The virus that causes 'immune amnesia'
It was late at night on 15 November 2019, on the Samoan island of Upolu – a tiny jade-green splodge in the Pacific Ocean, somewhere between Hawaii and New Zealand. Government officials were rushing to attend a meeting in the sleepy harbourside capital to discuss an urgent public health issue. By the end of the evening they had declared a state of emergency, with immediate effect.
Three months earlier, a member of the public had developed a characteristic red-brown blotchy rash after arriving on a flight from New Zealand, where there was an ongoing measles epidemic. They were swiftly diagnosed as a "suspected" case, but no further action was taken.
By 2 October, another seven measles cases had materialised. Schools – ideal environments for the virus to spread among its preferred victims – continued as normal, with the small concession that prize-giving ceremonies were banned. Even then, some ignored this. Just over a month later, the outbreak had spiralled to alarming proportions – with 716 people infected, out of a total population of around 197,000.
But with the new state of emergency in place, the country radically stepped up its efforts to halt the spread. Schools and businesses closed. Workers abandoned their offices. Residents were advised to stay in their homes. In a sinister echo of the red crosses marked on doors during medieval plague outbreaks, red flags popped up outside the homes of unvaccinated families across the country, draped on bushes, tied to columns and hung from trees. This allowed doctors to go house to house, administering compulsory vaccinations to those who needed them. Otherwise, Samoa became a ghost island – with empty roads and cancelled flights.
Eventually infections slowed, and the state of emergency ended on 28 December 2019. In all, 5,667 people were infected – including 8% of the population under 15 years old. Of those, 81 died, including three children from the same family.
The epidemic was over – but the virus hadn't necessarily taken its last victim.
Enter "immune amnesia", a mysterious phenomenon that's been with us for millennia, though it was only discovered in 2012. Essentially, when you're infected with measles, your immune system abruptly forgets every pathogen it's ever encountered before – every cold, every bout of flu, every exposure to bacteria or viruses in the environment, every vaccination. The loss is near-total and permanent. Once the measles infection is over, current evidence suggests that your body has to re-learn what's good and what's bad almost from scratch.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211112-the-people-with-immune-amnesia
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THIS explains why we were all so sick the year I was 9 and we started with measles in January.....
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