Is Measles Here To Stay?

[Dulcinea]

In 2000, the Pan-American Health Organization announced a monumental public health achievement: Widespread vaccination efforts, overseen by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had effectively eliminated measles from the United States.

The disease, which before the vaccination era affected 3 to 4 million people in the U.S. each year, was now isolated to small, contained outbreaks connected to international travel.

This year's record-setting outbreak threatens that achievement.

Since January, over 700 cases of measles have been reported in 22 states. Most of the affected have never been vaccinated. Sixty people have been hospitalized, and the case numbers continue to climb, although in some regions, like the Pacific Northwest, outbreaks have subsided.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/04/30/718220586/is-measles-here-to-stay

[unblock]

1. actual eradication is really, really hard.

most diseases that we deem "eliminated" are actually still around, just with few enough cases to not be a major concern... as long as people keep up with vaccinations, etc.

smallpox is the *only* disease we've actually completely eradicated, i.e., zero cases at all, the bug doesn't exist in the wild anymore. even that it not "completely" eradicated as it still exists in u.s. and russian labs.


so, yeah, measles is around to stay. even if we got the vaccination rates back up, the bug would still be around, so we'd still need to keep vaccinating people.