I’ve been tempted to ask this question for a long time - up until recently because of what I’ve read about Native-Americans/First Nations meeting up with Europeans for the first time and the rather unpleasant consequences of that. I was reminded by the several recent cases (no deaths to my knowledge) of children getting Measles in Alberta.
If someone comes down with a lethal case of Measles, what specifically causes death (i.e. exactly how does the virus mess you up so badly that you die)? Does it matter (in terms of cause of death, not likelihood of death) if the victim is an adult or a child?
PS Before you give me advice, I had to deal with childhood diseases the hard way way back when. I’ve HAD mumps, red measles, german measles, chicken pox, and I think maybe even scarlet fever back when I was an ankle-biter. That is part of the reason for my curiosity.
I am not expert enough to answer your question accurately, but my guess is that the leading cause of mortality in a modern case of measles (one taken care of in a modern hospital) is probably encephalitis or severe pneumonia. However the mortality rate in a healthy adult with access to modern healthcare is still quite low–probably under 1 in a few hundred at most.
However, measles in a population that is generally immunologically more naive and has no supportive care available is much more lethal. I’ve seen mortality estimates as high as a third for native populations for whom supportive care was unavailable such as a naive north american population exposed to a brand new germ from conquering europeans.
In those instances, pneumonia and encephalities are likely to be more lethal without supportive care, but other more ordinary complications such as dehydration or secondary infections might also be potentially lethal.
We spent so much money of sending vaccinations to the developing countries, but these things are deadly “In developing countries, where malnutrition and vitamin A deficiency are common”…
Smallpox wasn’t generally fatal in well-nourished basically healthy people. Most of those it killed were poorly nourished and already had something else wrong with them.
I was told that the fact that a lot of native american societies lived in small self-sufficient villages/tribal units had an adverse effect, too. Enough people would get sick that, even though most of them could recover with care, the lost labour would mean that the village didn’t have enough food to survive the next winter.
Some strains of smallpox had a 90% fatality rate. I rather doubt the communities they nearly wiped out were 90% composed of the poorly nourished and sickly.
Even if it didn’t kill you, it certainly left a lot of people blind and maimed.
I’d be interested in where you found that “fact” about smallpox.
I’ve mentioned this before in other threads and I’ll repeat it. I remember reading a review of a book in Scientific American - basically and analyzing the statistics of the Alaska smallpox epidemic, drawing on contemporary accounts. The last great epidemic reached Alska natives in the late 1800’s. (There’s also a very good exhibit, or there was, in the museum in Victoria about the native smallpox epidemic in BC a few decades earlier.)
The basic contention of the book was this - smallpox was no more serious for the natives, per person, than for Europeans - for healthy victims about a 10% death rate. The biggest problems were these - first, nobody had had it before, so there were no immune people and everyone got it at once, and second, the natives lived a subsistence lifestyle - with everyone sick, they died more likely of dehydration and starvation in their weakened state. It was very contagious. All or almost all the village sickened and died at the same time. In villages with someone to care for them (a missionary or a local who had mingled with the white traders and already had exposure and immunity) survival rates were much better, sometimes close to the 90% to be expected from European epidemics.
As I understand it, the victim can be feverish and unable to care for themselves for days. If at that point nobody at least gives them water, plus maybe some food for nourishment, the body may be too weak to survive. If the sickness develops while they are out in the open or travelling, exposure is an added risk.
There were two different kinds of smallpox, Variola major, and Variola minor. V. major had a 90% mortality rate, while V. minor usually killed only small children, the elderly, and the infirm. This was poorly understood for a long time, since the diseases look almost identical, and immunity for one confers immunity to the other.
V. major probably came to the new world first, which is why it was deadly to Native Americans with no immunity. Many Europeans had immunity from being exposed to V. minor, or Vaccinia (cowpox).
Relevant update - is there something more lethal about the current U.S. measles outbreak compared to the recent past, or just a statistical anomaly that there have been three deaths from measles this year already?
Here’s an article about some effects of measles on people. It mentions cytokine storms that sometimes happens from various infectious diseases. (It was a big problem with the Spanish Flu.)
It most often happens when someone has a really healthy immune system that overdoes it in reacting to the infection. People age 20+/- are prime candidates for this.
My grandmother’s sister died from measles. I’ve wondered if a cytokine storm may have been involved as she was in her late teens. A brother also died within a year of that of typhus.
I have no idea why people shrug off diseases that can so easily be prevented in most people.
Given the historical context of smallpox in First Nations in Canada and the US, killing small children meant reproduction of next generations was reduced, while killing elders disrupted the transmission of culture and practices, just when both of these were most needed for survival. And First Nations were often being pushed from their traditional regions, meaning they were now in conflict with other groups and were trying to adjust to new environments and foods, while under pressure from settlers and armed forces.
I don’t know, but I imagine it’s rooted in the fact the diseases are so easily prevented. Out of sight, out of mind. Trivial numbers of disease breeds complacency which breeds outbreaks or resurgence. That type of thing. Even at the Gov’t level; it felt like big outbreaks of contagious disease was a thing of the past, so why invest money in trying to prevent it/promoting awareness when that money could be used to put out other real current fires.
Maybe an analogy would be, lack of healthy diet and exercise are going to the cause of 90% of all your health issues, but lots of people, smart people, don’t do it. Why? I think the answer hits on the same reasons people shrug off easily prevented diseases.