The U.S. is having its worst year for measles spread in more than three decades, with a total of 1,288 cases nationally and another six months to go in 2025.
00:00Measles is a highly contagious respiratory virus that has plagued humans for an eternity.
00:08But with the advent in 1964 of very effective vaccines, we saw a decline across the world and in particular in the United States to the point that by the year 2000, we declared measles eliminated,
00:28which means cases will not keep propagating through the population.
00:34It continues to be eliminated, but that doesn't mean that we don't have big outbreaks and cases that keep going.
00:42For example, in 2019, we had a large outbreak in New York that was over 1,200 cases, and we came very close with that outbreak to losing elimination.
00:58The rule is that you have to have a continuous chain of transmission that extends past a year or 52 weeks.
01:06And so right now, we're about halfway there from January 20th or thereabouts until present day.
01:16The question is, do we contain this or is it kind of already out of the bottle here?
01:24My fear right now is over the last five years, we've seen the public health system in this country really degraded.
01:31You know, throughout COVID and more recently through some decisions being made federally to reduce funding and capacity.
01:42It really is made more difficult when you don't have an intact public health system, when you don't have a population that believes in evidence-based science and is racked with concerns about conspiracy.
02:01And you have people who basically profiteer off misinformation.
02:08All of us are kind of, they're pulling for our patients, for our communities, for our populations.
02:15And when we have tools that can really be helpful and see that they're discarded for no good reason, it's met with a little bit of melancholy on our part.
