Why do people think that the two children in Pennsylvania who died because they were sick with measles were too young to be vaccinated?
The usual suspects…
How Do MMR Vaccines Protect a Baby?
But that’s true, isn’t it?
After all, the MMR vaccine isn’t routinely given until an infant is 12 months old.
And early doses, given during outbreak situations, aren’t given until infants are at least six months old.
Still, that doesn’t mean that the MMR vaccine could not have protected these two babies…
In fact, the MMR vaccine should have protected these two babies!
How?
Newborn babies and infants are typically protected with measles antibodies they get from their mothers until they are old enough to be vaccinated.
And how do they get those measles antibodies?
Those measles antibodies are either generated after a natural measles infection or after they get their own measles vaccination.
Vaccinations would also have helped them if herd immunity levels of protection had been kept up.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
Instead, low MMR vaccination levels in the area combined with no maternal protection left them unprotected.
Unprotected at a time when there were high levels of measles cases, a recipe to get measles, a life-threatening disease.