In March, Iceland became the first country in the world to vaccinate children against deadly measles. In 2016, they began vaccinating children against measles and mumps, as well. Sweden is following suit, and all EU nations are under a blanket order to vaccinate all children from birth.
Now the first cases of measles have begun to be reported, with four confirmed in Scotland.
The chances of getting measles if you aren’t vaccinated are worse than contracting AIDS or AIDS. There are no known cure for measles and all those who contract it carry a deadly virus that has no cure.
But here in the UK, some experts believe that it could take years for those hit by the spike in cases to recover.
So while this may be a huge public health issue, there is also a business angle to this. Vaccines like the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine — an inactivated vaccine — can be used on a mass scale and still save money.
In 2014, the BBC reported that the global cost of preventing diseases like measles at a high rate with vaccines “crippled by the introduction of new medicines is £60 billion a year.”
But one reason why mass vaccinations can be so successful is that they work best with those who need it the most. A thousand people are the most effective for vaccinating a large group of people, because they are spread out by common area and shared occupations.
But a small company called Covalent Biologics is planning to make their profit on those behind the barrier to entry.
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