Measles Wipes Your Immune System's 'Memory,' So It Can't Fight Other Infections

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

6. I'm wondering about it also.

Here's the key line:

before the measles vaccine was introduced in the 1960s, an estimated 50% of childhood deaths may have been associated with infections that kids caught after surviving a bout of measles

"May have been" means someone is making a guess, intended to be an educated one. I doubt that figure can ever be confirmed, because we're not going to have good statistics on exactly when kids in decades past got measles, and then how many kids died within some defined period after. If there are any good numbers on measles epidemics in this country (and I'm not sure there ever were; I think measles were a reasonably steady thing for a long time) it would be possible to see if there are spikes in childhood mortality immediately afterwards.

I'm certainly not arguing against the measles vaccine, but this feels a bit overblown.