It’s a scourge that has afflicted mankind for more than a thousand years. And it’s what keeps Adam Ratner up at night: measles.
“It is the most infectious disease that we know by far — much more infectious than flu, much more infectious than COVID or polio or Ebola or anything else that I can think of,” says Ratner, a pediatric infectious disease physician in New York City.
In his new book, Booster Shots, Ratner makes the case that the control of measles is a test of how good our public health institutions are. And the fact that it is making a comeback is a bad sign.