This is not just about the latest measles death, it’s about something bigger…

Let’s preface this article by admitting to a singular truth: This isn’t just about measles. No article about preventable disease ever really is about just that disease, it’s about something bigger.

So, this article is about the first measles death in America that has occurred since 2003, but it’s also about a dangerously growing trend. It’s about parents choosing, selfishly, not to vaccinate their children because of unfounded fears caused by a widely discredited study. It’s about families risking the health of their children because they would rather believe one study that makes wild claims, instead of the numerous studies that refute them. And it’s about mums and dads putting every single person in their community at risk, including those who have been vaccinated, by providing a disease with a gateway into their lives.

But first, let’s talk about the victim.

The First Measles Death

In July of 2015, something very unusual happened in Washington state, something that hadn’t happened for more than 10 years.

A woman died of measles.

For unspecified health reasons, the woman was taking drugs that suppressed her immune system. While receiving medical care at a local community health clinic, she crossed paths with someone who had measles. The person who infected her wasn’t showing signs of measles, but the disease is of a kind that is contagious long before it is visible. In fact, measles is one of the “most highly communicable of all infectious diseases”, and that’s a quote direct from the Centres for Disease Control.

Anyway, back to the woman. She had a degree of immunity protection to measles checked, and doctors concluded she should have been fine, if not for the medicines she was taking. But she became infected, and developed a very rare form of measles: measles pneumonia. This type of measles is so rare in our post-vaccination era, that doctors couldn’t even identify the issue until they performed her autopsy after death.

Her story is one of many innocents that, through circumstances out of their control, contracted measles in 2014 and 2015 in the United States. And why? Because one child out of 12 in the United States is not getting their first dose of MMR vaccine on time, because parents are preventing or delaying those vaccinations.