The Good Thing About the Disney Measles Outbreak

Cases of measles linked to an exposure at Disneyland continue to spread, not just in California, but in several other states and in Mexico. The numbers of cases are climbing — and so are the number of exposed people who might get sick — and expose more people before they realize they are sick. Measles is extremely contagious; if someone has it, they will infect 90 percent of the people around them who aren’t immunized. It’s scary, because measles can be dangerous. 1 in 20 people who get it will get pneumonia. 1 in 1,000 will get encephalitis, a brain inflammation that can lead to seizures and brain damage. 1 or 2 in 1,000 will die. But as scary as this outbreak is, it may ultimately be a good thing — because it may get more parents to immunize their children. In a way, it’s our success with vaccination that is causing us problems these days. Vaccines work. They prevent the diseases they were created to prevent. And so very few people have seen measles — or polio, or diptheria, or bacterial meningitis or even chicken pox. It’s even true of doctors; recently, some younger doctors asked me to come look at a child’s rash and see if it was chicken pox, because they’d never seen the rash themselves (it wasn’t). When you haven’t seen these illnesses, it’s easy to think that a) they aren’t a big deal, and b) they aren’t going to happen to your child. And if they aren’t a big deal and they ...
Source: Thrive, Children's Hospital Boston - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Tags: Claire McCarthy, MD Vaccines Source Type: news