04/04/2023
"Sixty years ago, in March 1963, the U.S. Surgeon General granted licenses to two drug companies to produce the first measles vaccines. It had taken nine years of research before a vaccine was ready for release to the public. That was too late for my sister, Mary Maura Grimaldi, who died at age 6 of encephalitis caused by measles, on the same day the licenses were announced.
By contrast, it took only about a year for scientists to develop a Covid-19 vaccine. The difference was largely due to advances in research technology and $18 billion in taxpayer funds, said Dr. Paul Rota, chief of Viral Vaccine Preventable Diseases Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Perhaps a more important difference is that most Americans ultimately embraced the measles shot, urged on by a “no shots, no school” campaign requiring vaccinations for all students, noted Dr. Walt Orenstein, a professor of epidemiology at Emory University.
The result was one of the 20th century’s most significant advances in combating infectious childhood diseases. Before the measles vaccine became available, the disease was endemic in the U.S., with up to five million cases and 48,000 hospitalizations annually. Once the shot was introduced, the death rate plunged from 500 a year to near zero. In 2000, the CDC declared measles officially eliminated in the U.S., defined as an absence of continuous disease transmission for more than 12 months.
Today, however, the measles vaccination rate is falling, partly because Covid disrupted many routine childhood vaccinations. It now stands at about 93% for children entering kindergarten nationwide, with lower rates in a number of states. In Ohio, where the vaccination rate is below 90% for the kindergarten age group, 85 children were infected with measles last year. All but a handful hadn’t been vaccinated."
A shot offering protection against a common childhood disease was one of the 20th century’s major public health advances. For the author’s young sister, it came too late.
