As you may have noticed, there’s been increasing anxiety over the last several weeks about an outbreak of measles in Texas and New Mexico. In Texas alone, there have been over 120 cases reported — the most the state has seen in the last three decades.
The situation took on greater urgency Wednesday, as Texas officials announced the death of a child from the illness — the first measles-related fatality in the U.S. in 10 years, and the first death of a child since 2003.
That low fatality rate is largely thanks to the highly-effective measles vaccine, which prevents the disease. But with vaccine skepticism on the rise, and prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now leading the Department of Health and Human Services, there’s widespread concern that many families are not taking the necessary steps to protect their kids. The child who died from measles was reportedly unvaccinated.
Secretary Kennedy created some confusion yesterday by calling the outbreak “not unusual,” and also claimed that there have been two deaths, which news outlets could not immediately confirm. Meanwhile, public health officials in the Southwest are sounding the alarm — including Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association.
Humble joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
SAM DINGMAN: Good morning, Will.
WILL HUMBLE: Morning, thanks.
DINGMAN: So, Will, you are not just the executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association. You are, if I'm not mistaken, a measles survivor.
HUMBLE: That's right. So, I grew up in Tucson, and I actually was exposed to measles in 1961. My mom knew that I had a play date with somebody named Alison Vitale down there, and she knew that Alison Vitale had contracted she was diagnosed with measles before I was symptomatic.
And she took me down and she said she got a very expensive shot of gamma globulin, which is all there really was in those days. It's some antibodies that you can take that sort of take the edge off. So if you, if you get the disease, and sure enough, I ended up getting measles. I had, she said I had a 106 degree fever, she was really scared. And I ultimately, obviously I recovered because I'm here, but, and thank goodness for that.
DINGMAN: But your mom was contact tracing before it was cool.
HUMBLE: That's what exactly she was doing. That's right. She was contact tracing. She knew Allison had it. She knew I was exposed. She knew it was really contagious. She knew how serious it was because the vaccine didn't come out till '63. So like this was a scary illness in those days for parents because it does kill one out of 300 kids, and one out of 20 get a serious case of pneumonia.
DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, so just to give folks an idea of how scary this is, it's not just that the symptoms are really intense, as you were just alluding to, it's not just that the potential of fatality is very high. The contagiousness of measles is also extreme. Can you give us an example?
HUMBLE: Yeah, it's super contagious. I mean, a lot of epis think it's the most contagious disease there is. For example, I'm, I'm here in the studio. I walked through, I was in the elevator about a half hour ago. , I'm gonna leave the studio in a bit. And if I had had measles, somebody taking that elevator two hours from now would have enough of an exposure to, to, to contract the disease. It hardly takes any virus to infect the next person. So, yeah, super contagious.
DINGMAN: So, you have used in a blog post about this, you have used the metaphor of a wildfire to describe the situation. And that and that we need to try to contain it as we would a wildfire. What does that mean to you?
HUMBLE: Yeah, so like when you have a wildfire, you know, it's really important, especially when we have red flag days and stuff, like it's coming up in June, you gotta have like the hotshots get in there when it's just an acre or two in size, because it can grow really, really fast.
Same thing with measles. If measles is in an environment with low vaccination rates, like is the case in West Texas, like we have in Yavapai, Mohave counties, and you have an initial what we call index case, and that type of red flag environment, it can spread really, really fast.
So the, so the hotshot that goes to the firefighter that that goes to that initial wildfire is analogous to a clinician and a clinic at a community health center, at a pediatric office who needs to recognize that very first measles case and turn it into the county health department so they can get out and do the contact tracing to do the isolation and quarantine to exclude kids that were exposed from the classroom for two incubation periods because if you don't get it right away, it starts to really spread quickly if it's in an area with low vaccination rates.
Well, we've got parts of Arizona with great vaccination rates. The measles, for example, the Yuma area, the Pima County area, Santa Cruz County, good vaccination rates, and then we have places that have horrible vaccination rates, Yavapai County, Mohave County. So if it gets, the virus gets into a place like, you know, Chino Valley, then you're not able to find that initial case really fast, it mushrooms like is currently happening in Texas.
DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, so what are you hearing from your contacts throughout the state about how folks in those less vaccinated areas are responding to this?
HUMBLE: I don't know. I doubt that there's an influx of parents going to get their kids vaccinated because the threat in West Texas seems so remote. And to be true, like if this was Las Vegas, if this outbreak was like in a place like Las Vegas or even in Southern California, we'd be at higher risk because there's a lot more personal traffic back and forth. I don't know how much traffic there is between, you know, rural Arizona in general and West Texas, not as much as just see from, you know, closer places like LA.
DINGMAN: Sure. Well, just about a minute left here, Will. You know, we were alluding to the fact that there has been some potentially unreliable information coming out at the federal level about this. For folks who are concerned about that, where would you suggest they turn for reliable information?
HUMBLE: It's simple. Your pediatrician. That's it. I mean, you don't have to turn to me. Don't turn to our county health department. Talk to your pediatrician, the person who sees your kids at the community health center, spend time with them. That's the place to go and study after study show that the people that are trusted the most in situations like this aren't Will Humble on the radio, but rather the clinician, your pediatrician, your pediatric provider. That's the place.
