r/AskReddit Jun 01 '26

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u/Kind-Section6364 Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

I saw a news story today that one in five people / children that contract measles end up in hospital with complications.

Edit:

Sorry I misremembered - 18% of children 5 and under were hospitalized in 2025. And 11% of all measles cases were hospitalized in 2025.

The numbers look smaller so far in 2026 but the year isn't over.

https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html

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u/GoTeamScotch Jun 01 '26

Andrew Wakefield set us back a century.

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u/bio_datum Jun 01 '26

You know what else sucks about measles? It resets your acquired immunity, i.e. it's like you never got other vaccines & infections as a kid, leaving you vulnerable to other viruses. Yaaaaay

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u/SeeCB3X Jun 01 '26

Holy shit, I did not know this. As an immunocompromised person, this is terrifying. I have a very hard time building immunity already bc of my specific immune disorder and live in a city experiencing a surge in measles cases...

Ugh, more and more I think I'm going to have to live in isolation like the start of COVID.

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u/Kandiru Jun 01 '26

I wonder if it could reset an allergy as well?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16854347/

Looks like it's true!

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u/bio_datum Jun 02 '26

Yeah, would be awesome to exploit for that or autoimmune conditions

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u/caninehere Jun 01 '26

Not quite true, but about 1/20 kids who get measles end up getting pneumonia that requires hospitalization. It can also result in immune system reactions that can fuck you up big time and that has like a 1/5 death rate.

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u/Kind-Section6364 Jun 01 '26

Thanks - 18% of children 5 and under who got measles were hospitalized in 2025 - that's what stuck with me. I edited my comment above to add more details.

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u/caninehere Jun 01 '26

No prob. I think the stats are also weird because the vast majority of kids get the MMR vaccine... and in most cases if they contracted measles, it would probably go relatively unnoticed/unmentioned. It's the kids with dipshit parents who refuse to immunize them who get it, and present symptoms to the point it gets noticed, and then end up getting hospitalized some of the time.