Measles: all you need to know about the virus behind Washington's emergency

OOn the darkest day of 2018, the winter solstice, we at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Vaccine Research tweeted in desperation a guardian that measles cases in Europe have reached the highest number in 20 years.

Why was it a concern? Europe is far from the United States and, as some people apparently think, measles is a mild childhood disease that causes a rash, a dribbling nose and some spots, does not it? What was the problem?

As George Santayana said, "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it." Collective amnesia about the virulence of this disease has made us forget that the measles virus has killed tens of millions infants in the course of history. Now, with several epidemics underway in our own country, this useless threat is back.

See also: An anti-vaccine hotspot near Portland declares an emergency as measles cases increase

Measles is a highly contagious and sometimes deadly disease that spreads like wildfire in naive populations. The virus played its role in the decimation of Amerindian populations at the time of the discoveries. Given that these groups of people had no natural immunity to diseases brought to the New World by Europeans, some estimates suggest that up to 95% of the Native American population would have died as a result of smallpox, measles and other infectious diseases.

In the 1960s, measles infected about 3 to 4 million people in the United States each year. More than 48,000 people have been hospitalized and about 4,000 have contracted acute encephalitis, a potentially fatal disease in which brain tissue becomes inflamed. Up to 500 people died, mainly from complications such as pneumonia and encephalitis. That's why vaccine pioneers, John Enders and Thomas Peebles, have been motivated to isolate, weaken and develop a truly transformative measles vaccine for human health. Parents who knew the reality of the disease quickly vaccinated their children. Absorption has skyrocketed and the number of cases and deaths badociated has dropped in the developed world.

In 1985, when John Enders died, more than a million children in the world were still dying from this infection. However, measles is now a vaccine-preventable disease, and the World Health Organization has launched a considerable momentum to deal with this tragedy.

When I started working on the virus in 1996, more than 500,000 children died of measles each year around the world. Such numbers can be difficult to digest. So to put things in perspective, if you've ever seen or seen a Boeing 747, you'll know it's a very big plane. Think of more than three of those planes full of babies that crushes every day of the year with the death of 100% of the pbadengers. January, February, March … the summer solstice, the autumn equinox … november, return to the winter solstice of December … a rhythmic year. This is the reality of measles: every year in the 90s, more than half a million people lost their lives.

Thanks to vaccination, however, between 2000 and 2016, there was a Measles mortality has decreased by 84% and more than 20 million deaths have been prevented through vaccination. What an exploit!