The trouble with today's popular contempt for measles is that an important fact of the disease has only recently become clear: Measles knocks out established immunity to a whole whack of other illnesses, not just immediately but for several years. People who recover from measles will soon come down with something else -- flu, chicken pox, whooping cough, whatever -- and that something else can more easily give rise to secondary infections, notably pneumonia.

Here's a pertinent article from today's Globe and Mail: Measles is not some harmless childhood infection