Opinion: Major US measles outbreak on the horizon
Michael Mina, M.D., Ph.D., an epidemiologist and immunologist, warned that without proper containment, the United States could be at risk of a measles epidemic.
In an opinion piece published in The New York Times, Dr. Mina explained that because of its high contagion rate, a single case of measles can lead to at least a dozen more infections — particularly among vulnerable populations such as unvaccinated individuals, immunocompromised patients, infants and older individuals.
He noted that outbreaks were previously isolated events that affected communities with low measles vaccination rates. As a result of successful efforts to restrict the virus’s spread through vaccination, public health officials declared measles eliminated in 2000.
However, the growing pervasiveness of misinformation and vaccine skepticism made popular by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. secretary of health and human services, as well as the social and political climate of the COVID-19 pandemic has threatened painstaking labors to contain the measles virus. Vaccination rates for measles have continued to fall among school-aged children since 2019.
Dr. Mina emphasized that measles is known to cause pneumonia, encephalitis, disability and death. Further, a 2015 discovery revealed that the virus is also capable of wiping up to 70% of the immune system’s memory of prior infections — thereby leaving people susceptible to reinfection by pathogens they had previously been protected against.
As of early April, there have been a reported 480 cases of measles across several U.S. states. If the outbreak continues to expand, Dr. Mina indicated that tens of millions of unvaccinated and immunocompromised Americans could be at risk of otherwise preventable infection. He urged unvaccinated individuals and those born prior to 1989 who received just one dose of the measles vaccine to get vaccinated to protect themselves from infection.
Read more: The New York Times
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