The Myth That Measles Isn’t Deadly

Have you ever heard that measles isn’t deadly?

Sure, there are the folks who think that all vaccine preventable diseases are so mild that they wouldn’t kill you unless you lived in a Third World country.

The Myth That Measles Isn’t Deadly

But there are also folks, usually the same folks, who think that the measles virus doesn’t actually kill you – it is instead the complications that are deadly.

For most people, that’s a distinction without a difference.

“The acute pathological effects of measles include the destruction of respiratory epithelium and depression of cellular immunity. These effects interact to transiently increase measles-infected hosts’ susceptibility to respiratory bacterial strains to which they are not immune.”

Measles epidemics of variable lethality in the early 20th century.

After all, if you have measles and die, you probably don’t care if you died because of:

• viral pneumonia
• a secondary bacterial pneumonia
• acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)
• acute measles encephalitis (swelling of the brain)
• Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) – a late complication of natural measles infections

In the pre-vaccine era, before the early 1960s, about 400 to 500 people would die each year from measles and these complications.

So much for the myth that measles isn’t deadly.

But didn’t they all have underlying medical problems – another measles myth?

No they didn’t. One study of measles deaths in the 1960s found that only about 17% of the people who died with measles as the cause of death had an underlying disease.

And we now know that having a natural measles infection lowers your immunity and puts you at risk of dying from something else, even after you have recovered from your measles infection. That’s why mortality rates go down so much more than expected after measles vaccine programs are introduced in an area.

Measles Is Still Not Marvelous

While it is true that people rarely die of measles in the United States and other developed countries anymore, that’s just because most people are vaccinated and really big outbreaks aren’t that common, especially since the endemic spread of measles was eliminated in 2000.

You don’t have to go back to the pre-vaccine era to remember how measles kills though.

Measles is still deadly, even in this era of modern medicine, good nutrition, and clean water. Not that people in the United States didn’t eat well and have access to indoor plumbing in the 1950s, but medical care has improved.

People can still die when they get measles though.

Consider that at least 123 people died in the United States during the large measles epidemics from 1989 to 1991. Another 11,000 were hospitalized, among only about 55,000 cases.

During even more recent outbreaks of measles:

• a pregnant woman with measles was hospitalized and had a miscarriage (2013 measles outbreak in Brooklyn)
• an immunocompromised woman died of pneumonia due to measles (2015 measles outbreak in Clallam County, Washington)
• a 37-year-old died of meningitis due to measles during the 2019 measles outbreaks

There have been other measles deaths and complications of these preventable infections.

And there have been more than a few SSPE deaths.

That there aren’t more simply reflects that most people are vaccinated.

But when we start seeing more and more cases of measles, more and more people will start to die.

We also shouldn’t forget that worldwide, measles surged in 2019, reaching the highest number of reported cases in 23 years. And that came with a record number of deaths too. Worldwide, over 207 500 people died with measles in 2019, with measles deaths jumping nearly 50 percent since 2016.

What To Know About The Myth That Measles Isn’t Deadly

Not only are measles infections deadly, usually from pneumonia and encephalitis, but a natural measles infection can also cause years of immunosuppression, increasing your risk of death from other diseases too.

More About The Myth That Measles Isn’t Deadly

• Who’s Getting Measles?
• Why Haven’t We Eradicated Measles Already?
• Why Are You Still Worried About the MMR Vaccine?
• More Questions to Help You Become a Vaccine Skeptic
• Distinction Without a Difference Fallacy
• CDC – Notes from the Field: Measles Outbreak Among Members of a Religious Community — Brooklyn, New York, March–June 2013
• WHO – Measles Fact Sheet
• WHO – Worldwide measles deaths climb 50% from 2016 to 2019 claiming over 207 500 lives in 2019
• More Measles Myths
• What the Anti-Vax Movement Doesn’t Tell You About Measles
• Pre-Vaccine Declines in Measles Mortality
• CDC – Top 4 Things Parents Need to Know about Measles
• The measles vaccine protects against more than just the measles
• Measles vaccination has saved an estimated 17.1 million lives since 2000
• Comparing risks – Measles vs MMR
• Measles is more dangerous than we thought, and vaccines are as safe as we thought
• The history of measles: A scourge for centuries
• Measles More Deadly than Previously Thought
• Vaccine Injuries from The MMR, A Review of VAERS
• Measles is not better than autism: Debunking anti-vaccine arguments
• “Vaccines didn’t save us” (a.k.a. “vaccines don’t work”): Intellectual dishonesty at its most naked
• Study – Measles mortality. Analysis of the primary cause of death.
• Study – Long-term measles-induced immunomodulation increases overall childhood infectious disease mortality.
• Report – Measles epidemics of variable lethality in the early 20th century.
• Case Report – Fatal measles presenting as acute respiratory distress syndrome in an immunocompetent adult.
• Study – Measles mortality reduction contributes substantially to reduction of all cause mortality among children less than five years of age, 1990-2008.

Last Updated on March 31, 2021