The Relentless School Nurse: There is Nothing “Just” About Measles

I encourage readers to listen to the Bulwark podcast episode, “Just Measles” Left Her Sister Disabled for Life. The podcast, along with the accompanying article, Meet the Horrified Grandparents Fighting for Vaccines, features Therese Vogel, a member of Grandparents for Vaccines, who shared the story of her sister contracting measles as a child. Therese’s sister developed encephalitis that left her with permanent brain damage. It was not a dramatic story told for effect. It was the story of a family describing how one childhood illness changed the course of a life and, in many ways, the course of an entire family.

The phrase “just measles” is something we hear from people who have never seen measles or its complications. For many years, the success of vaccination programs meant that most physicians, nurses, and parents never had to see what measles could do. When a disease disappears from daily life, it becomes easy to underestimate it. The disease becomes theoretical, while the vaccine becomes the focus of concern.

Before the vaccine was introduced in 1963, measles infected millions of children in the United States every year. Most recovered, but thousands were hospitalized annually, and some developed pneumonia, encephalitis, hearing loss, or permanent neurological damage. Families did not always return to normal after measles. Some families lived with the consequences for the rest of their lives. That is the part of measles history that is often missing from modern conversations.

The Bulwark coverage was powerful because it did not focus on policy or politics. It focused on memory and lived experience. Therese was not speaking as a scientist or a policymaker. She was speaking as a sister who watched a disease alter her family forever. Stories like hers remind us that public health history is not just about timelines and vaccine development. It is about families, hospital stays, disabilities, and losses that led communities to decide that prevention mattered.

I am a member of Grandparents for Vaccines, and one of the reasons I joined is that the organization is grounded in lived experience rather than ideology. The grandparents involved are not trying to win arguments or shame parents who have questions. They are trying to add history back into the conversation by telling the stories of what these diseases actually did to children and families before vaccines were available.

One of the unintended consequences of successful public health programs is that success erases memory. Vaccines worked so well that many people today have never seen measles, polio, or rubella complications. Without that memory, the risk calculation changes. The disease begins to feel minor or unlikely, and the vaccine begins to feel optional. Public health history shows this pattern repeatedly. When a disease disappears, people begin to question the intervention that made it disappear. When vaccination rates fall, the disease returns and reminds everyone why prevention existed in the first place.

Therese’s story is not “just” about measles. It is about how easily societies forget the past when prevention is successful, and how important it is to preserve the stories that explain why vaccines were developed in the first place. Public health depends not only on science and policy, but also on memory. When societies remember disease, they invest in prevention. When societies forget disease, prevention begins to look unnecessary.

The stories being shared through Grandparents for Vaccines are not political arguments. They are historical memory. And memory, especially when it comes to protecting children, matters.

We remember.
And we want our grandchildren to be safe. Listen to us.

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