Apparently there is a measles outbreak happening in Alberta. If you never had a booster, see your doctor. Immunity can wane over time. 

I had measles in 1986. I was vaccinated, but I was born around the time the old MMR was just being replaced by the new version, so it’s a good bet I got the old version. 

I remember it well. I was on a high school band trip with 50 other kids, crammed onto two buses, driving around Manitoba, playing in small towns. On the second day, I started to feel tired, and I lost my appetite. But I kept playing my saxophone in the concert band, piano in the jazz band, and singing in both choirs. I wasn’t going to let a flu bug keep me down!

When I got off the bus back home, my mom took one look at me and took me to the doctor, who declared that I had measles. My spots were just starting to show up. I was to be quarantined at home for two weeks. 

That’s when the symptoms got bad. I didn’t realize just how bad at the time, but years later my mom told me she was really worried. I just remember sitting on the couch, staring out the window, because I didn’t have the energy to do anything else. There was one more visit to the doctor, which resulted in an antibiotic prescription for the ear infection that took advantage of my depressed immune system. I was nearly deaf while the infection raged. 

I recovered well. My hearing came back, except for a steady ringing, which grew worse over time to the point where now, it’s deafeningly loud in both ears. Noise exposure has made it worse over time, but measles sowed those seeds. I haven’t experienced silence in almost four decades. What I would give for a few moments of silence!

Measles is one of the most contagious diseases on Earth. If one infected person walks into a room with fifteen unprotected people, sixteen infected people will walk out, no matter how young and healthy they are. So, on that trip, those two packed buses, those shared hotel rooms, how many other kids got sick?

One.

Only one of my classmates caught measles. I don’t know if I gave it to her or the other way around. We weren’t close, just two kids in the same class, so it spread through incidental contact. But even though half the kids in my class probably had the old, slightly less effective MMR, it still protected all but two of us. 

We were lucky. Measles kills over 1000,000 people a year worldwide, even with safe, effective vaccines available. Some people can’t be vaccinated because they have compromised immune systems, either from disease, organ transplant, or other causes. To protect them requires a herd immunity threshold of at least 95%. But with the epidemic of science denial spawned by Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 “study,” that threshold is eroding. With an anti-science zealot in charge of the US health administration, the death toll in that country is bound to rise. 

We can do better.