One of the most prominent anti-vaccine activists in the US says he caught measles in west Texas and traveled back home – but he seems not to have alerted local authorities of his illness, which means the highly transmissible virus may have spread onward.
Measles is a threat to people who are unvaccinated or immune-compromised. In anti-vaccine communities, it may quickly find a foothold and spread largely under the radar before ballooning into an outbreak.
Brian Hooker, chief scientific officer of Children’s Health Defense, filmed an interview in west Texas in March with the parents of the six-year-old child who died from measles – the first measles death in the US in a decade.
The video promoted several dangerous myths about the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Two doses of the vaccine are 97% effective at preventing measles, a virus that can be deadly and can cause lifelong harm.
Hooker and Polly Tommey, an anti-vaccine film-maker with Children’s Health Defense, also interviewed other Mennonite families in west Texas. And they visited the medical office of Ben Edwards while patients and Edwards himself had symptomatic measles, they said.
Hooker then traveled home to Redding, California, and developed measles symptoms, he said.
“Full disclosure, 18 days after visiting Seminole, Texas, sitting in a measles clinic and being exposed to Doctor Ben with the measles, I got the measles. So cool,” Hooker said.
Hooker, Tommey, and Edwards spoke on a podcast hosted by anti-vaccine activist Steve Kirsch on May 22. This news has not been previously reported by other outlets. Children’s Health Defense did not respond to the Guardian’s inquiry for this story.
Hooker doesn’t appear to have sought healthcare or testing to confirm his symptoms were measles and not another infection. Other viral and bacterial infections may cause rashes, which is why medical providers need to conduct tests to confirm measles cases.
Without confirmation of his illness being measles, Hooker may spread misinformation about the illness – including what helps to treat it.
Hooker says he turned to the alternative treatments hailed by anti-vaccine activists. Edwards had given him cod liver oil and vitamin C supplements in Gaines county, Hooker said, noting: “I stuck them in my luggage, and that’s what I did.”
And if this case was measles, by not seeking confirmation testing and notifying officials, Hooker may have contributed to onward spread.
It’s not clear if his first symptoms appeared after 18 days, or if he developed other symptoms – runny nose, cough, fever, watery eyes – and then a rash after 18 days.
After a person is exposed to measles, the virus usually incubates for 11 to 12 days before respiratory symptoms appear, followed by a rash two to four days later. A person is considered infectious four days before the rash appears and remains infectious until four days after it fades.
If Hooker’s illness was measles, “it sounds like my worst nightmare as an infectious disease doc,” said Peter Chin-Hong, professor of medicine and infectious disease specialist at University of California San Francisco. “For all we know, there’s a trail of measles, like bread crumbs in Hansel and Gretel.”
In areas with no known cases, health providers might not immediately suspect measles, he said: “Many people probably didn’t know they had it. There could have been people who were ill with pneumonia, who went into the hospital and no one diagnosed it. It’s very, very hard to diagnose because we haven’t seen that much of it. But of course, we’re seeing a lot more of it now.”
There are other indications that the actual number of cases from the Texas outbreak is higher than the official count, Chin-Hong said – with three confirmed deaths, experts might expect a case count closer to 3,000, instead of the 762 cases in Texas and 95 cases in New Mexico.
Typically, medical providers alert local or state health officials when a patient tests positive for measles. Health officials then conduct contact tracing to notify anyone who came into contact with the patient, including other travelers.
A representative for the Shasta county health department, serving the area where Hooker says he lives, said there have been no confirmed cases of measles reported this year.
“There are no cases of measles in Shasta county, and we have had no notice of any confirmed cases of measles this year,” said Jules Howard, community education specialist with the Shasta County Health & Human Services Agency.
It’s important to know when a region has even a single case so resources can be diverted to the area to stop transmission, Chin-Hong said.
The most important part of those efforts is contact tracing and vaccinating anyone who is vulnerable – especially infants, pregnant people, and immune-compromised people, he said.
Hooker is a prominent figure in the anti-vaccine community. He testified on Tuesday before a US Senate committee in its first-ever “vaccine injury” hearing, attempting to link MMR vaccination to autism – despite several studies showing no relationship.
Hooker said he became sick with measles despite being vaccinated as a child. But because he was born before 1989, he probably only received one dose of the MMR vaccine, which is 93% effective at stopping illness. Vaccination may also make breakthrough illness milder.
When anti-vaccine messages keep parents from getting their children vaccinated, “I think the damage is immediate,” Chin-Hong said, before adding that it “goes beyond the measles outbreak”.
Other vaccine-preventable illnesses like whooping cough and the flu are also surging.
“Measles is like the poster child, but it’s about a way of life that we’ve taken for granted in the last few decades that is threatened,” Chin-Hong said. “The fact that [they] are questioning it on a public stage means that a lot more people who might have trusted their clinicians are questioning it more now.”
The US eliminated measles in 2000, but the nation could lose that status if there is sustained transmission for more than a year.
“We’re going back in time,” Chin-Hong said. “We have to relearn all of these diseases.”
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