U.S. Surgeon General Talks about Measles Outbreak
MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: There are more than 100 cases of measles across the country. 99 cases alone in California. In his first in-depth interview as surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy addressed the growing outbreak with our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.</s>SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: We know the numbers now, the number of people who have the infection, the number of states that have been involved. How do you quantify how bad this is from a public health standpoint? I mean are we on the precipice of this potentially getting much, much worse? Given how contagious this is?</s>DR. VIVEK MURTHY, U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: Well, measles is highly contagious, in fact if not the most contagious virus that we know of. You know, as you know, if you are not vaccinated, and you are exposed to measles you have a 90 percent chance of getting it. Which is that extremely infectious. The flip side is that if you are vaccinated, then your chance of getting it is only about, you know, it's much, much lower. I mean you get a 97 percent protection rate if you get both doses of the vaccine. So that's very good. But I think right now we are at a critical tipping point. Where you know, if we need to closely monitor the number of cases that we have. We need to continue to do contact tracing.</s>PEREIRA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us now from Atlanta. It's interesting, Sanjay, getting to see the two of you sit down together, his first major TV interview. He is one of the young -- he is the youngest surgeon general. He is the first of Indian descent and he's taking on this job while this measles outbreak and controversy is going on. Did he address that, about taking the job on right at this time?</s>GUPTA: Yeah, he did. And remember, he was nominated in November of 2013. It wasn't confirmed until just December of 2014. Just recently, so he just started. This is, you know, obviously was ongoing. Even as he was getting confirmed. So yes, he is saying he's going on a listening tour around the country trying to understand what's happening in the states. But he hadn't done much in the way of interviews. I asked him why now? You know, I think it's just because he just wants to sort of travel around for a little bit and understand what's happening out there, first.</s>PEREIRA: Well, if he's going on a listening tour, he doesn't have to listen too closely, because the sound is resounding there. There are people yelling from the rooftops about this vaccination debate. From a public health prospective, did he address the problem when people choose not to? Did he talk about that specifically?</s>GUPTA: Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. And I give him credit for one thing, that, you know, he's not being equivocal on this, he's not wavering, sort of giving both sides. You know, he's very strongly wording the fact that if you drop below a certain vaccination rate in the country, then you start putting the average person more at risk. So, you know, babies, for example, Michaela, they can't get vaccinated. People ...</s>PEREIRA: Right.</s>GUPTA: Who are -- have cancer, who are undergoing chemotherapy can't get vaccinated. So, there's going to be a certain percentage of the country that's always at risk. What they count on is what is known as herd immunity, meaning having enough of a herd of people around them to protect them. Until they can be vaccinated. Until they recover, until the child grows old enough. If you don't have herd immunity, all of a sudden you start to see what is known as sporadic cases of measles popping up and that's how something starts to become endemic again. That's how something starts to spread. Right now we're about 91.9 percent vaccination in this country. If we drop below 90, that's when that could start to happen.</s>PEREIRA: Well, you talk about the herd, the herd is not just here in our country. The herd extends, because we know our borders are open. And you look around the rest of the world. Did you guys talk about that? The immunization rates in other countries?</s>GUPTA: Yes.</s>PEREIRA: Because there's difference there. In fact, some countries have better rates of immunization than we do here in the United States.</s>GUPTA: Michaela, did you know that Russia has better immunization rates ...</s>PEREIRA: I didn't know.</s>GUPTA: China does. Zimbabwe. Iran. I mean the list goes on and on. Those are countries that are doing better than the United States when it comes to vaccinating against measles at a year of age. I asked the surgeon general about that. Let's listen to his answer.</s>MURTHY: Part of the challenge that we have had is in part we're a victim of our own success. Because we were able to eradicate diseases like polio, because we were able to eliminate measles in the United States. Many people have not seen these diseases. And they, they become, they become less of a threat. They become more theoretical.</s>GUPTA: What he's basically saying is that we're not slapped in the face with seeing these diseases on a regular basis. And all of these other countries, they see measles, they see mumps on a regular basis and they say, we don't want that. So that's why vaccination rates are much higher. We're just not -- we're not as acutely aware of the risk here.</s>PEREIRA: Right. I want to read, you wrote incredible and strongly worded op-ed for cnn.com. I want to read your words to you and for the rest of our viewers. Here's what you say, that you are 100 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to have a serious allergic reaction to the vaccine that protects you against measles is not a matter of opinion. You go on to say "facts should matter and science should win. But after 13 years as a medical reporter I know it's not that simple." There's a lot of emotion in this debate, Sanjay. Not often based on scientific fact.</s>GUPTA: I think people get lured into the emotional part of the debate and it's easy to see why. I mean it's children and it's autism.</s>PEREIRA: Sure.</s>GUPTA: I mean you cannot think of two more emotionally evocative things anywhere than those two topics. But that doesn't, you know, that doesn't change the science. You know and I think it's people are uncomfortable not knowing what causes autism. So we want to fill the void. We are not comfortable with voids, we want to fill the void with anything. And that's where a lot of people point is to vaccines. You know, you can understand that part of the sentiment. But I think that people who don't forcefully say, I get that, but that doesn't change the science. People who are not saying that are not doing a service to, because this is dangerous. People could die from not getting vaccinated. And this is totally preventable thing. There's so many problems in the world we don't know how to prevent. We don't know how to address, we don't know how to tackle ...</s>PEREIRA: This is one that ...</s>GUPTA: This one we can fix.</s>PEREIRA: Right. Dr. Sanjay Gupta from Atlanta, thank you so much. Go to cnn.com, you can read the article in full. Chris?</s>CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Mick. Two deadly crashes, one by air, one by rail. The key to both is what caused them. And we have the latest on both investigations. Hear what a former head of the NTSB has to say.