An article in the Harvard Gazette about our panel “Measles, Vaccines, and Protecting Public Health,” convened on February 25, 2015:
The numbers paint a telling picture. In the United States of the 1950s there were between 3 million and 4 million annual cases of measles, a highly infectious virus that causes severe flu-like symptoms and a spreading red rash. Roughly 48,000 of those infected each year were hospitalized, and 400 to 500 died.
By 2000, through an effective and widely used vaccine, measles was essentially eliminated in the United States.
But for the last several years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported a significant uptick. Last year, the CDC recorded more than 644 cases from 27 states, the worst since 2000. Only two months into 2015 the United States is facing more than 150 cases reported across the country, many of them tied to a December outbreak at Disneyland in California.
The resurgence involves measles-stricken travelers and American parents who don’t vaccinate their children. […]
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