Article from 2019 on the anticipated return of the measles in the USA. Pre-COVID, indicating the problem really didn’t start with the hysteria over the COVID vaccines
PBS NewsHour breaks down the U.S. fall and rise of the measles in 3 charts.
www.pbs.org
Timeline:
1861: 67,000 Union Army troops in the Civil War were infected with measles, leading to 4,000 deaths. American Army surgeon J. J. Woodward described the festering measles outbreaks as “always serious, often fatal.” Overall, two-thirds of the 660,000 fatalities in the Civil War were attributable to infectious diseases.
1912-1922: Officials require all U.S. health care providers and laboratories to report diagnosed measles cases, creating the first somewhat reliable statistics at a national level. During the first decade of measurements, deaths from measles range from 4,700 to 14,500 per year.
1958: The U.S. experiences its highest-known number of measles cases in a single year — 763,094. The same year marks the first test of a measles vaccine, which occurs at a school for students with mental disabilities in Boston.
1963: The first measles vaccine is licenced, based on the work done by Enders and his colleagues. Measles cases in the U.S. drop 95 percent over the next five years, from 385,000 to 22,000.
1968: The modern measles vaccine is released by Merck.
1978: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention institute a program to eliminate measles in three years. It misses its goal, but reduces measles cases by 88 percent (3,000 cases in 1981)
2000: Measles is declared eliminated from the U.S., meaning continuous transmission of the disease has not occurred in the country for more than 12 months.
2025: The return of the Trumpian measles.
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Aside: death rates from measles was indeed pretty low by the 60s, but measles infections caused a LOT of problems:
-higher rates of miscarriage and stillborn births in infected pregnant women.
-hearing loss
-locomotor issues
-learning disabilities among those infected under 3
-encephalopathy
