The Current Measles Outbreak Put Into Perspective

 

The U.S. is currently experiencing an outbreak of measles. At the beginning of this semester, I might not have thought much of it. However, after reading and getting to understand the history of epidemics and society, I now have a greater understanding of how bad diseases used to be and how diseases and society interact. By learning about epidemics throughout history in this class, it is clear the current measles outbreak not nearly as deadly and that society is likely at fault for its re-emergence.

For Artifact 3, we learned about the history of the plague and how deadly epidemic can be. The plague is famous for killing hundreds of millions of people throughout several occurrences over the last 1,500 years. The Justinian, the Black Death and the Bubonic Plague are the three most significant outbreaks of the plague. The disease is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and can kill people in multiple ways. The bacteria spreads throughout the body and causes lymph nodes to swell and form buboes, or the disease spreads to the lungs and causes the pneumonic and much more deadly form of plague. An estimated 100 million died during the Justinian plague and 100 million more during the Black Death and 10 million died in the modern Bubonic Plague. The plague is spread by fleas that carry the disease from rat to rat and if there are no rats around, the flea will spread the disease to a human. If a human infected with plague develops the pneumonic form, the disease can be spread through the air by coughing and sneezing. The pneumonic plague is considerably more fatal and easier to spread than the bubonic form.

The Plague sounds scary even when you know what the disease is and how it works. It must be far scarier when you have no idea what is causing the disease, how the disease is spreading and how to treat it. I an attempt to deal with the massive impact of all the dead from the plague, people would do anything to try to save themselves from it. People would kill others who they thought were responsible for the disease, a band of people self-flagellated to try to compensate for the sin of man that led to the disease and, most reasonably, people abandoned those they loved in an attempt to escape the disease. With no good way to prevent the disease from spreading, the only thing they could do was hope they weren’t the next one to get the disease. So many people died from the disease, their bodies were strewn about the cities. People brave enough to interact with their bodies would bring them to mass graves to be buried. We are greatly fortunate today that we don’t have to experience anything like this. With our scientific knowledge and technical capability, we shouldn’t have to go through an experience as deadly and terrifying as the plague.

With the understanding of how terrible diseases can be, it was disheartening to talk about HIV/AIDS in Artifact 9. We watched a documentary that detailed how social stigma and lack of action by the U.S. government likely caused many to suffer through a debilitating disease until it slowly killed them. In previous artifacts, like artifact 4 about Smallpox and Artifact 8 about Cholera, we learned that society and disease influence each other. Smallpox has become a great success story that established a precedent that showed how with international coordination, it is possible to eradicate diseases. And with Cholera, we learned that having proper public services like sewage, that help maintain cleanliness, the spread of diseases can be controlled. This made learning about HIV hard because there initially was no attempt to understand the disease and help those affected.

HIV was initially only found in homosexual men and at the time in the U.S., there was a huge negative social stigma against this group of people. This made it hard for people to get treatment as those diagnosed with HIV were immediately isolated by their friends, family and society. Scientists were making efforts to understand the disease, and they were able to disprove that you could get the disease by just touching or being around someone infected with it. However, people with HIV were quickly thrown into poverty because they were treated as though they could spread the disease by touch or through the air. Making matters worse, government officials refused to spread the knowledge that people with the disease were at no harm to others. This refusal to work with the scientific community allowed for people to mistreat those suffering and certainly made their lives worse. As a result, many people who showed signs of the disease would not seek treatment out of fear of the social rejection that would follow. It was not until other groups of people began contracting the disease that influenced people to care. We learned that the disease is spread primarily through anal sex and sharing needles. Had the public been more willing and sympathetic towards those contracting the disease, we might have been able to help thousands who needlessly suffered and died from the disease.

Now that I know how deadly diseases can be and that how we respond to them is influential, it is clear the current measles outbreak is not as severe as it could be, but if we don’t change our behavior, this outbreak has the potential to get much worse. Compared to history, the current measles outbreak is not deadly. According to the CDC, the number of people infected with measles is at the second highest since it was eradicated in 2000. In all of 2014, the year with the highest cases of measles in the U.S. since 2000, there were 667 cases. In the first four months of 2019, there have already been at least 626 cases of measles. Statistically, 1-2 out of every 1,000 people with measles dies (CDC) and the U.S. is quickly approaching 1,000 cases and the first death. Clearly, the outbreak is not as deadly as the plague. However, the problem with the outbreak is that society is allowing for this disease to spread.

Vaccination is responsible for the eradication of diseases like smallpox, polio, and at one time measles. Despite all of the obvious evidence and proof that vaccines work, people do not trust them or are willingly refusing vaccination. People aren’t vaccinating either because of religious reasons or out of ignorance or mistrust of medicine. If these sentiments don’t change, it is possible that more and more people get the disease. And that is exactly what is happening. Like we saw with HIV/AIDS, delaying appropriate action in response to the outbreak can cause unnecessary suffering. But, unlike many previous epidemics throughout history, we know exactly what we need to do to eradicate the disease. This brings forth new questions, why do people not trust vaccines and what do we do with people who willingly or ignorantly allow diseases to spread? We are at a strange point in history where we have the ability to prevent the spread of a disease, but we are not doing what is needed to stop this outbreak, an outbreak that should never have begun.

 

All Information Was Taken From Class Discussions, Resources On Canvas and the CDC Website