April 22, 2026 • 47 mins
Measles was once declared eliminated in the U.S. So why is it back and spreading fast?
Priyanka and Hari break down one of the most contagious viruses humans have ever faced, what actually happens in your body when you get infected, and why outbreaks are rising again today. They walk through the history of measles, how vaccines work, and the real risks versus the perceived ones. Along the way, they tackle common questions, misinformation, and the science behind the MMR vaccine so you can make informed decisions for yourself and your family.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This podcast is for information purposes only and should not
be considered professional medical advice that helps our body learn
how to defend itself from the disease without actually getting
the full blown disease.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
About one in five unvaccinated people in the US who
gets measled is hospitalized.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Is the risk of getting the disease and the complications
of that a lot worse than the risk of the
potential vaccine related issues.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
I'm Hurrycandibolu, I'm doctor preuncle Wally.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
And this is health stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I'm like really really revved up for today's episode.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Are you revved up for today's episode?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yeah, Like it's been in my heart to want to
do this episode for some time now in a solid way.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
So here I am. Here we are.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
We're talking about measles and vaccines, to which is definitely current.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah, very topical.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Do you remember getting vaccines as a kid?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
I actually don't. I don't remember it. I think because
I was so young.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I definitely don't have any like neither positive nor negative
memories associated with vaccines or shots, like really yeah, like
full disclosure, though, I had like a very chaotic childhood,
so I feel like maybe getting vaccinated was the.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Least of my problems.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Okay, okay in terms of just.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
The pain or the discomfort.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
And I can barely I can barely remember even getting vaccine.
I know, I dot everything, but I don't have it.
It's just like a blur in my mind.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Do you remember getting vaccinated as a kid.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I don't remember the actual vaccinations, but I remember that
the trauma of having to get them, the fear of
having to get them, crying. I remember that stuff. Wow, Okay,
and I'm kind of reliving it just because my kid,
you know, he's had to get vaccinated, right, He's such
a tough kid. He had like five vaccines he had
(02:10):
to take once and not a single teer, no way,
not a single teer. I was so impressed. And he's
proud of it too, He's like really proud of the
fact he didn't like it's so impressive.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
That is very very respectable. I mean, five vaccines in
one day. I'd be crying in.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
A corner even at adult.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
It was so it was a lot like I thought
it was. It was a bit much, but like that
we want to knock him all out.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
But look, vaccines are obviously a very hot and sensitive topic.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
These days.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
So I just want to kind of preface this episode
by encouraging our listeners to listen to this episode with
a really open mind. You may have some opinions about vaccines.
Our goal is to really just offer information that's backed
by science and to share real historical data with you
(03:05):
to help you navigate the health and healthcare systems. You know,
we're currently in the United States, in a country where
vaccine schedules are changing really rapidly, and our goal here
is to give you the best education, best understanding of
vaccines and educating you about the diseases behind them so
(03:28):
that you can make your own informed judgment.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Like I said earlier, we're going to start with measles
because we're seeing a resurgence of it and many people
don't actually know what it is. Before having to research
this episode, I had a vague idea of what it was,
but I never actually knew what it was, in part
because it had been eradicated, right, So why would you
need to know much more about it?
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
As of twenty twenty six, the CDC has confirmed over
twelve hundred cases of measles in the US just this year.
This is a rapid surge that has already reached nearly
half of twenty twenty five's total cases have been reported
across thirty one states, with about fifty seven percent of
infections occurring in children and teenagers.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, that's very, very significant. Actually, last year was the
worst outbreak of measles in the United States compared to
the last several decades. There were more than two thousand
recorded infections, and by the end of twenty twenty five
cases had reached a three decade high.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
So that that is huge because these.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Numbers are higher than any year for the last twenty
five years. You know, in two thousand, measles was declared
as eliminated in the United States, and that's a huge
historic public health achievement. But the reality is now, because
of how highly contagious measles is, it's actually reemerging and
(04:59):
the United State dates is losing its Measles free designation.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Now, let's go over some basics about measles. The measles
virus is one of the most contagious diseases humans have
ever faced, infecting nine out of ten unvaccinated people exposed.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, that's a really really high contagions rate.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah, it's primarily transmitted to the air via aerosolized respiratory
droplets from an infected person's cough or sneeze.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, and what's crazy is that if a person coughs
or sneeze, the virus can stay in the air for
up to two hours, so you don't even need to
be in the room at the same time when that
person sneeze to become infected, which is wild.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Another reminder, cover your sneezes, cover your coughs. Yeah, like
two hours, two hours in the air because you didn't
cover your cough or your sneeze. Is an endemic disease globally,
meaning it's always been president of the world's population somewhere.
So meals originated from a virus called render pest, which
(06:12):
was a highly contagious cattle plague known for massive like
ninety five percent of lifestock lost. Scientists believe that the
measles virus diverged from the render pest virus sometime in
the sixth century. It became a distinct virus that infects humans,
which aligns with accounts of an ancient emergence of measles
(06:32):
in humans. So we all feel pretty good about this timeline.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah, and a couple of interesting data points about render pest.
It's the German word for cattle plague, and this, to me,
is one of the first signs that measles arose because
of urbanization and the close proximity that humans were living
(06:56):
next to cattle. So this is like one of the
first diseases that emerged as a result of urbanization. But
what's key is that measles has been around for a very,
very long time.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
The measles virus became a bigger problem as we started
to explore the globe. You know, as we traveled from
place to place, we were spreading measles all around the world.
We I mean the Europeans.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Well, actually I think there was measles in India for
a really long time as well, that came from like
the Persians as well. So fair I wouldn't actually blame
all the Europeans.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Whenever there's a chance, I go for it.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
But no, I know, I know, I really want to
make sure that we remind the audience, Like if we're
going to talk about vaccines, I just want to remind
people that a lot of what we understand about how
vaccines works comes from the role that people who were
enslaved played early colonial United States in terms of our
(08:03):
understanding of smallpox.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
They played a crucial role.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
So I also just want to like give credit where
credit is due for kind of where we are today.
So yeah, it wasn't until seventeen fifty seven that a
doctor from Scotland, Francis Home. He was the one that
discovered that measles was caused by a pathogen. He actually
(08:29):
took the virus and he put it in healthy people
by using the blood of infected people. And yeah, like
he basically proved, hey, this is infectious, which which sucks
because he didn't have a cure. So he was just
basically like, Okay, we've confirmed that this is an infectious pathogen.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
What are we gonna do about it? I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
What he did was what they call stup. It was
a step thing to do to disease people and then
just yeah, yeah. Between eighteen fifty five and two thousand
and five, it's one hundred and fifty years. Measles is
estimated to have killed about two hundred million people worldwide.
(09:11):
There was no way to stop it. Some epidemics were
particularly severe, such as those in Hawaii in the late
eighteen nineties, which wiped out twenty percent of the population.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
I mean, it's really really kind of terrifying if you
think about living in this period. Like earlier in the show,
you were like, yeah, I don't really know much about measles,
Like it didn't affect me. But I'll tell you if
we were living in the early nineteen hundreds, oh my god,
you bet we knew about measles.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
By nineteen twelve, measles became a nationally notifiable disease in
the United States. So what that means is because it
was so contagious and so prevalent, healthcare providers were required
by law to report cases to state public health officials,
and in that first decade of reporting, they averaged about
(10:05):
six thousand measles related deaths each year, which is a lot.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Before the measles vaccine eventually came out, measles was a
very common series and sometimes fatal childhood illness. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
I would actually add that it was kind of the
there's some data points that show it was the number
one mortality for children.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Oh my god. Pre vaccination, I mean, outbreaks happened regularly
and each year measles infected and estimate three to four
million people, resulting in four hundred to five hundred deaths
and forty eight thousand hospitalizations.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
There's one thing to die for measles, it's another thing
to contract the complications and will break down all of that.
But again, before the vaccine, before the nineteen sixties, pretty
much all kids got measles by the time they were
fifteen sixteen, you know, had hit puberty. So this is
(11:05):
a disease that I think many of us living today
have really forgotten about.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
More to come on health stuff.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
So let's walk through kind of what happens when you
get measles.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
What does it feel like.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
So, symptoms usually begin seven to fourteen days after you've
been exposed, so it's not immediate. Measles typically begins with
upper respiratory inflammation, including running nose cough, red watery eyes, conjunctivitis,
and a high fever.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yeah, so in the beginning, it's pretty kind of your
run of the mill sort of viral. You're feeling not
that great, you know, running nose, cough, your eyes are red,
maybe a fever. You wouldn't think anything of it. But
then two to three days after those symptoms begin, there's
(12:03):
going to be something called Coplic spots, which are these
tiny white spots that appear in the inside of the mouth.
And they're called Coplic spots because it's named after a
pediatrician from New York, doctor Koplic, who named the white spots.
Which I swear one of these days I want to
discover something and name it like the Wally phenomenon.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, but do you really want your name to be
associated with death and disease?
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yeah, I mean that's true. So I mean, what would
I call it? The people's phenomenons?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah? Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
So then you get these Coplic spots, these white spots
on the inside of your mouth, and then three to
five days after the symptoms begin, you get the classic
measles rash. And this rash which is these flat red spots.
They come on your face like where your hairline is,
(13:02):
and then they spread down your neck, your torso, your arms,
your likes, your feet. And this is actually why measles
was also called rubiola, which comes from the Latin word rubius,
which means red, because it's describing this very distinct red rash.
And if you google measles, like Google image search measles, like,
(13:24):
majority of the images are this rash. This very like
classic rash, which when the rash appears, the person may
get a fever that goes really high, like up to
one hundred and four degrees, which by the way, is
like a medical emergency and can cause brain damage, organ failure,
and seizures.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Wait, so rubiola is different than rubella. Two different yes.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yes, yes, those are two distinct different diseases. Ironically, rubella
is called German measles, very confusing, yeah, which is a
different disease pase. So that's kind of the primary presentation.
But things get very tricky because you can get all
(14:09):
these complications because what happens is that the measles virus,
when you get infected with it, it can temporarily suppress
your immune system, which can then lead to complications.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Like ear infections, which can cause hearing loss that occurs
in one out of every ten children with measles. Diarrheas
reported with measles, pneumonia or encephalitis can develop, although rare,
and then there's subacute sclerosing pan encephalitis, which is very
rare but a fatal disease of the central nervous system.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
You know nowadays, if someone has diarrhea they can go
to the er and get ivy fluids. Back in the
early nineteen hundred is like that wasn't an option. People
would die from dehydration and organ failure related to I.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Mean around the world that people are still dying because
of diarrhea.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Correct, that's correct.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
So my personal scariest is the subacuse sclerossing pan encephalitis,
And I'll break that down. You can get this condition
literally four to fourteen years after you get measles. So
you get measles and then everything's fine, and then ten
years later you develop this condition pan encephalitis, and cephalitis
(15:21):
is inflammation of the brain. But what happens is that
this disease is so fatal that basically it strips your
brain cells of the neuronal tissue. It demilinates them, which
is the medical term for removing the nerve cells in
(15:42):
your brain. You slowly develop a failure in your nervous system,
You get more and more confused, more and more debilitated,
and usually within two to three years it's fatal.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, And this will happen in between like thirty out
of one hundred thousand cases of measles, So it's super rare,
but that to me is terrifying to get some acute
scloressing panencephalitis.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Well, especially since it doesn't show up immediately. The fact
that you wonder if you're a time bomb.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Right, can you imagine? I mean to me, that's just like, oh,
I'm fine.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Ten years later you're not fine. Yeah, yeah, it's terrifying.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Measles is serious at any age. However, there are several
groups that are more likely to suffer from complications of
measles infections. As many as one out of every twenty
children with measles gets pneumonia, the most common cause of
death for measles and young children under the age of five.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Yeah, I mean, pneumonia is very dangerous. It can kill kids.
They can't fight it. It's not the same as you
know when you're an adult. Many like one to three
out of everything and children who become infected with measles
will die from either respiratory or neurologic complications. Kids are
a very vulnerable population. And speaking of vulnerable populations, pregnant women.
(17:15):
If they get measles while pregnant, it can lead to miscarriage.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
People with weakened immune systems, such as those with an
HIV infection, with immunosuppression, undergoing chemotherapy or steroid therapy, or
transplant patients, they're all more vulnerable to the complications.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Of measles exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
And there's some other studies show that contracting pretty serious
complications of measles can also happen to people who are
malnourished or have vitamin A deficiency, which we don't see
too much of that here in the United States, but
worldwide it's definitely a thing if there's someone that there's
(17:58):
a concern that they have measles. Generally, the diagnosis happens
through certain types of lab testing, like they can do
a throat swab, or they can do a blood test
to basically detect the virus or the antibiotes. And that's
really important because measles can look similar to other things,
(18:18):
so it's really important to test early and then get
the diagnosis as early as possible, because again we're dealing
with a highly infectious agent, so we want to identify, diagnose,
and isolate. And what's crazy is that there's no treatment.
The treatment is you support the person with their symptoms,
(18:41):
like give them ivy fluids or bring their fever down
or you know, let them rest. But you know, you
can't take antibiotics for measles because it's a virus. You
might be able to take antibiotics if you get some
kind of bacterial infection as a secondary response to measles,
So like if you get an infection or bacterial pneumonia,
(19:02):
then you can treat that with antibiotics. But the virus itself,
there's no treatment.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
About one in five unvaccinated people in the US who
gets measles is hospitalized.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Yeah, which kind of basically brings you know, the best
sort of treatment is prevention, Like prevention is the treatment here,
and the most effective prevention against the measles virus is
the vaccine.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Bottom line, the MMR vaccine. Could you just tell us
what MMR stands for.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yeah, So MMR vaccine is a is a three vaccines
and one very effective which is great because you get
you don't have to have three shots. Yeah, so it
includes measles, mumps, and rebella. There's a lot of data
to show that this is a really really effective vaccine
for protecting you against measles. And you know, we'll talk
(19:58):
about the other the and the rubella like in other episodes.
Today we'll just focus on measles. But MMR is the
vaccine you want to get for that to me when
it comes to things that we've done over decades in
terms of our health system, like, look, we we haven't
been perfect, but the MMR vaccine and measles vaccination is
(20:21):
like one of the greatest public health success stories in
the history of like human medicine. So it is one
thing that I feel like proud of.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
I mean, it has a you know, an interesting timeline
which is still fairly recent. Honestly, Like we're talking about
like nineteen sixty three when the measles vaccine gets created.
That is not that long ago, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
American biomedical scientist John Enders and doctor Thomas Peebles collected
blood samples from several ill students during a measles outbreak
in Boston, and we're able to isolate the measles virus
hoped to make a vaccine, which they did in nineteen
sixty three. John Enders and colleagues created an effective measles
vaccine by sixty eight, and improved measles vaccine with fewer
(21:11):
severe side effects was developed, and just a few years later,
scientists developed a single vaccine against mumps, measles, and rebella,
the MMR vaccine, and then in two thousand and five,
scientists added the vericella virus chicken pox to the vaccine
to make the combination MMRV. So if you've wondered what
(21:32):
happened to chicken pox, they put it in a vaccine
and got.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Rid of it, right because I remember when the vaccine,
the chicken pox vaccine, came out because I had already
gotten chicken pox, but my brother who's younger than me, didn't,
so he got the vaccine, and I remember being like, damn,
I wish I could have gotten the vaccine because that sucked.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
What I just sweat through. I remember happening in the
third grade. I hated it so much.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Yeah. Yeah, Well back to measles.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Though, by nineteen seventy eight, the US said, you know what,
We're gonna eliminate measles by nineteen eighty two, which is
really ambitious. They didn't quite get there, but they did
reduce the number of cases by eighty percent by nineteen
eighty one, which is which is very good.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
I'd say that's very remarkable.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
The body does have some reactions to vaccines, but they're
fairly mild, like you might get a fever, a mild
rash and swellen glands, and there might be pain and
stiffness and joints, mostly for teenage or adult women, so
you know, it is minimal.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Yeah, and we'll talk a little bit about some of
the concerns related with the measles vaccine and in just
a few minutes.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
But how do vaccines work.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Well, essentially, they are mimickers of the infection itself. So
how the body interprets this is it develops an immunity
against pathogens that it can remember. So when we give
someone a vaccine, we're basically giving them a slightly altered
version of the original virus or the virus at a
(23:11):
much lower dose. And what this does is it helps
our body basically learn how to defend itself from the
disease without actually getting the full blown disease.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
It's basically target practice for your immune system.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Yeah, yeah, I love that analogy.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
So, because when you get vaccinated, it can still take
your body weeks to develop the immunity. It's still possible
that let's say you get vaccinated, but you become exposed,
like while your body's still developing the immunity, you could
get infected, and so you know, that's why sometimes people
(23:49):
who get vaccinated they still sometimes get infected with whatever
they were vaccinated. But the key here is that if
a person is vaccinated, they're less likely to become seriously
ill or die compared to someone whose immune system is
like completely unprepared to fight the fight against whatever the
(24:11):
pathogen is.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Now, let's talk about how vaccines are made, just to
give you a sense of how many steps there are
and the fact that it's a pretty elaborate process. There's
no one type of vaccine, so how they're developed varies,
but the general steps from identifying a germ that's causing
the disease to the improved product goes something like this.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Yeah, so first there, you know, when vaccines are being
developed at a very early stage, they first identify like
what is the pathogen, and then that's where they sort
of develop their ideas. So there's a lot of research
and like discovery, and this can take many many years
in a laboratory. A lot of times they test the
(24:55):
immune response of the vaccine on lab animals like mice,
and then they make adjustments accordingly and how effective a
vaccine is dependent on how well it protects people against
the infection itself, but also the complications of that pathogen,
(25:15):
so like hospitalization and death. And so if the early
animal studies are promising, that's when you then move to
clinical trials, which are done in human beings. And in
order to do a clinical trial, researchers have to submit
a application to the FDA and they have to show like, hey,
(25:37):
we did these animal studies and this is what it's showing,
and like this is the vaccine and it's many many phases,
and then the clinical trials happen and then it will
get approved.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
The clinical trials phase is a three phase process. During
phase three clinical trials, the FDA reviews the proposed manufacturing
process for the vaccine and inspects the man manufacturing facility.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Yeah, and so before it's even approved for use, there's
a lot of licensures that have to be passed and
then the FDA has to approve it. And even after
the vaccines approved, then the FDA continues to monitor it.
And what's important is that after the vaccine is released,
they track the quality of the vaccine. So every time
(26:25):
a vaccine's released, you know, They're assessing the safety throughout
the process and even after it's approved, So it's not like, oh,
once the vaccine is released, everyone's like, all right, cool,
we're done. Good job everyone. No, Like they keep monitoring
it for safety. And that's what's really important, because you know,
sometimes vaccines are released and then after they look at
(26:49):
the safety profile for people after the fact, and then
they pull certain vaccines, which which happened in certain situations.
Measles is not one of those cases though. Measles is
one of the cases that has been tried and true
for many, many decades, which I think is really important
when you're thinking about well what should I do, Like
(27:11):
which vaccine should I get?
Speaker 2 (27:14):
I mean, the whole process could take well over ten
to fifteen years, that's the development portion alone, and so
by the time it goes through the system, it's been
very carefully vetted.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Yeah, exactly. Not to mention.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
After all of that, there are these advisory committees which
are made of medical and public health experts who are
They meet three times a year and then they review
the vaccine recommendations and they're going over like, okay, for
these ages, do we need to recommend this? Like what
is the disease, doing how many people are affected by
(27:51):
the disease if they're not getting vaccinated or if they are,
And so the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices then gives
out recommendations and that's what the CDC then sets the
schedules based off of those recommendations. And there are other
organizations like American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Family Physicians,
(28:14):
lots of organizations backed by healthcare professionals that also approve
or stand by these recommendations. So the bottom line is
that there's many, many people involved in the process of
creating these vaccines and then making sure that they're safe.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
We're going to take a short break. Stay with us.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
One thing I just want to say is because recently,
like in the news, there's been a lot of upheaval
around the immunization schedules the CDC. At the time of
this recording, there's sort of been this adoption of the
stance of like everything is optional and it should just
be an informed decision. It kind of puts now the
onus on like the individual people, the individual patients to
(29:07):
make their best judgment of what is the vaccine that
is the best thing, and so again for the sake
of this episode, like I really want us to hone
in on one vaccine this time measles. I want to
kind of talk about measles and give people all of
the data that they need so they can make the
(29:27):
best informed judgment around the measles vaccination. And so I
want to just take kind of this next couple of
minutes to really acknowledge that there are skeptics because we
know the vaccination rates are decreasing and the US is
on the verge of losing its fight against measles. We
(29:50):
know fewer kids are just getting routine vaccines because of
a lot of reasons, you know, healthcare access issues, misinformation.
I do think kind of the skepticism around the measles
vaccine is based off of quite a bit of misinformation,
and I want to kind of address those issues so
(30:13):
that people can at least get some of the accurate
information that exists around like the measles vaccine, and then
make your own decision after that.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
We have a few questions that you might have regarding
the measles vaccine, which I will post to you, Doctor
Prianco Yeap. Question one, does the measles vaccine cause autism.
That's a very hot issue, right.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Right, there is so much data to show that there
is no connection, no link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
I think a lot of that theory comes from a
study which was now deemed fraudulent. It was published in
nineteen ninety eight by Andrew Wakefield, where there was data
(31:01):
correlating MMR vaccine to autism.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
But here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
The largest study to date that exists where they looked
at a Danish cohort of more than half a million
kids that they followed for over a decade. They found
no increased autism risk with MMR vaccination. And what's really
important about the study is that they even looked at
groups that were high risk, so like children who had
(31:26):
siblings with autism or children with autism risk factors, and
they follow them after vaccination, and even this high risk
group did not have an association with autism and the
MMR vaccine. So to me, it seems like pretty clear
(31:47):
that autism is not caused by the MMR vaccine specifically.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Here's another question, is the measles not that serious anymore?
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Well, I'm I.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Mean, I think we've kind of gone over how serious
measles can be I think you might be one of
the lucky ones to get like a mild version of
the disease. But the truth is it can be a
very serious illness. And I think because we've not had
to worry about it for so many decades in the
(32:21):
United States, I think we've forgotten how serious measles is,
and there's almost like a false sense of security. And
what is really important to note is like measles cases
are going up, and there are children that are dying
from measles now in the United States. So this, to
me is very serious and it's something we can really
(32:42):
do something about with vaccination.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Natural infection or natural immunity is superior to vaccine immunity.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
In order to get sort of natural herd immunity, there
would have to be nice twenty five percent compliance with vaccination.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
So even though like natural immunity.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Hypothetically is possible, it would actually require thousands and thousands
of people to die so that they would get sort
of washed out from the population. So the truth is, like, look,
we as a species have been struggling with measles since
sixth century BC. We ain't getting natural herd immunity anytime soon.
(33:33):
So there's a clear change in the projection of measles
starting with the creation of the vaccine from the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
So like the idea that it's.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
It's natural infection or natural immunity is superior to like
a vaccine immunity.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Look, I just don't want to stick around to wait.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
You know, one in five people who aren't vaccinated in
the US who get measles, they're going to be hospital
one in a thousand people will die. So those are
just stats, like to wait around for natural immunity.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
I just can't get behind that.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Also, the stat one to three people will die amongst
a thousand measles cases. That's in developed countries, right, so
when you start looking into the developing world, then all
of a sudden you're going to probably have higher rates. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Some parents may delay or skip vaccines, believing that too
many vaccines at once will overload a child's immune system,
leading to long term health consequences.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Yeah, you know, I mean I'm not sure about like
any kind of scientific evidence that supports this. I mean,
I will say though, like it might be just psychologically
a lot for the kid to get five vaccines at once, like,
not just for my kids, not for except for Haristan.
That would be the only thing, you know, if there
(34:58):
really is that kind of a concern, I mean, you
can talk to your pediatrician about spacing them out. They
might kind of raise an eyebrow, but like you know,
you can space them out a little bit if you
just think it's just a lot of injections. I mean,
as an adult, if I had five needles put into
me that day, trust me, I'd be pissed. I would
(35:20):
not be in a good mood. But the idea that
it would overload a child's immune system leading to long
term health consequences, I'm not sure. I'm not really sure
I can support that. I think there'd be other reasons
to not get five shots at once, But again, you
could just space them out a little bit.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
The MMR vaccine contains dimersol.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Right, which is a kind of mercury. It's like a preservative.
Ethyl mercury is the other name for it.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
And aluminum.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
So okay, So actually, before the two thousands, there was
a mercury in vaccine products, but now in the United States,
mercury has been removed from most of the vaccine products
since the early two thousands. I could I could understand
if people had concerns prior to two thousand, but now
(36:10):
that's not an issue. Ethyl Mercury is still used as
a preservative in some flu vaccines that are given in
multidose vials, but most of the childhood vaccines, especially MMR,
they don't have dimmersiol or ethyl mercury.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
The aluminum thing is.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Interesting because as far as I understand, there's no aluminum
in MMR specifically, but there was a study that was
done where they found a weak but small, statistically significant
association between the amount of aluminum received in vaccines and
(36:52):
whether someone was later in life diagnosed with asthma. But
there were like a lot of limitations with the study,
like there could have been confounding fractors and not everything
was fully accounted for. So the point is, though, and
when a vaccine is released, like it's monitored very closely
for safety, and so I definitely think there should be
(37:15):
more studies to be done around this, but specifically, again,
the focus of this episode is the MMR vaccine and
specifically related to measles. Like, I don't think the aluminum
issue is a concern with the measles vaccine specifically.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Now there's been a rise of misinformation, and politics definitely
plays a role in this. High profile figures including anti
vaccine activists dare we say conspiracy theorist and current US
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, who
along with some politicians, have turned up the volume of
vaccine skepticism, contributing to the spread of misinformation and questioning
(37:58):
of vaccine safety in general, well at the same time
defunding local efforts to improve vaccination rates. Now, the MMR
vaccine is very safe. We're going to talk about that
right now, but it is I think it's fair to
say is a very safe vaccine.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Yeah, yeah, I would say overall it's very safe. But
I I again, for the sykeptics out there, I want
to just name literally the worst case, extremely rare reactions
that can happen with the MMR vaccine. So we like
just call out everybody's concerns out of fairness. Look, a
(38:37):
person can be allergic to anything, so there is a
risk of a severe allergic reaction if you're one of
the people that are allergic to the MMR vaccine. I
mean literally, this is a one in a million situation,
like it would just be an unfortunate, bad luck situation.
But yeah, you can get anaphylaxis. What does that mean,
(39:01):
like a severe allergic reaction. I've had anaphylexis, so full disclosure,
I've had anaphlexis a whole bunch in the past because
of I used to have this severe nut allergy. So
I've experienced anaphylexis. And your throat swells up and your
face swells up, and if you don't do like an
(39:22):
injection with epinephrine, then you can have trouble breathing and
it is life threatening. But I've also had it, and
I mean, it sucks, but you can just take epinephrin
and then you can you can live through it. But granted,
like there are people who have died from aniflexis, so
it is a very serious reaction. So I just want
(39:44):
to say, though, like literally one in a million case,
you know, it'll happen one in a million.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
With the MMR.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Sometimes this is a little bit more common. You might
get a high fever because of the vaccine. This is
like one in four thousand. The fever eventually goes away,
but some people who get high fevers could develop seizures
because it's a stress on the brain. So that's a
pretty serious reaction, but again one in three to four thousand,
(40:13):
so pretty pretty rare. And if you do develop a
high fever, you know, it's important if you can tell
that your fever is rising to start taking like anti
fever medications to bring it down. But of course, yeah,
if your fever is left unchecked, you could develop seizures.
There's another very rare condition where you do the MMR
(40:38):
vaccine and it causes your plate like counts, which is
one of your clotting factors, to drop, and then you
can have issues with bleeding or bruising, and this usually
goes away on its own. It's called immune post cytopenic purpura,
where basically your plate let's go down again. This is
very rare, extremely rare. It's not gonna kill you, it's
(41:02):
gonna eventually go away, but it can be really freaky
if you're like having this bruising and bleeding and like
you go to the doctor and they check your platelet
counts and your platelets are low. Just know that, like
it usually goes away.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Then of course there's encephalitis.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Right, which is like my worst sphere. Now, this encephalitis
inflammation of the brain. This happens in people whose immune
systems are compromised, So we're talking one in a million.
There is something called measles inclusion body encephalitis. But just
to clarify, you can get encephalitis from measles itself.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
So if you get.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
The vaccine and you're one in a million to get encephalitis,
those odds are a lot lower than if you got
real measles. Now your chance of getting encephalitis just went
up to one in a thousand, so it's like playing
an odds game. And again, measles inclusion body in cephalitis
(42:09):
usually happens in people whose immune systems are compromised. So
if you have a compromised immune system, like maybe you
have HIV infection, or you are getting chemotherapy, or you're
you've received an organ transplant, or maybe you're taking steroid medications,
anything to kind of affect your immune system, you want
(42:31):
to talk to your doctor very carefully about like what
are the vaccines that you want to do, and like
weigh the pros and cons.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Now Prianca just laid this out, but I'm gonna just
reinforce it the disease risk outweighs the vaccine risk. It's
important to remember that the risks from the actual infectious
diseases the MMR vaccine prevents measles, mums, and rebella are
significantly higher than the risks of a serious reaction into
(43:00):
the vaccine.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Yeah, and so's that's kind of when you're thinking about,
like should I take a vaccine or not? Like, that's
kind of what you really want to think about, Like,
is the risk of getting the disease and the complications
of that a lot worse than the risk of the
vaccine related issues potential vaccine related issues.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
You might not feel anything.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
What we know is that a person who's vaccinated, you're
not just protecting yourself, but you're also protecting potentially vulnerable
people in the community. So let's say there's someone who's like,
I'm immino compromised, I can't get vaccinated for whatever reason.
Being vaccinated is helping that person out, So you're protecting
(43:46):
yourself and you're protecting the community. Not to mention like newborns,
Like for example, new kids can't get the MMR vaccine
until they're one year old, but they're still susceptible prior
to that, so like you're also helping those babies.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
I mean, global immunization efforts have saved and estimated one
hundred and fifty four million lives over the past fifty years.
That's an average of six lives saved every minute. Skepticism, though,
has caused a twenty percent surge in global measles cases,
according to the WHO.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Yeah, and you know, we spent this episode talking about
just the health impacts of not being vaccinated or contracting measles,
but we haven't even gotten into the economics of that,
in you know, the financial burden on individuals or even the.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
Public health system.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
The point is that this, to me, is one of
those examples of public health interventions that really actually did
a lot for our species survival. And I don't want
us to forget that. And I think we've become a
little complacent or we've forgotten that this was a very
(45:01):
serious illness that used to kill a lot of people.
And just because you don't remember that doesn't mean the
measles virus cares.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah, it doesn't mean it didn't happen. I mean there's yeah,
and I think about my my parents' generation you know,
as Indian immigrants, and they were still dealing with smallpox.
You know, the smallpox vaccine saved so many lives because
you know, my grandmother had smallpox. You know, it was devastating.
So like, you know, that's in a lifetime, you know,
(45:34):
how much can change. So this was not a small development,
the MMR vaccine, and it's changed so many lives around
the world.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
Also, yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, in some situations
it's cool to go retro, but like with meanless, this
is not cool. So vaccination is really the best way
to protect yourself from measles.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
Yes, now, it's okay to want more information about vaccinations,
both the efficacy and the safety of them, but make
sure you are getting that information from reputable sources like
this show. Like this show for example.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
So I hope that this was helpful, helpful, reminder, helpful
remembering of what measles was as a virus, what it's
capable of, and what you can do and decide about
how you want to handle it.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
All right, everybody, we'll see you next week.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
And if you're enjoying the show, please like, subscribe and
give us five stars on whatever platform you listen to.
This helps us reach a wider audience. Thank you so much,
We appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Health Stuff is a production of iHeart Podcasts. The show
is hosted by me Harikin Debolu and doctor Prianco Wally.
Producers are Rebecca Eisenberg, Jenna Cagel, Christina Loranger, Maya Howard
and Trine in Norville. Our researcher is Maria Tremarci and
our intern is Katia is Obode Ayala. To send us
a question, you can email us at voicemail at health
(47:09):
Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. Thank you for listening.
This podcast is for information purposes only and should not
be considered professional medical advice that helps our body learn
how to defend itself from the disease without actually getting
the full blown disease.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
About one in five unvaccinated people in the US who
gets measled is hospitalized.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Is the risk of getting the disease and the complications
of that a lot worse than the risk of the
potential vaccine related issues.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
I'm Hurrycandibolu, I'm doctor preuncle Wally.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
And this is health stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I'm like really really revved up for today's episode.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Are you revved up for today's episode?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yeah, Like it's been in my heart to want to
do this episode for some time now in a solid way.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
So here I am. Here we are.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
We're talking about measles and vaccines, to which is definitely current.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah, very topical.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Do you remember getting vaccines as a kid?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
I actually don't. I don't remember it. I think because
I was so young.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I definitely don't have any like neither positive nor negative
memories associated with vaccines or shots, like really yeah, like
full disclosure, though, I had like a very chaotic childhood,
so I feel like maybe getting vaccinated was the.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Least of my problems.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Okay, okay in terms of just.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
The pain or the discomfort.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
And I can barely I can barely remember even getting vaccine.
I know, I dot everything, but I don't have it.
It's just like a blur in my mind.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Do you remember getting vaccinated as a kid.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I don't remember the actual vaccinations, but I remember that
the trauma of having to get them, the fear of
having to get them, crying. I remember that stuff. Wow, Okay,
and I'm kind of reliving it just because my kid,
you know, he's had to get vaccinated, right, He's such
a tough kid. He had like five vaccines he had
(02:10):
to take once and not a single teer, no way,
not a single teer. I was so impressed. And he's
proud of it too, He's like really proud of the
fact he didn't like it's so impressive.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
That is very very respectable. I mean, five vaccines in
one day. I'd be crying in.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
A corner even at adult.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
It was so it was a lot like I thought
it was. It was a bit much, but like that
we want to knock him all out.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
But look, vaccines are obviously a very hot and sensitive topic.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
These days.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
So I just want to kind of preface this episode
by encouraging our listeners to listen to this episode with
a really open mind. You may have some opinions about vaccines.
Our goal is to really just offer information that's backed
by science and to share real historical data with you
(03:05):
to help you navigate the health and healthcare systems. You know,
we're currently in the United States, in a country where
vaccine schedules are changing really rapidly, and our goal here
is to give you the best education, best understanding of
vaccines and educating you about the diseases behind them so
(03:28):
that you can make your own informed judgment.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Like I said earlier, we're going to start with measles
because we're seeing a resurgence of it and many people
don't actually know what it is. Before having to research
this episode, I had a vague idea of what it was,
but I never actually knew what it was, in part
because it had been eradicated, right, So why would you
need to know much more about it?
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
As of twenty twenty six, the CDC has confirmed over
twelve hundred cases of measles in the US just this year.
This is a rapid surge that has already reached nearly
half of twenty twenty five's total cases have been reported
across thirty one states, with about fifty seven percent of
infections occurring in children and teenagers.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, that's very, very significant. Actually, last year was the
worst outbreak of measles in the United States compared to
the last several decades. There were more than two thousand
recorded infections, and by the end of twenty twenty five
cases had reached a three decade high.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
So that that is huge because these.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Numbers are higher than any year for the last twenty
five years. You know, in two thousand, measles was declared
as eliminated in the United States, and that's a huge
historic public health achievement. But the reality is now, because
of how highly contagious measles is, it's actually reemerging and
(04:59):
the United State dates is losing its Measles free designation.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Now, let's go over some basics about measles. The measles
virus is one of the most contagious diseases humans have
ever faced, infecting nine out of ten unvaccinated people exposed.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, that's a really really high contagions rate.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah, it's primarily transmitted to the air via aerosolized respiratory
droplets from an infected person's cough or sneeze.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, and what's crazy is that if a person coughs
or sneeze, the virus can stay in the air for
up to two hours, so you don't even need to
be in the room at the same time when that
person sneeze to become infected, which is wild.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Another reminder, cover your sneezes, cover your coughs. Yeah, like
two hours, two hours in the air because you didn't
cover your cough or your sneeze. Is an endemic disease globally,
meaning it's always been president of the world's population somewhere.
So meals originated from a virus called render pest, which
(06:12):
was a highly contagious cattle plague known for massive like
ninety five percent of lifestock lost. Scientists believe that the
measles virus diverged from the render pest virus sometime in
the sixth century. It became a distinct virus that infects humans,
which aligns with accounts of an ancient emergence of measles
(06:32):
in humans. So we all feel pretty good about this timeline.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah, and a couple of interesting data points about render pest.
It's the German word for cattle plague, and this, to me,
is one of the first signs that measles arose because
of urbanization and the close proximity that humans were living
(06:56):
next to cattle. So this is like one of the
first diseases that emerged as a result of urbanization. But
what's key is that measles has been around for a very,
very long time.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
The measles virus became a bigger problem as we started
to explore the globe. You know, as we traveled from
place to place, we were spreading measles all around the world.
We I mean the Europeans.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Well, actually I think there was measles in India for
a really long time as well, that came from like
the Persians as well. So fair I wouldn't actually blame
all the Europeans.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Whenever there's a chance, I go for it.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
But no, I know, I know, I really want to
make sure that we remind the audience, Like if we're
going to talk about vaccines, I just want to remind
people that a lot of what we understand about how
vaccines works comes from the role that people who were
enslaved played early colonial United States in terms of our
(08:03):
understanding of smallpox.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
They played a crucial role.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
So I also just want to like give credit where
credit is due for kind of where we are today.
So yeah, it wasn't until seventeen fifty seven that a
doctor from Scotland, Francis Home. He was the one that
discovered that measles was caused by a pathogen. He actually
(08:29):
took the virus and he put it in healthy people
by using the blood of infected people. And yeah, like
he basically proved, hey, this is infectious, which which sucks
because he didn't have a cure. So he was just
basically like, Okay, we've confirmed that this is an infectious pathogen.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
What are we gonna do about it? I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
What he did was what they call stup. It was
a step thing to do to disease people and then
just yeah, yeah. Between eighteen fifty five and two thousand
and five, it's one hundred and fifty years. Measles is
estimated to have killed about two hundred million people worldwide.
(09:11):
There was no way to stop it. Some epidemics were
particularly severe, such as those in Hawaii in the late
eighteen nineties, which wiped out twenty percent of the population.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
I mean, it's really really kind of terrifying if you
think about living in this period. Like earlier in the show,
you were like, yeah, I don't really know much about measles,
Like it didn't affect me. But I'll tell you if
we were living in the early nineteen hundreds, oh my god,
you bet we knew about measles.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
By nineteen twelve, measles became a nationally notifiable disease in
the United States. So what that means is because it
was so contagious and so prevalent, healthcare providers were required
by law to report cases to state public health officials,
and in that first decade of reporting, they averaged about
(10:05):
six thousand measles related deaths each year, which is a lot.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Before the measles vaccine eventually came out, measles was a
very common series and sometimes fatal childhood illness. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
I would actually add that it was kind of the
there's some data points that show it was the number
one mortality for children.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Oh my god. Pre vaccination, I mean, outbreaks happened regularly
and each year measles infected and estimate three to four
million people, resulting in four hundred to five hundred deaths
and forty eight thousand hospitalizations.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
There's one thing to die for measles, it's another thing
to contract the complications and will break down all of that.
But again, before the vaccine, before the nineteen sixties, pretty
much all kids got measles by the time they were
fifteen sixteen, you know, had hit puberty. So this is
(11:05):
a disease that I think many of us living today
have really forgotten about.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
More to come on health stuff.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
So let's walk through kind of what happens when you
get measles.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
What does it feel like.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
So, symptoms usually begin seven to fourteen days after you've
been exposed, so it's not immediate. Measles typically begins with
upper respiratory inflammation, including running nose cough, red watery eyes, conjunctivitis,
and a high fever.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yeah, so in the beginning, it's pretty kind of your
run of the mill sort of viral. You're feeling not
that great, you know, running nose, cough, your eyes are red,
maybe a fever. You wouldn't think anything of it. But
then two to three days after those symptoms begin, there's
(12:03):
going to be something called Coplic spots, which are these
tiny white spots that appear in the inside of the mouth.
And they're called Coplic spots because it's named after a
pediatrician from New York, doctor Koplic, who named the white spots.
Which I swear one of these days I want to
discover something and name it like the Wally phenomenon.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, but do you really want your name to be
associated with death and disease?
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yeah, I mean that's true. So I mean, what would
I call it? The people's phenomenons?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah? Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
So then you get these Coplic spots, these white spots
on the inside of your mouth, and then three to
five days after the symptoms begin, you get the classic
measles rash. And this rash which is these flat red spots.
They come on your face like where your hairline is,
(13:02):
and then they spread down your neck, your torso, your arms,
your likes, your feet. And this is actually why measles
was also called rubiola, which comes from the Latin word rubius,
which means red, because it's describing this very distinct red rash.
And if you google measles, like Google image search measles, like,
(13:24):
majority of the images are this rash. This very like
classic rash, which when the rash appears, the person may
get a fever that goes really high, like up to
one hundred and four degrees, which by the way, is
like a medical emergency and can cause brain damage, organ failure,
and seizures.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Wait, so rubiola is different than rubella. Two different yes.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yes, yes, those are two distinct different diseases. Ironically, rubella
is called German measles, very confusing, yeah, which is a
different disease pase. So that's kind of the primary presentation.
But things get very tricky because you can get all
(14:09):
these complications because what happens is that the measles virus,
when you get infected with it, it can temporarily suppress
your immune system, which can then lead to complications.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Like ear infections, which can cause hearing loss that occurs
in one out of every ten children with measles. Diarrheas
reported with measles, pneumonia or encephalitis can develop, although rare,
and then there's subacute sclerosing pan encephalitis, which is very
rare but a fatal disease of the central nervous system.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
You know nowadays, if someone has diarrhea they can go
to the er and get ivy fluids. Back in the
early nineteen hundred is like that wasn't an option. People
would die from dehydration and organ failure related to I.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Mean around the world that people are still dying because
of diarrhea.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Correct, that's correct.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
So my personal scariest is the subacuse sclerossing pan encephalitis,
And I'll break that down. You can get this condition
literally four to fourteen years after you get measles. So
you get measles and then everything's fine, and then ten
years later you develop this condition pan encephalitis, and cephalitis
(15:21):
is inflammation of the brain. But what happens is that
this disease is so fatal that basically it strips your
brain cells of the neuronal tissue. It demilinates them, which
is the medical term for removing the nerve cells in
(15:42):
your brain. You slowly develop a failure in your nervous system,
You get more and more confused, more and more debilitated,
and usually within two to three years it's fatal.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, And this will happen in between like thirty out
of one hundred thousand cases of measles, So it's super rare,
but that to me is terrifying to get some acute
scloressing panencephalitis.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Well, especially since it doesn't show up immediately. The fact
that you wonder if you're a time bomb.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Right, can you imagine? I mean to me, that's just like, oh,
I'm fine.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Ten years later you're not fine. Yeah, yeah, it's terrifying.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Measles is serious at any age. However, there are several
groups that are more likely to suffer from complications of
measles infections. As many as one out of every twenty
children with measles gets pneumonia, the most common cause of
death for measles and young children under the age of five.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Yeah, I mean, pneumonia is very dangerous. It can kill kids.
They can't fight it. It's not the same as you
know when you're an adult. Many like one to three
out of everything and children who become infected with measles
will die from either respiratory or neurologic complications. Kids are
a very vulnerable population. And speaking of vulnerable populations, pregnant women.
(17:15):
If they get measles while pregnant, it can lead to miscarriage.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
People with weakened immune systems, such as those with an
HIV infection, with immunosuppression, undergoing chemotherapy or steroid therapy, or
transplant patients, they're all more vulnerable to the complications.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Of measles exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
And there's some other studies show that contracting pretty serious
complications of measles can also happen to people who are
malnourished or have vitamin A deficiency, which we don't see
too much of that here in the United States, but
worldwide it's definitely a thing if there's someone that there's
(17:58):
a concern that they have measles. Generally, the diagnosis happens
through certain types of lab testing, like they can do
a throat swab, or they can do a blood test
to basically detect the virus or the antibiotes. And that's
really important because measles can look similar to other things,
(18:18):
so it's really important to test early and then get
the diagnosis as early as possible, because again we're dealing
with a highly infectious agent, so we want to identify, diagnose,
and isolate. And what's crazy is that there's no treatment.
The treatment is you support the person with their symptoms,
(18:41):
like give them ivy fluids or bring their fever down
or you know, let them rest. But you know, you
can't take antibiotics for measles because it's a virus. You
might be able to take antibiotics if you get some
kind of bacterial infection as a secondary response to measles,
So like if you get an infection or bacterial pneumonia,
(19:02):
then you can treat that with antibiotics. But the virus itself,
there's no treatment.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
About one in five unvaccinated people in the US who
gets measles is hospitalized.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Yeah, which kind of basically brings you know, the best
sort of treatment is prevention, Like prevention is the treatment here,
and the most effective prevention against the measles virus is
the vaccine.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Bottom line, the MMR vaccine. Could you just tell us
what MMR stands for.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yeah, So MMR vaccine is a is a three vaccines
and one very effective which is great because you get
you don't have to have three shots. Yeah, so it
includes measles, mumps, and rebella. There's a lot of data
to show that this is a really really effective vaccine
for protecting you against measles. And you know, we'll talk
(19:58):
about the other the and the rubella like in other episodes.
Today we'll just focus on measles. But MMR is the
vaccine you want to get for that to me when
it comes to things that we've done over decades in
terms of our health system, like, look, we we haven't
been perfect, but the MMR vaccine and measles vaccination is
(20:21):
like one of the greatest public health success stories in
the history of like human medicine. So it is one
thing that I feel like proud of.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
I mean, it has a you know, an interesting timeline
which is still fairly recent. Honestly, Like we're talking about
like nineteen sixty three when the measles vaccine gets created.
That is not that long ago, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
American biomedical scientist John Enders and doctor Thomas Peebles collected
blood samples from several ill students during a measles outbreak
in Boston, and we're able to isolate the measles virus
hoped to make a vaccine, which they did in nineteen
sixty three. John Enders and colleagues created an effective measles
vaccine by sixty eight, and improved measles vaccine with fewer
(21:11):
severe side effects was developed, and just a few years later,
scientists developed a single vaccine against mumps, measles, and rebella,
the MMR vaccine, and then in two thousand and five,
scientists added the vericella virus chicken pox to the vaccine
to make the combination MMRV. So if you've wondered what
(21:32):
happened to chicken pox, they put it in a vaccine
and got.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Rid of it, right because I remember when the vaccine,
the chicken pox vaccine, came out because I had already
gotten chicken pox, but my brother who's younger than me, didn't,
so he got the vaccine, and I remember being like, damn,
I wish I could have gotten the vaccine because that sucked.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
What I just sweat through. I remember happening in the
third grade. I hated it so much.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Yeah. Yeah, Well back to measles.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Though, by nineteen seventy eight, the US said, you know what,
We're gonna eliminate measles by nineteen eighty two, which is
really ambitious. They didn't quite get there, but they did
reduce the number of cases by eighty percent by nineteen
eighty one, which is which is very good.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
I'd say that's very remarkable.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
The body does have some reactions to vaccines, but they're
fairly mild, like you might get a fever, a mild
rash and swellen glands, and there might be pain and
stiffness and joints, mostly for teenage or adult women, so
you know, it is minimal.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Yeah, and we'll talk a little bit about some of
the concerns related with the measles vaccine and in just
a few minutes.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
But how do vaccines work.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Well, essentially, they are mimickers of the infection itself. So
how the body interprets this is it develops an immunity
against pathogens that it can remember. So when we give
someone a vaccine, we're basically giving them a slightly altered
version of the original virus or the virus at a
(23:11):
much lower dose. And what this does is it helps
our body basically learn how to defend itself from the
disease without actually getting the full blown disease.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
It's basically target practice for your immune system.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Yeah, yeah, I love that analogy.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
So, because when you get vaccinated, it can still take
your body weeks to develop the immunity. It's still possible
that let's say you get vaccinated, but you become exposed,
like while your body's still developing the immunity, you could
get infected, and so you know, that's why sometimes people
(23:49):
who get vaccinated they still sometimes get infected with whatever
they were vaccinated. But the key here is that if
a person is vaccinated, they're less likely to become seriously
ill or die compared to someone whose immune system is
like completely unprepared to fight the fight against whatever the
(24:11):
pathogen is.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Now, let's talk about how vaccines are made, just to
give you a sense of how many steps there are
and the fact that it's a pretty elaborate process. There's
no one type of vaccine, so how they're developed varies,
but the general steps from identifying a germ that's causing
the disease to the improved product goes something like this.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Yeah, so first there, you know, when vaccines are being
developed at a very early stage, they first identify like
what is the pathogen, and then that's where they sort
of develop their ideas. So there's a lot of research
and like discovery, and this can take many many years
in a laboratory. A lot of times they test the
(24:55):
immune response of the vaccine on lab animals like mice,
and then they make adjustments accordingly and how effective a
vaccine is dependent on how well it protects people against
the infection itself, but also the complications of that pathogen,
(25:15):
so like hospitalization and death. And so if the early
animal studies are promising, that's when you then move to
clinical trials, which are done in human beings. And in
order to do a clinical trial, researchers have to submit
a application to the FDA and they have to show like, hey,
(25:37):
we did these animal studies and this is what it's showing,
and like this is the vaccine and it's many many phases,
and then the clinical trials happen and then it will
get approved.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
The clinical trials phase is a three phase process. During
phase three clinical trials, the FDA reviews the proposed manufacturing
process for the vaccine and inspects the man manufacturing facility.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Yeah, and so before it's even approved for use, there's
a lot of licensures that have to be passed and
then the FDA has to approve it. And even after
the vaccines approved, then the FDA continues to monitor it.
And what's important is that after the vaccine is released,
they track the quality of the vaccine. So every time
(26:25):
a vaccine's released, you know, They're assessing the safety throughout
the process and even after it's approved, So it's not like, oh,
once the vaccine is released, everyone's like, all right, cool,
we're done. Good job everyone. No, Like they keep monitoring
it for safety. And that's what's really important, because you know,
sometimes vaccines are released and then after they look at
(26:49):
the safety profile for people after the fact, and then
they pull certain vaccines, which which happened in certain situations.
Measles is not one of those cases though. Measles is
one of the cases that has been tried and true
for many, many decades, which I think is really important
when you're thinking about well what should I do, Like
(27:11):
which vaccine should I get?
Speaker 2 (27:14):
I mean, the whole process could take well over ten
to fifteen years, that's the development portion alone, and so
by the time it goes through the system, it's been
very carefully vetted.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Yeah, exactly. Not to mention.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
After all of that, there are these advisory committees which
are made of medical and public health experts who are
They meet three times a year and then they review
the vaccine recommendations and they're going over like, okay, for
these ages, do we need to recommend this? Like what
is the disease, doing how many people are affected by
(27:51):
the disease if they're not getting vaccinated or if they are,
And so the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices then gives
out recommendations and that's what the CDC then sets the
schedules based off of those recommendations. And there are other
organizations like American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Family Physicians,
(28:14):
lots of organizations backed by healthcare professionals that also approve
or stand by these recommendations. So the bottom line is
that there's many, many people involved in the process of
creating these vaccines and then making sure that they're safe.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
We're going to take a short break. Stay with us.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
One thing I just want to say is because recently,
like in the news, there's been a lot of upheaval
around the immunization schedules the CDC. At the time of
this recording, there's sort of been this adoption of the
stance of like everything is optional and it should just
be an informed decision. It kind of puts now the
onus on like the individual people, the individual patients to
(29:07):
make their best judgment of what is the vaccine that
is the best thing, and so again for the sake
of this episode, like I really want us to hone
in on one vaccine this time measles. I want to
kind of talk about measles and give people all of
the data that they need so they can make the
(29:27):
best informed judgment around the measles vaccination. And so I
want to just take kind of this next couple of
minutes to really acknowledge that there are skeptics because we
know the vaccination rates are decreasing and the US is
on the verge of losing its fight against measles. We
(29:50):
know fewer kids are just getting routine vaccines because of
a lot of reasons, you know, healthcare access issues, misinformation.
I do think kind of the skepticism around the measles
vaccine is based off of quite a bit of misinformation,
and I want to kind of address those issues so
(30:13):
that people can at least get some of the accurate
information that exists around like the measles vaccine, and then
make your own decision after that.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
We have a few questions that you might have regarding
the measles vaccine, which I will post to you, Doctor
Prianco Yeap. Question one, does the measles vaccine cause autism.
That's a very hot issue, right.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Right, there is so much data to show that there
is no connection, no link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
I think a lot of that theory comes from a
study which was now deemed fraudulent. It was published in
nineteen ninety eight by Andrew Wakefield, where there was data
(31:01):
correlating MMR vaccine to autism.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
But here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
The largest study to date that exists where they looked
at a Danish cohort of more than half a million
kids that they followed for over a decade. They found
no increased autism risk with MMR vaccination. And what's really
important about the study is that they even looked at
groups that were high risk, so like children who had
(31:26):
siblings with autism or children with autism risk factors, and
they follow them after vaccination, and even this high risk
group did not have an association with autism and the
MMR vaccine. So to me, it seems like pretty clear
(31:47):
that autism is not caused by the MMR vaccine specifically.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Here's another question, is the measles not that serious anymore?
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Well, I'm I.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Mean, I think we've kind of gone over how serious
measles can be I think you might be one of
the lucky ones to get like a mild version of
the disease. But the truth is it can be a
very serious illness. And I think because we've not had
to worry about it for so many decades in the
(32:21):
United States, I think we've forgotten how serious measles is,
and there's almost like a false sense of security. And
what is really important to note is like measles cases
are going up, and there are children that are dying
from measles now in the United States. So this, to
me is very serious and it's something we can really
(32:42):
do something about with vaccination.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Natural infection or natural immunity is superior to vaccine immunity.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
In order to get sort of natural herd immunity, there
would have to be nice twenty five percent compliance with vaccination.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
So even though like natural immunity.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Hypothetically is possible, it would actually require thousands and thousands
of people to die so that they would get sort
of washed out from the population. So the truth is, like, look,
we as a species have been struggling with measles since
sixth century BC. We ain't getting natural herd immunity anytime soon.
(33:33):
So there's a clear change in the projection of measles
starting with the creation of the vaccine from the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
So like the idea that it's.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
It's natural infection or natural immunity is superior to like
a vaccine immunity.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Look, I just don't want to stick around to wait.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
You know, one in five people who aren't vaccinated in
the US who get measles, they're going to be hospital
one in a thousand people will die. So those are
just stats, like to wait around for natural immunity.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
I just can't get behind that.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Also, the stat one to three people will die amongst
a thousand measles cases. That's in developed countries, right, so
when you start looking into the developing world, then all
of a sudden you're going to probably have higher rates. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Some parents may delay or skip vaccines, believing that too
many vaccines at once will overload a child's immune system,
leading to long term health consequences.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Yeah, you know, I mean I'm not sure about like
any kind of scientific evidence that supports this. I mean,
I will say though, like it might be just psychologically
a lot for the kid to get five vaccines at once, like,
not just for my kids, not for except for Haristan.
That would be the only thing, you know, if there
(34:58):
really is that kind of a concern, I mean, you
can talk to your pediatrician about spacing them out. They
might kind of raise an eyebrow, but like you know,
you can space them out a little bit if you
just think it's just a lot of injections. I mean,
as an adult, if I had five needles put into
me that day, trust me, I'd be pissed. I would
(35:20):
not be in a good mood. But the idea that
it would overload a child's immune system leading to long
term health consequences, I'm not sure. I'm not really sure
I can support that. I think there'd be other reasons
to not get five shots at once, But again, you
could just space them out a little bit.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
The MMR vaccine contains dimersol.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Right, which is a kind of mercury. It's like a preservative.
Ethyl mercury is the other name for it.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
And aluminum.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
So okay, So actually, before the two thousands, there was
a mercury in vaccine products, but now in the United States,
mercury has been removed from most of the vaccine products
since the early two thousands. I could I could understand
if people had concerns prior to two thousand, but now
(36:10):
that's not an issue. Ethyl Mercury is still used as
a preservative in some flu vaccines that are given in
multidose vials, but most of the childhood vaccines, especially MMR,
they don't have dimmersiol or ethyl mercury.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
The aluminum thing is.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Interesting because as far as I understand, there's no aluminum
in MMR specifically, but there was a study that was
done where they found a weak but small, statistically significant
association between the amount of aluminum received in vaccines and
(36:52):
whether someone was later in life diagnosed with asthma. But
there were like a lot of limitations with the study,
like there could have been confounding fractors and not everything
was fully accounted for. So the point is, though, and
when a vaccine is released, like it's monitored very closely
for safety, and so I definitely think there should be
(37:15):
more studies to be done around this, but specifically, again,
the focus of this episode is the MMR vaccine and
specifically related to measles. Like, I don't think the aluminum
issue is a concern with the measles vaccine specifically.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Now there's been a rise of misinformation, and politics definitely
plays a role in this. High profile figures including anti
vaccine activists dare we say conspiracy theorist and current US
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, who
along with some politicians, have turned up the volume of
vaccine skepticism, contributing to the spread of misinformation and questioning
(37:58):
of vaccine safety in general, well at the same time
defunding local efforts to improve vaccination rates. Now, the MMR
vaccine is very safe. We're going to talk about that
right now, but it is I think it's fair to
say is a very safe vaccine.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Yeah, yeah, I would say overall it's very safe. But
I I again, for the sykeptics out there, I want
to just name literally the worst case, extremely rare reactions
that can happen with the MMR vaccine. So we like
just call out everybody's concerns out of fairness. Look, a
(38:37):
person can be allergic to anything, so there is a
risk of a severe allergic reaction if you're one of
the people that are allergic to the MMR vaccine. I
mean literally, this is a one in a million situation,
like it would just be an unfortunate, bad luck situation.
But yeah, you can get anaphylaxis. What does that mean,
(39:01):
like a severe allergic reaction. I've had anaphylexis, so full disclosure,
I've had anaphlexis a whole bunch in the past because
of I used to have this severe nut allergy. So
I've experienced anaphylexis. And your throat swells up and your
face swells up, and if you don't do like an
(39:22):
injection with epinephrine, then you can have trouble breathing and
it is life threatening. But I've also had it, and
I mean, it sucks, but you can just take epinephrin
and then you can you can live through it. But granted,
like there are people who have died from aniflexis, so
it is a very serious reaction. So I just want
(39:44):
to say, though, like literally one in a million case,
you know, it'll happen one in a million.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
With the MMR.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Sometimes this is a little bit more common. You might
get a high fever because of the vaccine. This is
like one in four thousand. The fever eventually goes away,
but some people who get high fevers could develop seizures
because it's a stress on the brain. So that's a
pretty serious reaction, but again one in three to four thousand,
(40:13):
so pretty pretty rare. And if you do develop a
high fever, you know, it's important if you can tell
that your fever is rising to start taking like anti
fever medications to bring it down. But of course, yeah,
if your fever is left unchecked, you could develop seizures.
There's another very rare condition where you do the MMR
(40:38):
vaccine and it causes your plate like counts, which is
one of your clotting factors, to drop, and then you
can have issues with bleeding or bruising, and this usually
goes away on its own. It's called immune post cytopenic purpura,
where basically your plate let's go down again. This is
very rare, extremely rare. It's not gonna kill you, it's
(41:02):
gonna eventually go away, but it can be really freaky
if you're like having this bruising and bleeding and like
you go to the doctor and they check your platelet
counts and your platelets are low. Just know that, like
it usually goes away.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Then of course there's encephalitis.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Right, which is like my worst sphere. Now, this encephalitis
inflammation of the brain. This happens in people whose immune
systems are compromised, So we're talking one in a million.
There is something called measles inclusion body encephalitis. But just
to clarify, you can get encephalitis from measles itself.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
So if you get.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
The vaccine and you're one in a million to get encephalitis,
those odds are a lot lower than if you got
real measles. Now your chance of getting encephalitis just went
up to one in a thousand, so it's like playing
an odds game. And again, measles inclusion body in cephalitis
(42:09):
usually happens in people whose immune systems are compromised. So
if you have a compromised immune system, like maybe you
have HIV infection, or you are getting chemotherapy, or you're
you've received an organ transplant, or maybe you're taking steroid medications,
anything to kind of affect your immune system, you want
(42:31):
to talk to your doctor very carefully about like what
are the vaccines that you want to do, and like
weigh the pros and cons.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Now Prianca just laid this out, but I'm gonna just
reinforce it the disease risk outweighs the vaccine risk. It's
important to remember that the risks from the actual infectious
diseases the MMR vaccine prevents measles, mums, and rebella are
significantly higher than the risks of a serious reaction into
(43:00):
the vaccine.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Yeah, and so's that's kind of when you're thinking about,
like should I take a vaccine or not? Like, that's
kind of what you really want to think about, Like,
is the risk of getting the disease and the complications
of that a lot worse than the risk of the
vaccine related issues potential vaccine related issues.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
You might not feel anything.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
What we know is that a person who's vaccinated, you're
not just protecting yourself, but you're also protecting potentially vulnerable
people in the community. So let's say there's someone who's like,
I'm immino compromised, I can't get vaccinated for whatever reason.
Being vaccinated is helping that person out, So you're protecting
(43:46):
yourself and you're protecting the community. Not to mention like newborns,
Like for example, new kids can't get the MMR vaccine
until they're one year old, but they're still susceptible prior
to that, so like you're also helping those babies.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
I mean, global immunization efforts have saved and estimated one
hundred and fifty four million lives over the past fifty years.
That's an average of six lives saved every minute. Skepticism, though,
has caused a twenty percent surge in global measles cases,
according to the WHO.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Yeah, and you know, we spent this episode talking about
just the health impacts of not being vaccinated or contracting measles,
but we haven't even gotten into the economics of that,
in you know, the financial burden on individuals or even the.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
Public health system.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
The point is that this, to me, is one of
those examples of public health interventions that really actually did
a lot for our species survival. And I don't want
us to forget that. And I think we've become a
little complacent or we've forgotten that this was a very
(45:01):
serious illness that used to kill a lot of people.
And just because you don't remember that doesn't mean the
measles virus cares.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah, it doesn't mean it didn't happen. I mean there's yeah,
and I think about my my parents' generation you know,
as Indian immigrants, and they were still dealing with smallpox.
You know, the smallpox vaccine saved so many lives because
you know, my grandmother had smallpox. You know, it was devastating.
So like, you know, that's in a lifetime, you know,
(45:34):
how much can change. So this was not a small development,
the MMR vaccine, and it's changed so many lives around
the world.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
Also, yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, in some situations
it's cool to go retro, but like with meanless, this
is not cool. So vaccination is really the best way
to protect yourself from measles.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
Yes, now, it's okay to want more information about vaccinations,
both the efficacy and the safety of them, but make
sure you are getting that information from reputable sources like
this show. Like this show for example.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
So I hope that this was helpful, helpful, reminder, helpful
remembering of what measles was as a virus, what it's
capable of, and what you can do and decide about
how you want to handle it.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
All right, everybody, we'll see you next week.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
And if you're enjoying the show, please like, subscribe and
give us five stars on whatever platform you listen to.
This helps us reach a wider audience. Thank you so much,
We appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Health Stuff is a production of iHeart Podcasts. The show
is hosted by me Harikin Debolu and doctor Prianco Wally.
Producers are Rebecca Eisenberg, Jenna Cagel, Christina Loranger, Maya Howard
and Trine in Norville. Our researcher is Maria Tremarci and
our intern is Katia is Obode Ayala. To send us
a question, you can email us at voicemail at health
(47:09):
Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. Thank you for listening.
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Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.