Guess what I just saw in the news today! South Carolina is having a major measles outbreak! 88 new cases in just the last three days and over 600 all together! Why is this happening you ask? Oh I know! It’s because people have taken a stand and are not getting vaccinated because it is their right to make a decision for all the rest of us 5 and under and 20 and up and immunocompromised to intentionally expose us to this terrible illness.

Is measles fatal you ask? The answer is YES. It can be. It can be FATAL in up to 3 in a 1000 cases. This rate is much higher in the immunocompromised. So, it’s not nothing. It does matter and lives are being compromised with this no vaccine decision making. You may also ask well this wasn’t before when we were not vaccinating. This is where you are really fooling yourself. It wasn’t happening before because we still had the benefit of herd immunity from those who had been vaccinated. It takes a few years for those numbers to fall enough for the disease to resurge. Yes, I said resurge, not come back. You see, it never disappeared in the first place. It has always been there simmering. We just adequately used vaccines to prevent it.

Let’s go through the measles process. First you have incubation, when you are infected with no symptoms. this lasts 7 to 21 days. So, you can be out there infecting everybody without even realizing it. Then you have the prodromal phase with the fever, the cough, the runny nose(coryza) and red eyes. This lasts 2 to 4 days. Then you move on to the exanthem phase when the red and blotchy rash appears and spreads from the face down to the whole body. This part lasts 3 to 5 days. Then, you finally make it to the recovery phase when symptoms gradually fade but the fatigue can last a long time. So, we are talking about over a month of yuck.

The vaccine, first offered in the 1950s, offers protection for your whole life. Measles is even more contagious than Covid that we are all afraid of. Measles was so common before vaccine that most people developed immunity just from getting it. Yes, that is true. I will give you that part. But, if you are one of the unlucky ones that is immunocompromised or you are under five, it could kill you.

I just can’t rectify to myself the option of refusing something that is available to us and is actually proven beneficial. I just can’t rectify to myself putting others at risk without their knowledge and making decisions for them without their consent. For those of you out there refusing vaccines and “taking a stand” and “not letting anyone tell you what to do,” congrats. All you are doing is putting others and yourself at risk. Please rethink it.

Dr. Katz