I sat down with the measles itself to find out. I had suggested we hike or do an outdoor activity, but measles vetoed anything too far out in nature, suggesting instead a number of intimate, indoor locations where large groups of people were gathered in poor ventilation. Finally, we settled on a cafe.
Measles is there waiting for me, looking well-rested despite its whirlwind tour of classrooms and homes. It’s unprepossessing — tinier in person than you’d expect for such an impactful figure, but quite self-assured.
I apologize for my late arrival.
“Please!” measles says with a smile. “It took me decades!”
Is this really the measles doctors warned me about? Every medical professional I interviewed described measles as “deadly” and “bad to have” and “objectively terrible. Even if it does not literally kill you, it will hospitalize you, give you encephalitis and kill someone else. It is the Dr. Hannibal Lecter of diseases. Why are you giving measles column space?”
(To them, I said, “Don’t worry. No one reads print anymore!” I tell measles this. It laughs. Like many aspects of measles, its laugh is contagious.)
Measles stares thoughtfully out from its small container. It spends most of its time in the vial. (“I think of myself as a pioneer of the tiny home,” it quips, showing me around.) There’s not much to see: just a glass tube, a triumph of elegant minimalism. The space feels lived-in, as it has been since 2000, when the specimen was captured just as measles was declared eliminated in the United States but before people decided, “No. We want measles back. Give us measles.”
“So,” I say. “Why you? Why not mammoths? Why not a living wage? What is it about the measles?”
Measles shakes its head modestly. “I ask myself that question a lot,” it says. “When you look over the past and try to guess what is going to come back, never in a million years would I have thought, me. I guessed wide-legged jeans, because every size of jean comes back around eventually.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed Nazism, either,” it adds with a shrug. “Which just proves that I’ve been living in a cave for the past 20 years!” Measles and I share another laugh.
“Who made this possible?” I want to know. “Who are your biggest boosters?”
“Boosters? Where?” measles asks, glancing around nervously, and I cringe at my inadvertent choice of words.
“I meant supporters,” I clarify.
“Oh! Lots of people,” measles says. “The surgeon general of Florida has been a big help. I would say the Republican Party in general, for backing him up, given the opportunity. Any time you shrug and say, ‘Eh, he’s the surgeon general of Florida, we’d better listen to him about measles,’ that’s a win for me. Anyone who urges people to question vaccines, from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Jenny McCarthy. The Republican Party. They believed in me when I didn’t even believe in myself.”
“What’s special about you?” I ask. Measles thinks a long time before answering. I watch the sunlight play across its vial.
“I don’t know,” it says. “I actually don’t think it’s just me. I think I’m part of something bigger. I think infectious disease is making huge strides across the country. I mean, I’d be remiss not to mention that the CDC just decided there’s no need to isolate for five days with covid-19.”
“But after 2000,” it confides, leaning in, “I was really at a low point. I kept saying, ‘Do books instead. Put books in the schools, and keep me out. I had a good run.’ I thought it was the end of the road for me. But they, you know, the Republicans, kept saying, ‘No! We want measles in the schools and books out of them!’ I guess I underestimated people’s desire to dismantle one of the landmark triumphs of modern science for no reason whatsoever and put hundreds of children at risk of dying every year and tens of thousands at risk of hospitalization.”
“Anyway, I was like, ‘You’re the boss, I guess,’” — measles sighs — “and now, here I am. It’s incredible.”
Measles said that if there were one thing it wanted people to carry with them from this interview, it was measles, and if there were several things, it was measles, mumps and rubella.
But if there were even more things, it guessed that it wanted us to remember that even if you had come to see yourself as nothing but a plague and scourge, there would always be people out there who considered you desirable and were willing to do whatever it took to bring you back around.
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