Measles: How Worried Should We Be?

Measles is spreading in the U. S., with hundreds of cases across more than 20 states. And tons of people online are arguing over how we should feel about it. Some say this is bad because measles is SO contagious — and not enough people get the vaccine. But others say that measles isn't such a big deal, so why are we freaking out?? Didn't basically everyone get this virus back in the day and live to tell the tale? So we’ll find out — what is measles doing to our body (and our brain)? And how can we stop this outbreak ... and possibly rid the world of measles. We hear from New Scientist reporter Grace Wade, Prof. Peter Kasson, Dr. Meru Sheel and Dr. Katherine Gibney. Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/ScienceVsMeasles In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Measles cases are popping off in the U. S. (04:04) How measles messes with our immune system (10:13) How measles can kill (14:54) How contagious is measles - really? (18:46) How good is the measles vaccine? (25:11) What are the risks of the measles vaccine? (28:34) What it will take to stop this measles outbreak This episode was produced by Wendy Zukerman, with help from Michelle Dang, Meryl Horn, Rose Rimler, and Ekedi Fausther-Keeys. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Eva Dasher. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Emma Munger, So Wiley, Peter Leonard, Bumi Hidaka and Bobby Lord. A special thanks to the researchers we reached out to including Professor Rik de Swart, and a big thanks to Joseph Lavelle Wilson and the Zukerman family. Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Wendy Zukerman?

  Hi, I'm Wendy Zukerman and you're listening to Science Versus.

• 0:05Wendy Zukerman?

  Today on the show, the insanely weird virus that is measles.

• 0:16Wendy Zukerman?

  For more than 20 years, the US had stopped the ongoing spread of measles.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we declared it eliminated.

• 0:24Wendy Zukerman?

  This is Grace Wade, health reporter at New Scientist magazine.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  That's the thing. The measles used to be this perfect example of the power of medicine and like the power of vaccines. And it was always heralded as this great example. And now we're just watching it crumble before our eyes.

• 0:42Wendy Zukerman?

  On the 20th of January, Texas reported a case of measles, and then another one, and another one.

• 0:49Speaker 02

  The country's deadly measles outbreak is getting worse, spreading at an alarming rate in Texas.

• 0:54Speaker 03

  Measles cases connected to the outbreak in Texas have officially passed 500 confirmed cases. It's gonna get worse before it gets better.

• 1:03Wendy Zukerman?

  And now, there are infections all over the country. There's a whole rash of cases in more than 20 states. Some of those are just isolated cases. But in other states, the disease is spreading.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  And so that's concerning, right? Because you're seeing this outbreak spread to multiple states, and then from there, take off.

• 1:22Wendy Zukerman?

  In some cases, people who were in Texas have then spread the virus to other states, but not always. Grace said that the outbreak in Michigan started when someone got infected on a trip to Ontario, Canada, where they're currently experiencing a measles outbreak of their own. In the US, at least 800 people have had measles. That's according to the CDC. The vast majority of those, 96%, are unvaccinated, or we don't know their vaccination status.

• 1:52Speaker 04

  800 cases, how many hospitalized, how many dead?

• 1:56Speaker 01

  85 people have been hospitalized, two people have tragically died from measles. They were both unvaccinated children. And there was also one other potential death related to measles. It's still under investigation.

• 2:10Wendy Zukerman?

  And now, online, there's all these people talking about measles and vaccines.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Oh, would you look at that, after a second child has died of measles.

• 2:21Wendy Zukerman?

  Some say this is bad because measles is so contagious. While others say that measles isn't such a big deal. Why are we freaking out here? There's viral videos where people point out, didn't everyone just get measles back in the day? You just get a rash, a red rash.

• 2:38Speaker 05

  They make it seem like it's such a scary thing. Yeah, it wasn't no big deal.

• 2:43Wendy Zukerman?

  And, you know, the Brady Bunch kids were fine. Boy, this is the life, isn't it? Yeah, if you have to get sick, you sure can't beat the measles. Meanwhile, the head of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is saying that part of what's causing this current outbreak is that the vaccine loses its effectiveness over time.

• 3:03Speaker 06

  The vaccine wanes. The vaccine's weighing about 4.8% per year. So, you know, that, that is a leaky vaccine and that problem is always going to be around.

• 3:16Wendy Zukerman?

  So today on the show, how worried do you really need to be about this US outbreak? What is measles doing in our body and our brains? And I'll tell you what, it's weirder than I thought. And how can we stop these outbreaks in their tracks? And possibly even rid the world of measles? When it comes to measles, there's a lot of... If you have to get sick, you sure can't beat the measles. But then, there's science.

• 3:46Wendy Zukerman?

  Science vs. Measles is coming up just after the break.

• 3:56Wendy Zukerman?

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• 4:33Speaker 07

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• 6:09Wendy Zukerman?

  Welcome back. Today on the show, measles. So our first question is, how serious is this illness, really? Because the majority of folks who get measles will recover fairly quickly. At first, you'll probably notice flu-like symptoms: coughing, sneezing, fever. This is because measles is a respiratory virus. A couple of days later, you might see these tiny white spots inside your mouth. They're called Kopplic spots. And then, of course, there's that blotchy red rash, which, fun fact, is triggered by the measles virus infecting your skin cells.

• 6:50Wendy Zukerman?

  In the current outbreak in the US, hundreds of folks who have gotten infected, almost 90%, were never hospitalized. So you can understand why people are saying, "What's the big deal here?" But the thing is, even if you get a mild case of measles, what researchers are realizing is that this virus is actually doing something pretty weird that could have consequences on your health for years to come.

• 7:20Speaker 05

  Measles is really nasty.

• 7:22Wendy Zukerman?

  This is Peter Kasson. He's a professor who studies viruses at Georgia Institute of Technology.

• 7:27Speaker 05

  Most people think about measles and they think of it as a mild disease that is quickly over and quickly forgotten, that this is not some benign childhood rash.

• 7:40Wendy Zukerman?

  Peter told me that researchers have known for a while now that after young kids get the measles and get over it, they're more likely to contract other infectious diseases afterwards, so things like colds and flus. And sometimes this can actually get so bad that the kids get hospitalized. And so this idea emerged that maybe measles is going after your immune system, or what Peter calls...

• 8:08Speaker 05

  Immunological destruction. And there was a particularly striking study a few years ago.

• 8:17Wendy Zukerman?

  It all started when there was this outbreak of measles in an orthodox Protestant community in the Netherlands. This is a tight-knit community that isn't so crash hot on vaccines. And so during this particular outbreak, researchers took blood samples from 82 kids who hadn't been infected, yet. They then followed the children. 93% of them ended up getting measles. Under half of those had a mild case. The others were pretty severe. On average, seven weeks after the kids got infected, the researchers took blood samples again. And they basically wanted to know how exactly was measles messing with their immune

• 9:01Wendy Zukerman?

  system? So as part of the study, they zoomed in on these immune cells that make antibodies. I talked to Peter about them. These are the immune cells that, you know, if you've been infected with a cold before or the flu or COVID, you have cells that remember this infection so that hopefully next time you get it, either you won't even feel symptoms because your immune system will kill it so quickly, it'll say, oh, I remember this enemy, I know how to kill it, or the disease will be much milder the second, third time around.

• 9:34Speaker 05

  Or if you've gotten a vaccine, these are the cells that that make you immune to whatever you were vaccinated against.

• 9:42Wendy Zukerman?

  And this study on the Dutch outbreak, it was specifically looking at whether measles affected something called the antibody repertoire. You can think of it almost like a little library of antibodies that your immune system makes against the infections that you've had. And what they found is that unvaccinated kids who got measles, on average, they lost around 20% of their antibody library. But there was this huge range. In the worst case, it erased more than 70% of a kid's repertoire. What does this mean? So next time you get infected with the cold, the flu, COVID, what?

• 10:25Speaker 05

  As if you had never seen it. It's as if it's the first time. It wipes out a lot of the old memories. You know, it depends. If it, if measles has completely wiped out that part of your repertoire, it's as if you've never seen it. If it got part of it, but not all of it, it's somewhere in between. But that's one insidious feature of this.

• 10:48Wendy Zukerman?

  You can kind of think about it like a computer virus that's getting into your hard drive and deleting all of these programs that help you fight off infections. Some papers even call this immune amnesia. This immune effect where measles is killing off your antibodies, this happens to? To some extent, to everyone who gets a measles infection, this is not just for complicated, serious cases. This is basically-

• 11:14Speaker 05

  It's not just for complicated, serious cases. It's common. I can't say universal, but it's extremely common.

• 11:20Wendy Zukerman?

  Wow, when you read that paper, what did you think?

• 11:24Speaker 05

  I thought, this is bad stuff, to be honest.

• 11:30Wendy Zukerman?

  Now, Peter told me that if you are unvaxxed and you do get measles, your immune system isn't screwed for life. But you'll probably need to get exposed to all of these viruses and bacteria, the colds, the flus again, to start building that antibody library back up. To go back to our hard drive analogy, it's like you've got to boot up the old computer, reinstall those missing programs, kind of one by one. And this could take months or even years to get back to where you were. Scientists are still trying to work all of this out. But still, this is what we know about a so-called mild measles infection.

• 12:14Wendy Zukerman?

  And then there's the more serious cases. In the current outbreak, around one in 10 people have been hospitalized. And so I asked Dr. Maro Shiel from the University of Sydney in Australia, why exactly a measles infection might land you in the hospital? Like, what is it doing that's so bad? And she said that the most common complication is actually pneumonia.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  So pneumonia is basically when you get really bad infection in your lungs and you can't breathe.

• 12:45Wendy Zukerman?

  The breathing becomes so hard, you just, you can't get oxygen into your body.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  And it's probably the most common cause of death as well, from measles in young children.

• 12:55Wendy Zukerman?

  In fact, one of the kids who died in Texas in the current outbreak, an eight-year-old girl, died from lung failure. And it is expected that roughly one in 500 children who get measles will die from it. In around one in a thousand cases, measles can cause encephalitis, which basically means that you get all of this inflammation in your brain and your brain swells up. This can lead to convulsions, it can lead to child death or with intellectual disability. And encephalitis is actually another reason that you can die from measles.

• 13:35Wendy Zukerman?

  And then there's some really rare, but really weird stuff that measles can do. I talked about this one thing with Maru. I read that it's possible, in rare cases, maybe less than one in 10,000, that the measles virus can get into the brain. The virus itself gets into the brain and can almost learn how to infect the brain.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  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.

• 14:22Wendy Zukerman?

  This is... I read this case report of a 16-year-old boy who came into a medical centre because he had been feeling weak. He was having some bladder problems. 16-year-old kid, lost his balance, and then started having seizures. And the doctors worked out that it was this condition, it was from a measles infection, that he got when he was two months old. So it had been sitting in his body, in his brain, for 16 years. And then he did end up dying from it. That is so terrifying. It's so terrifying.

• 14:58Speaker 02

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

• 15:05Wendy Zukerman?

  Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who's the Health and Human Services Secretary, said it's very difficult for measles to kill a healthy person.

• 15:14Speaker 06

  The best thing that Americans can do is to keep themselves healthy. It's very, very difficult for measles to kill a healthy person.

• 15:23Wendy Zukerman?

  Is that true?

• 15:24Speaker 02

  Generally, with most viral infections, most people will recover.

• 15:28Wendy Zukerman?

  Now, if you are immunocompromised, you're sick, pregnant, or you're a little baby, thanks for listening to this podcast, you are at a greater risk of having a nastier measles infection. We also know that the measles death rate is higher in certain developing countries, where you might have worse healthcare and some kids might be malnourished. But Maru talked... Told us that even if that's not you, there's no guarantees here.

• 15:57Speaker 02

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

• 16:04Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, the two children who died from measles in the US, I think they were healthy, had no known underlying conditions.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, 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.

• 16:29Wendy Zukerman?

  So is measles scary? Are we overreacting with this current outbreak in the US? You decide. In the US right now, we've got around one in 10 hospitalized, at least two out of 800 dead, and it's hitting kids particularly hard. And even if you get measles and bounce back straight away, it could muck about with your immune system, making it weaker for a while and putting you at a higher risk of other nasty infections. Now, let's look at how contagious measles is because one thing that you hear over and over again is that it's extremely contagious. So what are we talking about here?

• 17:12Wendy Zukerman?

  And for this, I spoke to infectious disease researcher Dr Katherine Gibney at the Doherty Institute in Melbourne, Australia. And she said that all the hype that you read about measles being infectious, it's not hype. It is the infection that you think of that is the most contagious virus that we know of. It's a big claim to fame. So if you've got a room full of unvaccinated people, someone walks in with measles, how many of those others would get infected?

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they say that nine in 10 people will be infected if they're exposed.

• 17:46Wendy Zukerman?

  Another way to look at it is, do you remember the R naught number from COVID? It's basically the number that says, if you are walking around infected with a disease, on average, how many other susceptible or unvaccinated people will you infect?

• 18:03Speaker 02

  So, you know, the beginning of COVID, it was sort of 1.5, 2.5.

• 18:07Wendy Zukerman?

  For flu, it's like one to two. For measles, it's 12 to 18. Wow. And flu's only one to two. I mean, we're going into a flu season now. So it's interesting that it's only one to two and measles 12 to 18. Yeah, so it's, you know, just on another scale. So, yeah, compared to a lot of other diseases out there, measles is pretty R naughty. Here's how Maru thinks about it.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  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 canary in the coal mine. If you have a gap in your immunization coverage, it will find that gap.

• 18:46Wendy Zukerman?

  So why is measles on another scale? Why does it spread so easily? Well, researchers told me that one thing that's going on here is that you're actually very contagious in the days before you even know you have measles, like before you start getting obvious symptoms. But that's not all. Maru told me that this virus is also hardy as [BLEEP]. I mean, she didn't put it quite like that.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  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 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.

• 19:44Wendy Zukerman?

  That is insane. That is up to two hours.

• 19:49Wendy Zukerman?

  On top of all of this, Catherine told me that you don't need to breathe in that many measles viral particles to actually end up sick, particularly when you compare it to something like COVID.

• 20:03Wendy Zukerman?

  This thing is seriously relentless. It's like the John Wick of viruses. You can't hide from it. I read about this report from the 1991, what they called back then the Special Olympics, where there was an outbreak of measles and it was the athletes where the outbreak had happened. And they tracked two spectators got infected and they were sitting in the upper decks 32 metres away. These are the reports that. Make us all very nervous about measles.

• 20:37Wendy Zukerman?

  So measles is looking like one tough opponent. But after the break, we fight back.

• 20:54Wendy Zukerman?

  Today's Ask Wendy Me Anything is brought to you by Amazon. Whether it's delivering medication to your door with Amazon Pharmacy or 24/7 virtual care with Amazon One Medical. Thanks to Amazon, healthcare just got less painful. So I'm here with senior producer Rose Rimmler, who has some questions for me from you guys, from our listeners.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Yes, so the first one comes from Kaylee on Instagram. She asks, what's the weirdest question you've had to ask a stranger? For science, of course.

• 21:27Wendy Zukerman?

  Um, a lot of them are a little bit not safe for branded advertising.

• 21:37Wendy Zukerman?

  But maybe one of the most awkward was when we were at the human composting facility and we were looking at this big tub of human compost. And I really wanted to put my hands in it. And I said, can I please touch that?

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Can I touch it?

• 22:00Wendy Zukerman?

  And they said, yes.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Our next question comes from Steve, also on Instagram. He asks, tell us about some episodes that were left on the cutting room floor because they came to the wrong conclusions.

• 22:10Wendy Zukerman?

  Wrong conclusion. Interesting. Okay, I really like this question, Steve. Thank you for asking it because I feel like we get, actually, a lot of people sort of asking us this in this world where science has become so politicized. I think sometimes we get accused, if that's the right word, of being politicized ourselves or only delivering kind of woke science, if you want. But actually, when it comes to pitching for science versus, the more surprising that the science is, the more likely the episode is to get through. For those who do sort of think we have become, you know, a slave to the... Yes, we actually piss off a lot of people by really focusing on the science and

• 22:55Wendy Zukerman?

  just reporting on what we see. And so just to some examples where I would say we did get to the quote unquote wrong conclusion according to certain pockets of the internet. In the menopause episode, according to menopause social media, saying that hormone therapy increases your risk of breast cancer even slightly, that's the wrong answer. A lot of people are saying that hormones are magic. So that was the wrong answer. Our recent episode on fluoride had some quote unquote wrong answers by saying that, you know, the science here is actually more messy than we thought it was. So I guess in a nutshell,

• 23:38Wendy Zukerman?

  no, we do not leave episodes on the cutting room floor because they come to the wrong conclusion. We deliver the science and that's why you come to us.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of our episodes come to some conclusion that is the opposite or more nuanced than sort of the darling thesis of some group of people, including people that have very strong feelings on either side of the political aisle.

• 24:03Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Rose.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Thanks, Wendy.

• 24:07Wendy Zukerman?

  Today's Ask Wendy Me Anything was brought to you by Amazon. Thanks to Amazon, healthcare just got less painful.

• 24:17Speaker 04

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• 26:04Wendy Zukerman?

  Welcome back. Today on the show, measles, it's very contagious, but we have one weapon against it: the vaccine. And it works well. With two doses, according to the CDC, the MMR, or measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, is 97% effective.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  So essentially, it's almost close to 100%.

• 26:26Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  It's a pretty amazing vaccine against measles.

• 26:29Wendy Zukerman?

  That's Dr. Maroucheal again, an infectious disease researcher. Now, concerningly, RFK Jr. recently said that one of the reasons that people are now getting measles in the U.S. is because the vaccine is leaky and its effectiveness wanes over time. Is that true?

• 26:47Speaker 02

  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 miniscule. So it's not like you're going to zero after that. There might be a little drop in your antibody levels.

• 27:05Wendy Zukerman?

  Right. I mean, just by virtue of the fact, when you look at the numbers of the current outbreak in the U.S., if the measles vaccine was leaky and its effectiveness waned over time, you would expect way more vaccinated people to be infected, right?

• 27:19Speaker 02

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

• 27:25Wendy Zukerman?

  According to the CDC, in the current US outbreak, only 2% of those who have been infected were fully vaccinated. So this vaccine, it still works. And the fact that it works so well takes us to this kind of amazing possibility when it comes to measles. What is super interesting to me that I had no idea about before doing this episode is that measles doesn't infect other animals. It doesn't have a reservoir in, you know, birds or pigs or pangolins or bats or anything. And so that means we could potentially eradicate measles.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. So when you think about said 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.

• 28:38Wendy Zukerman?

  Right. So we've been using basically the same vaccine for decades now, working great.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  More than 50 years.

• 28:45Wendy Zukerman?

  50 years.

• 28:47Speaker 02

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

• 29:00Wendy Zukerman?

  Wow.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  And so the vaccine works.

• 29:04Wendy Zukerman?

  So we have this vaccine that works amazingly well over decades. There's no animal reservoir. Why haven't we conquered measles yet? Well, because a lot of people around the world don't have access to the vaccine. And then a lot of other people who do have access aren't vaccinating their children. And a big reason why is that they're worried about the risks here. And you know, this vaccine, it is made by taking the measles virus and then weakening it. And we basically inject this weakened virus into people. That's what creates this great immune response.

• 29:44Wendy Zukerman?

  But some are worried that injecting a virus into an otherwise healthy kid is a bad idea. And you go online and people have all sorts of things to say about how dangerous this vaccine can be. The truth is that there are a couple of real risks. And then there's a lot of crap online you don't have to worry about. So first, some kids might get a rash soon after the vaccine. Does it look like the measles rash? What kind of rash?

• 30:14Speaker 04

  It does, it is a similar red rash.

• 30:16Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, interesting.

• 30:16Speaker 04

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

• 30:25Wendy Zukerman?

  But important for people to know, because that would be quite scary if you weren't expecting it. You give your kid the measles vaccine and all of a sudden they're getting a measles rash.

• 30:35Speaker 04

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

• 30:40Wendy Zukerman?

  The second thing to know about here is seizures. So in about one in 3,000 cases to about one in 4,000 cases, a kid may get what's called a febrile seizure after getting the MMR vaccine. Those figures come from the CDC. Dr Katherine Gibney told me that this does not mean measles is infecting your brain or anything. This happens because after you get a vaccine, it's pretty common to get a fever. And in young kids, that can trigger a seizure. Is just anytime you get a fever, you could get a seizure?

• 31:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's right, yes. And particularly for young children.

• 31:21Wendy Zukerman?

  How serious are those? They seem scary. Yeah, I think they're scary rather than serious. And by that Catherine means that if you're a parent watching this happen to your kid, it can be really frightening, but according to the CDC, nearly all kids will recover quickly. When we think about sort of vaccine skepticism. I guess we should talk about autism. Do we have to?

• 31:47Wendy Zukerman?

  Does it lead to autism? No, definitely not. So that's been well and truly disproven and very carefully sort of disproven with lots of, you know, really great science. I don't mean to sound dismissive here, and you know, I am still seeing a lot of stuff online connecting this vaccine to autism. But the thing is, over and over again, studies have compared thousands of kids, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of kids, that looked at those who've gotten the vaccine and those who didn't, and they can't see higher rates of autism in the kids who got the MMR vaccine. Next question. What will it take to stop the outbreak in the US?

• 32:32Wendy Zukerman?

  I talked about this with Maru. So according to the World Health Organization, to prevent outbreaks, we need to vaccinate 95% or more of the population with two doses. When we look at the situation in the US, it's been reported that one county in Texas, where there's an outbreak, the MMR vaccination rate is 82%. And then when you look across the US, MMR vaccination rates aren't great in some states like Wisconsin, Alaska and Idaho, the number of kindergarten kids with two doses of MMR vaccine is less than 85%.

• 33:14Wendy Zukerman?

  Given these numbers, how do you see this all playing out?

• 33:18Speaker 02

  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 like, it's rapid fire. And remember, after you vaccinate, you need about three to four weeks for the immune response to kick in.

• 33:52Wendy Zukerman?

  I mean, given, I was just looking at the news and the messages coming from RFK Junior and that sort of thing. And there's been really big cuts to the CDC and public health in general. If that's what it takes, you know, as someone, Maru, who's, who's been tracking outbreaks around the world, if that's really what it takes, mass vaccination to stop it, that's really the only thing at this point.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Vaccination is the only way to control this outbreak.

• 34:18Wendy Zukerman?

  And then, so, you know, we've talked a lot about the US situation, where hundreds of people have been infected. When it comes to measles around the world, what's going on?

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Sadly, measles has been going up for a fair few years now. The number of cases of measles in Europe have reached numbers they haven't seen in about two decades.

• 34:42Speaker 03

  A record spike in measles cases in Europe has killed 37 people since the beginning of 2018.

• 34:49Speaker 02

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

• 34:54Wendy Zukerman?

  Wow, 90,000 across Europe.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:58Wendy Zukerman?

  Jeepers.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  Huge, huge outbreak. So from the year 2022 to 2023, 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.

• 35:16Wendy Zukerman?

  Wow. Measles is alive and well around the world. I mean, this is, we are not even close to eradicating this.

• 35:25Speaker 02

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

• 35:30Wendy Zukerman?

  It's crazy that we thought we were done with measles. I mean, who are we kidding?

• 35:35Speaker 02

  We're not done with measles. We, we should be and we could be done with measles, but we're not there yet.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  2025 is now the worst year for measles in Canada. An urgent warning from health officers. The disease is making a comeback. Yemen is witnessing a rise in suspected measles cases amongst its children. But Zimbabwe's measles outbreak. Zambia has been experiencing.

• 35:57Wendy Zukerman?

  Recurrent measles outbreak. Health officials are warning of further outbreaks of measles across the country.

• 36:10Wendy Zukerman?

  That's Science vs. Measles.

• 36:13Wendy Zukerman?

  This episode has

• 36:17Wendy Zukerman?

  98 citations in it. So if you want to learn more about measles or the vaccine, the MMR vaccine, then just go to the show notes of the podcast and click on the link to the transcript and you can see everything there. We'd love to hear how you felt about this episode. You can find me on TikTok. I'm at Wendy Zukerman or we're on Instagram, science underscore V S.

• 36:52Wendy Zukerman?

  This episode was produced by me, Wendy Zukerman, with help from Michelle Dang, Merrill Horn, Rose Rimler and Aketi Foster Keys. We're edited by Blythe Terrell, fact checking by Eva Dasha, mix and sound design by Bobby Lord, music written by Emma Munga, So Wiley, Peter Leonard, Boomi Hadaka and Bobby Lord. A special thanks to the researchers who helped us with this episode, including Professor Rick Desfart. And a big thanks to Joseph Lavelle Wilson and the Zukerman family. Science vs. is a Spotify Studios original. Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you are listening on Spotify, you can follow us and tap the bell icon so you get notifications when new episodes come out.

• 37:33Wendy Zukerman?

  And whatever app you are listening on, we would love if you gave us a five star review because it helps people find the show. I'm Wendy Zukerman, back to you next time.

• 38:02Speaker 02

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• 38:14Speaker 02

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