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> In fact, health officials say the virus is so contagious that if an unvaccinated person walks through a room two hours after someone with measles has left, th
by mcdoh 8y ago
> In fact, health officials say the virus is so contagious that if an unvaccinated person walks through a room two hours after someone with measles has left, there’s a 90 percent chance that an unvaccinated person will get the disease. People can spread measles for four days before the rash appears and for four days after.
Yikes!
- Fomite 8y agoSeriously. I'm an infectious disease epidemiologist, and measles is amazingly transmissible.
- Johnny555 8y agoAs an infectious disease epidemiologist, could you elaborate on that? What is it that makes it so contagious?
- Fomite 8y agoA couple reasons: - While it enters via the lungs, the virus emerges in the trachea, which positions it really well to be aerosolized through coughing. This aerosol and droplet transmission is really efficient. - Measles is relatively stable in the environment, so lingers for a fair amount of time. - It also appears to have a relatively small infectious dose. Other highly contagious diseases, like norovirus, share fairly similar properties - you make a lot of virus, it hangs out for awhile, and you don't need to come in contact with much of it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4997572/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4997572/