{"id":11537,"date":"2026-02-25T18:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T00:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11537"},"modified":"2026-02-25T18:05:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T00:05:11","slug":"the-deaths-doctors-never-thought-theyd-see-in-the-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/02\/25\/the-deaths-doctors-never-thought-theyd-see-in-the-u-s\/","title":{"rendered":"The Deaths Doctors Never Thought They\u2019d See in the U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/2026\/02\/measles-death\/686122\/\">The Atlantic<\/a> For years, the worst outcomes of measles were all but unknown in America. Now they look inevitable. Of every 1,000 people the measles virus infects, it may kill as few as one to three. In a way, this can seem merciful. But the mathematics of measles is also unforgiving. The virus is estimated to infect roughly 90 percent of the unimmunized people it encounters; each infected person may pass the infection on to as many as 12 to 18 others. In large part owing to an ongoing outbreak in South Carolina, the United States is watching those risks unfold in real time. As of last Thursday, the CDC is reporting 982 cases of measles. That count is expected to break 1,000 this week; a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/publichealth.jhu.edu\/ivac\/resources\/us-measles-tracker\">tracker<\/a>\u00a0run by researchers at Johns Hopkins University that many experts consider more reliable has ticked past 1,000 already. By the numbers alone, another death seems inevitable, and inevitable soon<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Probabilities aren\u2019t guarantees, of course. So far, 2026 may be seeing some improvements over 2025, when the U.S. documented more than 2,200 measles cases\u2014more than in any year since 1991. This year, just 4 percent of measles cases have led to hospitalization, compared with 11 percent last year. Several factors could be contributing to that discrepancy, including how hospitals in South Carolina are&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/south-carolina-measles-hospital-admissions\">reporting measles admissions<\/a>&nbsp;or of more mild cases being diagnosed to begin with; experts aren\u2019t yet sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That 4 percent, however, still represents 40 or so people who have ended up in the hospital with at least one of the conditions that can make measles so devastating\u2014among them, pneumonia, respiratory failure, and brain disease. In South Carolina,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/measles-is-causing-brain-swelling-in-children-in-south-carolina\/\">multiple people<\/a>, including children, have been hospitalized with a form of brain swelling called encephalitis, which can lead to permanent intellectual disability or deafness, and in some cases turn fatal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/2026\/02\/measles-death\/686122\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Atlantic For years, the worst outcomes of measles were all but unknown in America. Now they look inevitable. Of every 1,000 people the measles virus infects, it may kill as few as one to three. In a way, this can seem merciful. But the mathematics of measles is also unforgiving. The virus is estimated [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-headlines","category-measles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11537"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11538,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11537\/revisions\/11538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}