A Bit More About Measles

Good evening all,

In my previous post I told you a bit about the ongoing measles outbreak and what you can do to protect yourself. The good news is that vaccination rates nationally are pretty good. The bad news is that there are many pockets of low vaccine rates, and these are growing. Also, measles is (unsurprisingly) showing up outside the original outbreak area in Texas/New Mexico. The best (and really only) protection against measles is vaccination. Two doses is 97% effective—for life! So what’s the bad news? Why are there so many people who aren’t protected?

Before 1998, measles vaccine coverage in the UK and US was greater than 90%. Then, the prestigious medical journal The Lancet published a paper by a later-disgraced and defrocked doctor named Andrew Wakefield. This paper purported to have found a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. Doctors and scientists quickly recognized the flawed nature of the article, and it was later found not only to be wrong but to be fraudulent.

Unfortunately, it was too late to unscramble that egg. Parents in the UK and USA were frightened. On the one hand doctors were telling them they need to protect their kids with a vaccine. On the other, the early 21st-century version of “influencers” were spreading the new anti-vaccine gospel. Measles vaccine rates—which as we said need to be above 95% to protect a community—fell to nearly 80% in the UK. Here in the US, the drop wasn’t as dramatic, at least nationally. But there were many pockets where rates dropped and measles reappeared. Sometimes it was small religious communities; often it was affluent communities where the relatively new internet helped parents share misinformation; and all too often it was in minority and immigrant communities. Anti-vaccine evangelists would target these vulnerable communities especially.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the current head of the US Department of Health and Human Services is a long-time antivaccine activist and frequently cites Wakefield’s fraudulent work to support his (horribly incorrect) view that vaccines cause autism. If fact, RFK Jr is tasking the CDC with studying the already-disproven connection between autism and vaccines. Many well-done (and non-fraudulent!) studies have already been published. Kennedy’s demand for a new investigation does two very negative things: it wastes already-scarce resources to ask a question that’s already been answered; and it feeds the idea that this connection may exist, despite already having been proven wrong. For those of us in the scientific and medical fields, this is like commissioning a study to see if gravity actually causes things to fall down.

Kennedy has also been touting the purported benefits of nutritional therapy and Vitamin A in particular to combat measles. These claims are false. While good nutrition is always important, there are no treatments for measles other than supportive care. The best “treatment” is prevention by vaccination. (Vitamin A is used is poorer countries where children have vitamin A deficiencies. Measles infections can worsen this. Taking too much vitamin A is very dangerous).

Measles is a dangerous, very infectious disease that had been eliminated in the US by 2000. We are currently in the middle of one of the worst outbreaks in years, largely due to low vaccine rates in some communities. Two people have already died. You can protect yourself and your family by making sure your children are appropriately-vaccinated and checking your own vaccine status, updating it if needed.

Stay well.

-pal