Why infants are especially vulnerable to measles
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Illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios
The rising measles caseload is bad news for one particularly vulnerable group of people: infants, who typically aren't vaccinated against the disease until they're a year old.
Why it matters: Even parents who want to protect their babies against the disease have few options for the first 12 months of their children's lives.
My son is 8 months old and hasn't received any doses of the MMR vaccine. This week, I clicked on a story about a child in Virginia coming down with the disease.
- I figured it was unlikely this child lived near me, or would have had any chance of interacting with my baby.
- Lo and behold, the child was treated in the same emergency room that we took my son to the week before.
My son had a run-of-the-mill cold that ended up causing him to breathe faster than normal.
- Our pediatrician suggested we go to the ER if his breathing exceeded a certain rate — while acknowledging the risk of him picking up something else while he's there.
- He was fine after a "hospital-grade snot suck." But it was a reminder of how all kinds of weird little things can qualify as emergencies when you have a baby.
- The problem is that hospitals can be mixing bowls, and as measles continues to spread around the U.S., it becomes likelier to join flu, COVID and colds as a constant threat.
Between the lines: Of course, most babies don't get sick from hospital visits. They get sick from day care, which is its own Petri dish for germs.
- The measles vaccine is extremely effective, so most parents of vaccinated children don't have much to worry about when they send their kids to school or day care. That's true even if they live in states like South Carolina, where the virus is currently spreading.
- But for parents of immunocompromised children, infants, or kids that haven't received the vaccine for some other reason, the idea of measles ping-ponging around the place where your child spends 8+ hours a day is scary.
- 1 out of every 5 children who gets measles is sick enough to require hospitalization, and 1 in 20 gets pneumonia.
The bottom line: Parents can spare themselves worry by giving their children the MMR vaccine.
- The big exception is the parents of infants, and I can't be alone in my anxiety when I see news reports about local cases.
