03/12/2025
No! It absolutely is not "better" if everyone just got the measles...please don't listen to the idea that we should just "let 'er rip!"
The reason for that is simple: the "benefit" of lifetime immunity from living through an active measles infection comes with WAY higher risks than vaccination alone. (note: MMR vaccine risks are not zero, but they are well-studied and documented, are almost all short lived things like mild rash or fever. And importantly, the risk of autism is NOT higher in vaccinated vs. un-vaccinated -- this idea has been studied exhaustively, and continues to get debunked).
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccine-safety/vaccines/mmr.html
Common question I get: measles used to be a common childhood issue, so why get vaccinated?
It's no fun to have measles, for starters. A few weeks of feeling awful, fever, cough, not to mention strong chance of diarrhea, dehydration, ear infections...one in 20 kids will develop a pneumonia. Some of those will require hospitalization (btw we do not hospitalize for "quarantine," those kids who have already been in the hospital in West Texas were sick enough to need it.) The scarier, though less common, complications like Encephalitis, Brain damage, and even Death *will* start to occur as we get higher numbers of cases.
If that isn't reason enough to be concerned, one of the most forgotten aspects is that of "Immune Amnesia."
This is one of the less-well-known problems that Measles causes: active infection with the Measles virus can inhibit your body's ability to fight off other infections that it previously could have handled easily. So even if you survive the measles, other infections can and would cause greater harm, for the next 2-3 years(!) until your immune system can fully recover.
https://asm.org/articles/2019/may/measles-and-immune-amnesia
Please have a chat with any of your vaccine-hesitant friends and family, and feel free to share this post!
Measles is much more serious than a rash and fever: it also causes immune amnesia and leaves patients especially vulnerable to secondary infection.