Texas measles outbreak expected to last for months, though vaccinations are up from last year

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. I'm about half way through a

book called "Booster Shots" by Adam Ratner, MD. It covers the history of measles most specifically, but is also about vaccines and vaccination. One chapter is titled "Crowded, Poor, Malnourished" which are the conditions which render it most deadly. People with measles are contagious for something like two weeks before they show any symptoms, at which point they are essentially no longer contagious. It helps somewhat that a person who recovers from measles is forever immune.

Another point the book makes is that when a disease like measles goes from being something everyone gets in childhood to one no one in your community has gotten in many decades, so that even most doctors have no longer seen it, then when it does pop up, even the doctors can be slow at correctly diagnosing it.
Measles are uniquely suited to humans and will forever be with us. Although mass vaccinations can keep it at bay.