This Graph From The CDC On Measles Infections Should Scare You

Two hundred and eighty-eight cases of measles may not sound like much in a country of 313.9 million people. But the below graph from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows why it is: there have been more measles cases so far this year than in the entirety of any other year from 2001 to 2013. The last big outbreak of a vaccine-preventable disease was of pertussis, or whooping cough. In that case, the fact that the current vaccine is less able to prevent disease than researchers expected when it was introduced played a role; the pertussis vaccine, though effective, wanes enough that if people don’t get boosters some disease can get through. But in the case of measles, all we have to blame are pockets of people who are choosing not to vaccinate their children, and who are catching the disease when it is brought from other countries. This is the kind of thing that keeps public health experts up at night.