‘I would never wish it on anyone:’ Measles resurgence spurs memories of past toll in Wisconsin

“It was so horrible,” recalled Thompson, 72, of Richland Center. “I would never wish it on anyone.”

In the years before a measles vaccine became widely available in the 1960s, Thompson’s experience was not uncommon. Nearly every child in the United States caught measles before age 15. What many considered a normal part of childhood was disruptive and even deadly. It wasn’t unusual for students to go home from school sick. In hundreds of cases each year, they never returned. 

After vaccine advances eliminated the virus in the U.S., measles is spreading again. More than 1,300 measles cases have been confirmed across 41 states, the latest being Wisconsin. 

The state Department of Health Services on Saturday announced it confirmed nine measles infections in Oconto County — the first in Wisconsin this year. 

To understand what the reemergence of measles might look like, Wisconsin Watch spoke with residents who contracted the disease decades ago as children, including some who still live with complications today. They described high fevers and days of bed-ridden isolation during the infections, as well as lasting damage to their bodies — like the hearing loss some live with now.

Health professionals across the state told Wisconsin Watch they’re preparing to recognize the signs of a disease they’ve rarely, if ever, treated — and to respond to potential outbreaks.

When nothing stopped measles

In the days when measles ran rampant, medical treatment was limited. Families largely cared for sick children at home, relying on home remedies and passed-down knowledge, or the occasional house call from a doctor.

Thompson remembers her days sick at home. Her mother applied calamine lotion to relieve itching around her rashes, and Thompson was required to stay in a dark room wearing sunglasses for fear that the disease would damage her eyes. The worst part, she recalled, was being packed in ice to manage her over 100-degree fever.

Other common treatments in decades past included isolating to prevent spreading the virus to others and spending days in bed until symptoms wore off. 

With no vaccine to block infections, some officials advised parents to have their children catch measles early — particularly for daughters, so they would be less likely to contract it later during a pregnancy. 

Newspaper accounts in the 1950s and 1960s described the phenomenon of “measles parties,” in which children were deliberately exposed to others infected with the virus.

Those also applied to German measles, or rubella, a milder virus linked to severe birth defects during pregnancy. 

Kathleen Cooper of Rhinelander remembers those parties. When she ultimately caught measles at age 6, she was confined to a darkened room and prevented from watching television due to fears that bright light might cause blindness — similar to what Thompson recalled.

Cooper was supposed to attend a birthday party that weekend. Instead, the party came to her.

“That’s how they treated it back then,” said Cooper, now 73. “If one kid in the neighborhood got the chickenpox or the measles, everybody went over to their house so the mothers could just get it over with, because it was just something that you had to get through.”

Lasting toll from measles

But measles parties did not protect people from the misery of the disease. Infections only spread. 

“I was ill and bedridden for weeks. When I was finally able to get up I was a skeleton. My pants couldn’t stay up and my clothes hung on me,” Door County resident Pam Goodlet recalled of a measles bout in 1963 as a 13-year-old. 

Delirious with fever and unable to eat or drink water, Goodlet stayed hydrated by sucking on ice cubes. She recalled being visited by a doctor just once and was never taken to a hospital or clinic.

Goodlet ultimately recovered without long-term health consequences, but many others weren’t so lucky.

Of the estimated 3 to 4 million Americans infected each year before vaccinations, an estimated 48,000 were hospitalized and 400 to 500 died, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

In 1967, a column published in the Waukesha Daily Freeman described the stories of children whose lives were permanently altered by the disease. 

They included a Watertown toddler who was hospitalized and diagnosed with a cognitive impairment after an infection that occurred one year before vaccines became widely available in 1963. 

“Too late for Valerie,” the toddler’s mother reportedly lamented.

Another child was described as healthy until developing encephalitis — a dangerous inflammation of the brain — at the age of 2 due to measles. The condition left her mentally impaired and also deaf, the newspaper reported. An estimated 1,000 children annually suffered encephalitis from measles in the pre-vaccination era.

Leslie Fedorchuk of Milwaukee still lives with the effects of her measles infection.

She was about 6 years old when she realized something wasn’t right with her hearing. As her mother’s friend kept dialing her home’s wall-mounted phone, Fedorchuk, perched on a chair to reach it, would answer, hear nothing and hang up.

It took her mother picking up to realize her friend was speaking each time, but Fedorchuk couldn’t hear from her right ear. The episode happened shortly after Fedorchuk contracted measles and mumps simultaneously.

“I’m in my 70s, and I’ve lived with it my whole life,” Fedorchuk said. “When I hear people say, ‘Oh, nothing can happen if you don’t get a vaccination,’ I think, ‘Oh, yeah, something can definitely happen.’”

Peggy Haas, 69, a registered nurse in Waukesha County, became a firm believer in vaccines after witnessing the damage measles could inflict.

While finishing her master’s degree at Marquette University in 1987, she taught undergraduate students in the pediatrics ward at St. Joseph Hospital in Milwaukee. One day she assigned a student to care for a woman in her 20s who, due to measles complications, had the developmental capacity of an infant.

“She couldn’t talk, she couldn’t feed herself, she couldn’t even walk,” Haas said. “That was the first time I’d seen anybody who had failed to vaccinate their child and what it could do.”

Potential measles complications run the gamut from ear infections and diarrhea to more serious issues like pneumonia and encephalitis. Such brain swelling can cause permanent tissue damage, leading to hearing loss or other serious neurological complications.

Some potential effects aren’t immediately visible. Measles can disrupt the part of the immune system that remembers previous infections, a phenomenon known as immunity amnesia. That leaves people more vulnerable to future viruses for two to three years after a measles infection.

“For example, if you’ve been immunized for polio, and then you get a measles infection, the immunity you had to polio could be wiped out or reduced,” said Malia Jones, a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor in the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology. “You wouldn’t even know that you’re susceptible to some of this stuff.”

The mortality rate for measles is just 1 in 1,000, but the risk of a weakened immune system makes the toll of measles higher, Jones noted. And while medical care has dramatically improved since the 1960s, no specific treatment exists for measles today.

“We just offer supportive care — in the hospital for those who become very sick — and hope for the best,” Jones said.

Vaccine was ‘a turning point in public health’ 

By the 1960s, vaccine breakthroughs showed that cases of measles were preventable. 

The first measles vaccine was licensed in the U.S. in 1963. By 1971 it was combined with vaccines for mumps and rubella, paving the way for the MMR vaccine used today. 

Early uptake was limited, and in 1983, the MMR vaccine was only routinely recommended for 1-year-olds.

But it soon became clear that a single dose fell short of offering full long-term protection. A second dose was added in 1989 to the routine schedule for children before starting school. Taking two vaccine doses is about 97% effective at preventing measles, the CDC says, compared to 93% for one dose.

The two-dose regimen initiated more regular contact between young children and healthcare providers. That led to more early developmental checks, including hearing, vision and behavioral assessments now standard in pediatric care. It also paved the way for childhood vaccination schedules to prevent other diseases, said Dr. Jim Conway, a UW-Madison professor in the Divisions of Infectious Diseases and Global Pediatrics.

“The MMR vaccine was a really major turning point in public health,” he said.

By the early 2000s, measles was declared eliminated in the U.S., meaning it wasn’t continuously spreading for a period longer than a year. 

How health officials are responding

But the virus is back, with the U.S. seeing more than four times as many infections in 2025 than in all of 2024. And it has now been detected in Wisconsin. 

In Oconto County, “all of the cases were exposed to a common source during out-of-state travel,” the state health department said in a statement Saturday.

“DHS, in coordination with the Oconto County Public Health, is working to identify and notify people who may have been exposed to the measles virus,” the statement said. “At this time no public points of exposure have been identified and the risk to the community remains low.”  

Wisconsin is vulnerable to an outbreak due to its relatively low childhood vaccination rates. It is one of just 15 states that allow vaccine exemptions for medical, religious and personal belief reasons. No Wisconsin county comes close to reaching the vaccination rate of 95% that is considered the benchmark for herd immunity protection. 

Public health officials are bracing themselves to respond.

Jennifer Weitzel, director for public health in Sauk County, said her department began closely monitoring measles this year after a Texas outbreak resulted in hundreds of infections and killed two unvaccinated school children. The department is being attentive as popular destinations like Wisconsin Dells and Devil’s Lake draw out-of-state visitors this summer. Just 70% of Sauk County’s kindergarten-aged children received two doses of the vaccine in 2024, down from 76% in 2019. 

The health department is working with providers and doctors to communicate the important protections vaccines bring. 

“I think that’s part of the challenge … no one sees these diseases anymore, so we forget just how effective vaccines have been and how awful these diseases really are,” Weitzel said.

Her colleagues coordinate tabletop exercises with other health departments, including those in Richland County and the Ho-Chunk Nation, practicing communication and response protocols in worst-case scenarios.

Health officials say they are trying to build trust in an era of misinformation surrounding viruses and vaccines. 

“Public health also took a big hit during COVID,” Weitzel said. “Folks are leery of government overreach, of recommendations, so we’re trying to build back that trust at a time where it’s critical, because measles is spreading, and we know that we could prevent it.”

But Holly Neri, a public health nurse in Door County, sees some positives from the COVID-19 pandemic: It prompted public health professionals to better prepare for virus outbreaks.

Door County nurses have sought to make sure patients are up to date on vaccinations. A state immunization grant for purchasing vaccines has helped, Neri said. The goal is for at least 78% of Door County children to be current on their vaccines by age 2, including MMR.

Their department is sharing information with local medical providers about identifying and responding to measles. 

Some groups, such as pregnant women and very young infants, cannot be safely vaccinated. That makes it particularly important for others to do so — aiming to get as close to herd immunity as possible, said Rebecca Wold, public health supervisor for the Oneida County Health Department. 

“If you’re not sure of your immunity or vaccination status, you don’t have any record of having a measles vaccine or having had measles as a child, it is safe to get a measles vaccine, and we would recommend it,” Wold said.

Want more information about measles? 

See this guide from Wisconsin Watch that rounds up medical professionals’ recommendations for protecting yourself and others. 

Door County Knock reporter Emily Small contributed to this report. 

This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.