Invictus Reviews

Spots and Dots: Measles vs. Chickenpox

• Mel Herbert

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Measles and chickenpox are often confused despite having significant differences in symptoms, severity, and treatment options. We break down the key distinctions between these two infectious diseases, highlighting why measles is significantly more dangerous and why vaccination remains critical for public health.

• Measles starts on head and neck, spreads downward through the body
• Measles is highly contagious with an R0 of 18, spreading through respiratory droplets
• Patients are infectious for four days before and after rash appears
• Serious complications include pneumonia, encephalitis, and potentially fatal SSPE years later
• No specific treatment exists for measles beyond supportive care
• Chickenpox presents as vesicular lesions, commonly on face, chest and back
• Chickenpox is less severe with lower mortality rates than measles
• Antiviral treatments like acyclovir are effective for high-risk chickenpox patients
• Herpesvirus nature of chickenpox means it can reactivate later as shingles (zoster)
• Vaccination has reduced global measles deaths from millions to about 100,000 annually
• Current Texas outbreak has already caused two deaths among unvaccinated individuals

Vaccination saves lives. The diseases we prevent are far worse than unfounded concerns about vaccine safety.


Speaker 1:

Hey Invictus people. Um, measles versus chickenpox. I don't know about you, but I always get these two confused. But I think I've thought of a way that's going to help me, and therefore might help you, in remembering the difference between those two. So over on this side we've got measles.

Speaker 1:

Measles is a worse disease than chickenpox. It's more infectious. People get sicker, the mortality rate is higher. It has worse complications. So measles used to kill two or three million people a year. Now only about a hundred thousand because of vaccination and, as part of their measles, mumps, rubella vaccination and remember this is the vaccination which started this whole vaccines cause autism thing. It was in the Lancet, then it was pulled because it was fraudulent and it's been studied multiple times since then. These vaccines do not cause autism but they do save lives.

Speaker 1:

So if you look at any pictures of measles in kids, they look sick because it's a miserable disease. They look really sick and their rash is classic and this is what you need to remember. With measles it sort of starts on the head and neck, particularly behind the ears, macula, papula, and then it spreads down the body, classically into the limbs, onto the chest, down into the legs and then fades. You're infectious for about four days before and about four days after the rash starts. It is super duper infectious. It has an R0 of like 18 respiratory droplets. Everybody in the room who walks in there for the next few hours is probably going to get measles. Now measles is a and I don't know how to pronounce this a paramyxoveridae family or morbilliform virus. It also used to be called rubeola. So it's a disease that makes you feel terrible and then it has the complications, so you can get pneumonia. That pneumonia can be directly from the measles virus itself, which is very bad or secondary infection bad, high mortality rate. It can produce an acute encephalitis bad, high mortality rate occurs in about 100,000 people and then it can produce this weird autoimmune thing, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, which occurs a long time later, years and years later.

Speaker 1:

There's no actual treatment for measles. It's supportive only only, which is a bit of a problem. Let's go over now and talk about chickenpox, which is varicella virus. So it's a herpes virus. This tends to make people not as sick as measles. It produces those little vesicle lesions, particularly on the face, chest, back, doesn't tend to spread like measles. As I said, you're usually not as sick with this one as you are. With measles, incubation period is, for you know, a couple of days before, and then you stay infectious until the last of the lesions has scabbed over and healed, because it's a herpesvirus. This is the one that could go back into your motor roots and then come out as zoster later on, classically when you're immune, suppressed or over the age of 60. There's now a vaccine for that and that zoster, just like the chickenpox, is infectious as well Because it's a herpivirus. You can actually treat this in high-risk people with acyclovir, valcyclovir. There is also an immune globulin which you can give to high-risk kids or high-risk pregnant people or immune-suppressed people, which you can't actually do with the old measles.

Speaker 1:

It can also produce pneumonia. It can also produce encephalitis, but much less common and much less severe than the old measles. Now the other thing I should say about measles is complex spots. They're those white little jobbies that you can get in your mouth and that can predate the rash, so they might come in. They've got sort of arthralgias, fever, and then you see the coplic spots and, like dude, you're going to get a rash tomorrow. It's going to start on your head, go down.

Speaker 1:

So let me summarize again measles is the worst disease. Measles has the classic rash that starts on the top and spreads down, classically does not involve the palms and soles, whereas chickenpox does. Sick of disease, more encephalitis, more pneumonia, much more higher death rate. Bad, bad, bad. Nothing really to treat it with the old chickenpox more of those vesicles. Not as bad a disease. We can treat it if we get it early with things like acyclovir and immune globulin and I think that's all we need to know for now.

Speaker 1:

This was Invictus Reviews. Lots of stuff going on, more to tell you soon. Did that help? It helped me? There's a big outbreak occurring in Texas right now because there's a bunch of people who are not vaccinated. Two deaths already, all in the unvaccinated, both of them. I should say All, both in the unvaccinated. It's a bad disease and we've forgotten how bad this disease is because we've been vaccinating. But there's some people out there who believe vaccines are bad. It's because they don't really know how bad the disease is. The disease measles is horrible and super infectious. Rub it out.