[wmboy]

"Measles is one of the most contagious and most lethal of all human diseases."

Okay, I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty sure that sentence is not accurate.

The percentage of people that die from measles is extremely low, and it's hard to tell if it's the disease that causes it, or simply the fact that the person was already very weak (and therefore would have died from another sickness such as complications of a cold).

[nostrademons]

"Most contagious" is accurate.

"Most lethal" is accurate if you're talking total deaths, not death rate, and if you assume the non-existence of vaccines. Pre-vaccination, roughly 7-8m children died every year from measles. By comparison, HIV currently kills about 1.1m, TB kills 1.5m, and malaria kills about 438k. This is an admittedly misleading definition of "most lethal", though, because it incorporates its contagiousness as a factor and assumes no vaccines and developing-world conditions. In the developed world, the death rate from measles is only about 0.2%, which is comparable with some of the more virulent influenza strains, but still an order of magnitude less than the 1918 flu pandemic.

[acqq]

> The percentage of people that die from measles is extremely low

Only because most of the children are vaccinated!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles

"It causes the most vaccine-preventable deaths of any disease."

"In 1980, the disease was estimated to have caused 2.6 million deaths per year."

It would be an unbelievably cruel experiment, but if "anti-vaxxers" would win in the US and force it on everybody, in about, let's say, a decade there would been enough children deaths (it's 2 from every 1000 infected!) to prove them wrong.

As long as the most of children are vaccinated, it's the vaccinated ones who protect those of "anti."

[will_pseudonym]

I think he was referring to the mortality rate of people who are infected.

"The risk of death among those infected is usually 0.2%, but may be up to 10% in those who have malnutrition." (from your link)

[acqq]

Yes, only of 12 million children younger than 5 in the US, "only" 0.2%, that is, 2 of 1000 infected would make 25000 vaccine preventable children deaths in one epidemics, if nobody would have been vaccinated.

To answer to wmboy's question "how does it compare to malaria" -- malaria wasn't treatable with vaccines up to now, there are very recent successes to develop one which is still only 25%-50% effective (has a relatively low efficacy and it was only recently, 2015, approved for use outside trials). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria_vaccine I don't think you'd like mosquitoes biting you if you would travel, for example, to Africa, where malaria is common.

[wmboy]

Over the years improvements such as clean water, sanitation, medicine, access to healthcare etc have also improved.

The 2.6 million deaths per year were mostly from Africa right? Does that mean child mortality rates have improved that much?

I'm not saying that measles isn't a killer disease, but how does it compare to malaria for instance?

[idoh]

I tracked down a stat, "Death from measles was reported in approximately 0.2% of the cases in the United States from 1985 through 1992. As with other complications of measles, the risk of death is highest among young children and adults. Pneumonia accounts for about 60% of deaths. The most common causes of death are pneumonia in children and acute encephalitis in adults."

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/meas.html

Maybe they mean lethal in absolute but not relative numbers?

[wavefunction]

I had an adult co-worker who had never been vaccinated for measles and had contracted it as an adult. He had to take expensive eye-drops regularly for the rest of his life, or he will go blind. He grew up in Utah.

[grahamburger]

I'm not sure if you were trying to suggest otherwise, but Utah's childhood vaccination rates are quite good relative to other US States: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6341a1.htm

[wavefunction]

I mentioned Utah because it's in the middle of the United States, rather than Sub-Saharan Africa. My coworker had all the benefits and access to modern medicine, and now he faces blindness.

[hckr1292]

Those are two separate questions: (1) what is the leading cause of death and (2) which disease is most deadly and/or transmissible.

If the author of this opinion piece is correct, it could well be that vaccination is keeping the most deadly disease from causing the most deaths.

Another way this could happen would be if measles killed people so fast they couldn't infect others, although I've never heard anyone make this claim.

Although I don't think the argument is compelling, it is a great question: is there some other reason that measles isn't killing as many people as it used, other than vaccination? To answer that question, we do need scientific research not logic.

[wmboy]

Exactly...correlation does not imply causation. Better sanitation, access to clean water, access to better medication and healthcare could also be related

[sxg]

Measles itself likely won't kill many people. Hoever, measles can turn into subacute sclerosing panencephalitis later in life, which is very lethal.

[wmboy]

When that happens, it's most likely because that person has a weak immune system, correct? So what evidence do we have to say that person wouldn't have died from the next disease to come along (e.g. diarrhoea or simply catching a cold and dying from pneumonia?).

Just a question... kind of playing the devil's advocate, but I think it's usually ignored by most people when talking about vaccination.

[sxg]

Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) isn't due to an immunocompromised state. That happens in normal people who get measles. It's rare in adults that contract measles, but much more common in kids that get it.

A similar disease called progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) is due to an immunocompromised state. Patients with HIV and those taking certain medications with multiple sclerosis are at risk.

[wmboy]

Sorry I missed the 'later in life' in your original comment. Either way, I'm pretty sure the author of this article didn't have that condition in mind when he penned the sentence.

[JoeAltmaier]

Yet its the leading cause of death among children? How do we reconcile that with ' extremely low '

[wmboy]

It's extremely low likelihood of death compared to other more lethal diseases. I'm pretty sure AIDS, leukemia or malaria are more lethal to children than measles is.

And as far as "the leading cause of death", diarrhoea or pneumonia are arguably the biggest cause of deaths in children.

[dragonwriter]

Diarrhea and pneumonia are symptoms, not diseases, comparing them to a disease like measles (for which, incidentally, both are among the common complications) is not really sensible.

[vorotato]

Nobody has ever died from lung cancer, it's the coughing up blood which gets you. rolls eyes