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
Chapter 1: What is causing the current measles outbreak in the U.S.?
Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus. Today on the show, the insanely weird virus that is measles. For more than 20 years, the US had stopped the ongoing spread of measles. Yeah, I mean, we declared it eliminated. This is Grace Wade, health reporter at New Scientist magazine.
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 like heralded as this great example. And now we're just watching it like crumble before our eyes.
On the 20th of January, Texas reported a case of measles, and then another one, and another one.
The country's deadly measles outbreak is getting worse, spreading at an alarming rate in Texas. Measles cases connected to the outbreak in Texas have officially passed 500 confirmed cases. It's gonna get worse before it gets better.
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.
And so that's concerning, right? Because you're seeing this outbreak spread to multiple states and then from there take off.
In some cases, people who are 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. 800 cases. How many hospitalized? How many dead?
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.
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Chapter 2: How does measles affect the immune system?
So today on the show, how worried do you really need to be about this U.S. 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. Science vs. Measles is coming up just after the break. 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 coplic spots. And then, of course, there's that blotchy red rash, which, fun fact, is triggered by the measles virus infecting your skin cells. In the current outbreak in the US, hundreds of folks who have gotten infected, almost 90%, were never hospitalised.
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.
Measles is really nasty.
This is Peter Kasson. He's a professor who studies viruses at Georgia Institute of Technology.
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.
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... Immunological destruction.
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Chapter 3: What are the serious health risks and complications of measles?
I thought, this is bad stuff, to be honest.
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. 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. Maru Sheel 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.
So pneumonia is basically when you get really bad infection in your lungs and you can't breathe. The breathing becomes so hard, you just, you can't get oxygen into your body. And it's probably the most common cause of death as well from measles in young children.
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.
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.
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Chapter 4: How contagious is measles compared to other viruses?
Yeah. The two children who died from measles in the U.S., I think they were healthy, had no known underlying conditions. 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.
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?
And for this, I spoke to infectious disease researcher Dr. Catherine 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?
Yeah, so they say that nine in ten people will be infected if they're exposed.
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Chapter 5: How effective is the measles vaccine?
Another way to look at it is, do you remember the R0 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?
So, you know, at the beginning of COVID, it was sort of 1.5, 2.5. For flu, it's like 1 to 2. For measles, it's 12 to 18.
Wow. And flu's only 1 to 2. I mean, we're going into a flu season now. So it's interesting that it's only 1 to 2 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.
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Chapter 6: What are the risks associated with the measles vaccine?
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 cannery in the coal mine. If you have a gap in your immunization coverage, it will find that gap.
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 f**k. I mean, she didn't put it quite like that.
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'll 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.
That is insane. That is up to two hours. 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. This thing is seriously relentless. It's like the John Wick of viruses. You can't hide from it.
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Chapter 7: What measures can stop the current measles outbreak?
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.
So, measles is looking like one tough opponent. But after the break, we fight back. 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 Rimler, who has some questions for me from you guys, from our listeners.
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?
A lot of them are a little bit... Not safe for branded advertising, I think. 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? Can I touch it?
And they said yes. 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 conclusion. 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 politicised. I think sometimes we get accused, if that's the right word, of being politicised ourselves or only delivering kind of woke science, if you want.
But actually, when it comes to pitching for Science Versus, the more surprising thing that the science is, the more likely the episode is to get through.
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