Asheville – Buncombe County Health and Human Services has once again blitzed social media with requests that people get vaccinated for measles. There are no recent reports of measles cases in Buncombe County; the last confirmed case of measles in North Carolina was in 2024. A child living in Mecklenburg County became ill after traveling to an unnamed foreign country, and details were not published to protect patient privacy. Last year, Buncombe County Interim Health Director Jennifer Mullendore reported that there were three confirmed cases in Eastern Tennessee.
On June 12, the CDC report, which is updated weekly, had tallied 1,197 confirmed cases, 21 outbreaks, 144 hospitalizations, and three deaths in the United States. This compares to 284 confirmed cases for the entirety of last year.
Myth busters are of the opinion that measles is not and should not be a normal part of childhood. In addition to the red spots, measles typically comes with fever, coughing, respiratory inflammation, eye irritation, and general malaise. The symptoms have been described as “severe, flu-like, and some people are remembering their misery eighty years after the fact. Worse, measles can bring on complications like pneumonia, encephalitis, and death. Quoted hospitalization rates for people afflicted with measles range from 12-25%.
Measles is a highly-contagious, airborne respiratory virus. This means no amount of antibiotics or sanitization will protect against it. It is estimated that 90% of unprotected people exposed to the virus, even by stepping into a room two hours after an infected person coughed, will catch it. Alternative remedies like inhaled corticosteroids or Vitamin A do not attack the virus, may ameliorate symptoms, and may prove harmful if mismanaged…