quotes:
Measles is an acute viral respiratory illness. It is characterized by a prodrome of fever (as high as 105°F) and malaise, cough, coryza, and conjunctivitis -the three “C”s -, a pathognomonic enanthema (Koplik spots) followed by a maculopapular rash. The rash usually appears about 14 days after a person is exposed. The rash spreads from the head to the trunk to the lower extremities. Patients are considered to be contagious from 4 days before to 4 days after the rash appears.
In the decade before the live measles vaccine was licensed in 1963, an average of 549,000 measles cases and 495 measles deaths were reported annually in the United States. However, it is likely that, on average, 3 to 4 million people were infected with measles annually; most cases were not reported. Of the reported cases, approximately 48,000 people were hospitalized from measles and 1,000 people developed chronic disability from acute encephalitis caused by measles annually.
One out of every 1,000 measles cases will develop acute encephalitis, which often results in permanent brain damage.
One to three out of every 1,000 children who become infected with measles will die from respiratory and neurologic complications.
Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) is a rare, but fatal degenerative disease of the central nervous system characterized by behavioral and intellectual deterioration and seizures that generally develop 7 to 10 years after measles infection.
Measles is one of the most contagious of all infectious diseases; up to 9 out of 10 susceptible persons with close contact to a measles patient will develop measles.
The virus is transmitted by direct contact with infectious droplets or by airborne spread when an infected person breathes, coughs, or sneezes. Measles virus can remain infectious in the air for up to two hours after an infected person leaves an area.
One dose of MMR vaccine is approximately 93% effective at preventing measles; two doses are approximately 97% effective.
Single-antigen measles vaccine is not available.
Severe measles cases among children, such as those who are hospitalized, should be treated with vitamin A. Vitamin A should be administered immediately on diagnosis and repeated the next day.
The recommended age-specific daily doses are
50,000 IU for infants younger than 6 months of age
100,000 IU for infants 6–11 months of age
200,000 IU for children 12 months of age and older
https://www.cdc.gov/measles/hcp/index.html
My niece was one of those who got encephalitis. She wasn’t expected to survive, but did, with brain damage. She lost a year of school and had to learn to use her arms and legs again, eat, crawl and then walk.
To this day (age 33) she has problems with her speech despite years of speech therapy.
Measles wiped out entire military regiments during the Civil War. I come across the documentation all the time when doing family research. Yet my Mom’s entire family came down with measles when she was a kid and it wasn’t a huge deal aside from everyone staying at home. I’m fairly convinced that the military deaths weren’t so much due to measles as to the poor sanitation aspects surrounding it.