Measles will always show you if someone isn't doing a good job on vaccinations.
Kids will start dying of measles. You may be asking yourself why should I care about measles?
Before vaccines were developed in 1963
each year almost 3 million children died around the world because of this viral infection.
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What is measles? Measles is referred to also as rubeola or red measles. It is a highly contagious vaccine-preventable viral infection. Symptomatic illness, that is symptoms
accompanying the infection, develop in over 90% of susceptible contacts
and most infected children are sick and miserable for many days. I'll say more about that a bit later.
How common is measles? In a pre-vaccination era, measles was almost a universal experience
during childhood. Indeed more than 95 percent of children contracted measles by 15 years of age.
The incidence the frequency of measles dramatically declined after the introduction
of measles vaccine in 1963 and the infection was virtually eliminated in the United States by 2000.
However in 2019 there was a resurgence with more than thirteen hundred cases of measles
reported in the United States. This is the greatest number of cases annually since 1992.
Over 90% of those confirmed cases were amongst the unvaccinated. And measles remains a major cause of
child mortality in low-income and middle-income countries, especially in Africa and Southeast
Asia regions of the world. The estimated deaths worldwide due to measles in 2018 was 142,000.
How does measles spread? Measles is a highly contagious viral infection,
one infected person typically infects between 12 and 18 others
who are not immune to the infection. That is they have not had the infection before. This can
be contrasted with somebody who has an influenza infection who typically infects one to two others.
Measles is transmitted by contact with respiratory droplets, either directly from an infected person,
or from a surface that that infected person has recently touched. Less frequently the virus spreads
by inhalation of airborne droplets. Measles virus can live for up to two hours in the airspace after
an infected person has left the room. Therefore you do not even need to be in direct contact with a
person with measles to contract measles from them. The incubation period for measles, that is the time
from your coming into contact with an infected person to the time that you begin to have
symptoms yourself from measles, is between 10 and 14 days. People who come down with measles
are themselves contagious from about four days before they develop symptoms to about
four days after the rash of measles begins. So you can be infected from a person with measles
before they have any signs of the infection and for several days after the infection has started.
What are the common signs of measles? After the incubation period of 10 to 14 days,
there's usually about two to four days of mild illness, characterized by fever and
usually some combination of a cough, red eyes, often referred to as conjunctivitis,
and runny nose. When the rash starts it's usually splotchy and it starts on the forehead
and behind the ears and it usually begins at the peak of the respiratory symptoms (the
peak of the cough, and the runny nose, and the red eyes) and then the rash spreads within three days
down the entire body. The rash usually lasts for three to five days and then fades
from a red color, to a copper color, to a brown color, and the skin may peel as the rash resolves.
The rash is usually accompanied by a high fever as high as 40 degrees celsius. That fever peaks
two to three days after the rash onset. The rash may be itchy, but more often than not
it is it is not itchy. After the fever peaks the rash and the other signs fade away unless there
are complications. Questions covered in the next video: What are the complications of measles? Are
some people especially at risk for bad measles? How is measles diagnosed? and, How is measles treated?