

What essentially happens is you get infected with measles you've recovered, and then the virus can essentially stay in your body undetected. And then seven to 10 years later, it can get reactivated and attack your nervous system, can lead to progressive dementia, and almost always is fatal.

It's absolutely terrifying, and it's a rare complication, but no one wants to get it.

Is that true? Generally, with most viral infections, most people will recover.

But we just don't know whether you will recover quickly or whether you'll end up getting hospitalized and dying from measles.

And in most people, we won't know those underlying conditions. You don't know that until something happens. And yeah, to my knowledge as well, these two children who died were healthy. They were just unvaccinated children. And that could have been prevented.

It's one of those viruses that it finds any gaps. We often call it, when we're studying epidemiology, we call it the tracer disease. It's the cannery in the coal mine. If you have a gap in your immunization coverage, it will find that gap.