Mask Up for Measles!!

The WHO put out this reminder about measles, which is hitting Europe and the UK hard and starting to be seen more in Canada too:

I re-did it to bring more attention to the pandemic we're currently swimming in:

And a few people commented things along the lines of measles being a real disease, or a virus to worry about because it's actually deadly. Measles is somewhere around 4-9 times more contagious than Covid, spreading faster and further. It also can be stopped by wearing an N95. The public health notifications are explaining aerosol transmission, which is identical to Covid. Measles incubates for about 1½ to 2 weeks, and people are contagious for four days before getting a rash. Kinda like Covid is contagious before you have any symptoms. Maybe this will remind us how asymptomatic transmission works. It's great to stay home when you're sick, but it's really, really not enough to avoid spreading either of these viruses. If you're like me and couldn't live with yourself if you realized you gave someone a disease that destroyed their life, then wear an N95 in public places.

More will die of measles that should because so many people have stopped getting vaccinated. We need 95% vaccination rate for herd immunity to measles, and we've lost ground on that. We need a lot of people to vaccinate their kids and give the finger to Wakefield's long-retracted "study." 

And we need to counter every single piece of disinformation about vaccinations circulating since Covid started, every single time we hear it. Many mainstream media outlets are a disaster on this front, allowing the anti-vax rhetoric to take center stage for clicks.   

But, at its peak in Canada, before we had vaccines for it, as far as I can find, the highest number of deaths in a year was in 1926 when there were 892 deaths from measles. We've had more than 892 deaths from Covid in a week. I keep reading social media posts that say 1 in 3 die of measles, but the CDC says fatality is 1 TO 3 in 1,000; Wikipedia says as high as 28% fatality in malnourished nations or in immunocompromised people. The WHO says 0.1% in industrialized countries and 15% in developing countries. I can't help noticing that 0.1% or 1 in 1,000 is the same fatality rate as Covid from the most conservative estimates and 3 in 1,000 by the highest estimates, or 1-3 in 1,000 overall.

I mean, the population is almost four times as high right now as it was in 1926, sure, and measles is so much more contagious and affects more children, which is devastating, and there are other long term consequences to measles like blindness and encephalitis, and we should definitely do absolutely everything in our power to stop the spread of measles. Absolutely. I would love if this helps light a fire under governments to start cleaning the air and for everyone to start wearing N95s in hospitals, schools, and public transport. 

But how is measles considered "more real" than Covid?? Is it because we can see the rash? Do we need concrete, visible proof like we're in Piaget's pre-teen stage of development? It's so baffling to me how minimized the ongoing pandemic became. The edge Covid has over measles is that you can get it again and again and again, upping the odds of disability or fatality with each infection, and the vaccines don't much prevent infection or transmission; they mainly prevent severity of acute infection to keep the hospitals barely running. 

The really frustrating thing about having measles surging is that the vaccines prevent it so much better provided almost all of us get them. We knew exactly what to do to stop it. We solved the problem already. It worked!! We eliminated measles in 1998. And then we stopped doing the thing that worked because of one really poorly executed study and a bunch of dudes in trucks shitting in the streets of our capital city. 

And because of a massive paradigm shift away from collective action for the public good. 

In the U.K., they're minimizing measles too with this ignorant article! 

When we're dealing with airborne viruses, "catching" your sneeze or cough in your elbow or a tissue does fuck all to stop the spread! Every time an infected person exhales in a room, it will spread the virus and leave it hanging there for unsuspecting people who enter after the infected person has left. What is preventing that from become common knowledge??

Just like Covid, the odds are that you're fine. Most people will be fine if they get measles, or Covid, or Polio. But that has to be the very worst way to understand that 1 in 1,000 stat. That's the most capitalist and individualistic and Hunger Games-ish way of looking at it. A good chunk of people won't be fine unless we act to reduce the spread. These diseases are entirely preventable. Are we still going to fight tooth and nail against protecting our kids from getting sick because N95s are annoying?? 

Or can the fear of measles actually save the day??

ETA: T. Ryan Gregory's post: 

"Measles has been known for 1,000 years, and it still hasn't evolved to be benign. Measles can cause 'immune amnesia', wiping out immunity to other pathogens.  Measles infection increases susceptibility to other pathogens over both short and longer time scales. Measles seems very unlikely to evolve immune escape for specific reasons [so one vaccination lasts for decades]. Measles virus may persist in the body for several months after infection. Unlike measles, we have only known about SARS-CoV-2 for less than five years. Unlike measles, SARS-CoV-2 has recently infection billions of people. Unlike measles, SARS-CoV-2 can reinfect up to several times per year. We do not and cannot yet know what it does or does not do long term."