Written By:
- Date published:
10:51 pm, November 3rd, 2025 - 52 comments
Categories: education, health, national/act government, vaccines -
Tags: Measles, vaccination
Measles is spreading across Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Dr Oz Mansoor reports that the spread has been confined to local contacts so far, and the good news is that most of the country is immunised.
The latest official count is 17 that officials are aware of, in Northland, Auckland, Taranaki, Wellington, and Nelson.
And more vaccines are on the way.
Last week, a number of schools, in consultation with the National Public Health Service, told select students to stay home after close contact with measles.
However, a rapidly issued directive from Simeon Brown and his non-health background appointed Director General of Health, Audrey Sonerson – who seems to have followed Brown from Transport – said schools must prioritise attendance over contagion measures.
Specifically, Brown directed that only unvaccinated, close contacts were to remain at home.
That means unvaccinated non-close contacts did not need to.
It also ignores the incubation period of measles of about 11 days on average.
It’s noteworthy on a number of fronts:
Today, Wellington Girls’ College said it could not comply with this order, especially as they had worked with Health NZ in the first place, which led them to conducting an open ceremony that exposed 900 students to measles.
RNZ:
Wellington Girls’ College principal Julia Davidson told Morning Report she specifically asked whether the event, held last week at the Michael Fowler Centre, should go ahead, and was told it could given the community’s high level of immunisation.
A student was later found to have attended the event, as well as classes and a prize-giving rehearsal, while symptomatic.
The school has put classes online for students in years 9, 10 and 11, while their vaccination statuses are checked, something Davidson said the Ministry of Education said they shouldn’t be doing.
i.e. the Ministry of Education, led by Erica Stanford and David Seymour, who is laser focused on his school attendance KPI, tried to stop the school and its Board from exercising its legal and fiduciary duty of care.
Online, right wing commentators are mocking people for caring about measles.
But measles is not only one of the most contagious infections in the world, with a 90%+ infection rate, many categories of people including children, the immunocompromised, and pregnant women are all at higher risk of serious complications. It has caused blindness in Kiwi kids, including those born from mothers who contracted it.
In 2020, 79 children died in the Samoan outbreak, and in the USA, two measles deaths have occurred this year – the first deaths in 10 years – after previously being “eliminated in the United States” – and surging again under the new anti-vaccination culture wars championed by many on the right.
National’s gambit may or may not pay off, but it’s been interesting to watch how they have handled the health situation.
This excerpt is from the Mountain Tūī Substack
I call this the VanVeldon method. 'Not too high a price on life'
Reason #573 why we should be extremely relived this lot weren't running the show in 2020. But still a terrifying prospect that they could be in charge during any major public health crisis. Be very afraid.
Hmmmm. Not sure if Hanlon’s Razor applies here. Or if this is more of a case study in priorities.
Sure, there’s an argument to be made that school attendance is important (and it is). But in this case, irrespective of the policy merits, the government feels way out of step with what parents and families across the country actually expect.
You can track and report on attendance all you like, but in a post-COVID world, if your kid is sick, society expects you to keep them at home.
Can you really blame parents for being cautious? We just lived through a global pandemic that killed millions. And now the same government apparatus that many already distrusted over COVID is saying, “Send your kids to school. They’ll be fine… probably.”
That’s a big ask, and an even bigger leap of faith.
In any case, this obsession with KPIs in education seems less about improving learning and more about measuring something, anything, for the sake of it.
Neoliberalism always needs numbers, even when they’re meaningless.
I wonder if it's a pseudo productivity issues too. The principle that not only should kids go to school, but mums and dads should got to work rather than staying home with sick kids. It doesn't makes sense unless one is ideologically wedded.
shrug
Maybe we need a corollary to Hanlon’s razor: never attribute to malice what can be explained by ideology?
Yeah. Though there may be a another 'razor' that follows from your one: "never attribute an ideology to principle, when it can be explained by malice".
No one is suggesting that sick kids be anywhere other than at home. The issue is whether ones who are not sick, and have virtually zero chance of getting sick, should also have to stay at home.
So, how do you tell if people have virtually zero chance of being sick?
People are contagious at about the time they first show non-rash symptoms so they can think it's a cold or tummy upset. It's only about 4 days later when the rash appears that it's more obviously measles.
And people can be carriers without being sick. Or just be unlucky enough to have waining immunity even when immunised.
Apparently 1 in 3 people with measles need hospital care.
“So, how do you tell if people have virtually zero chance of being sick? ”
By whether they are immunized or not.
If you are vaccinated, your chances of catching are minimal. Unlike COVID, your immunity doesn't wane over time. And if you don't catch it, you can't transmit it.
'Be vaccinated' is the answer to this problem.
If parents choose to not to have their children vaccinated, then they can also choose to home-school their children during an epidemic.
You can be vaccinated and catch it. And if you are vaccinated and catch it then you can pass it on. (But you are way less likely to catch it, way less likely to have a bad outcome and way less likely to pass it on.)
Interestingly, in this paper, it was the college age kids (10-19 years old) who were the ones most likely to catch it while vaccinated. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X24009393
Given the tiny numbers involved (high unlikelihood of vaccinated getting measles, and then the high unlikelihood of passing it on) – I wouldn't read too much into those statistics. Especially in the context of this discussion – any transmission is much more likely to be intra-family, rather than across schoolmates.
I would guess that the total time spent in close contact with school mates outstrips being in close contact with family members.
If your kid has been immunized, they will be fine. The standard MMR vaccines have over 99% efficacy (and, even if you're one of the unlucky 1%, you'll have a very mild dose, with an incredibly low likelihood of complications).
And, actually, all of those kids are likely to be out, congregating at malls, movie theatres and parks – with their friends – and exposed to far more risk than they would be at school.
The ones who are at risk are those who are not immunized. Presumably, their parents have made an 'informed decision' – and should bear the consequences of home-schooling until either their kid is immunized, or the outbreak has run it's course.
No one is suggesting that unwell children should be sent to school. The issue is, whether those who are not sick, and have close to zero chance of getting sick, should also be excluded from education.
in this case, the issue is whether the child is about to get measles because of close contact but doesn't have the rash yet. That child staying home is preventing transmisson. Did we learn nothing from covid?
Don't know why you are so judgemental about this, but unvaccinated children fall into at least 4 categories:
I think all those kids should stay home if they've been in close contact with someone with measles eg a sibling living in the same home.
quick google suggests 3/100 people who've been vaccinated against measles can get measles. That's a small but not tiny amount.
Again, the issue is about transmission.
You can wax lyrical all you like about parental responsibility (and ignore the facts in doing so), but public health dictates they do what they can to stop the spread of measles in this outbreak.
I think it comes down to whether someone thinks 4 days off school is a big deal or not. I don't, especially now that lots of lessons are online.
I really don't get why some pro-vax people are so resistant to taking all reasonable measures to slow an outbreak.
If the child is unvaccinated, then they should stay home (and their parent/s should home-school)
If the child is vaccinated, then they won't catch measles, and won't pass it on – regardless of whether they've been exposed or not.
Basically – why are we punishing families who have done the right thing (got vaccinated), instead of those who have chosen not to.
again, public health doesn't work if it starts from a place of being judgemental. It works by getting people on board with the required actions.
Again, there comes a point where you have to impose consequences for poor quality decision making.
Your framing is telling. Who’s the “you” here? And how do you “impose consequences”?
It seems you shift all responsibility to a single agency (i.e. the parents/guardians) instead of acknowledging that there are systemic, social, cultural, and institutional factors at play too.
Viewing life through your biased lens leads to being judgemental and poor judgement.
Amazingly, this was not the general tenor of the comments on TS during the Covid epidemic – when 'cookers' were widely vilified for their choices about vaccination (a vaccine, BTW, which was constructed using novel methods, and which was nothing like as effective as the MMR vaccine)
I didn't see you commenting then, about viewing life through a biased lens.
That’s a fair point to raise, but the situations aren’t really comparable.
During COVID, vaccination wasn’t just about individual health. It was an emergency public-health response to a novel pandemic. People weren’t vilified for being unvaccinated so much as for spreading misinformation and endangering others when hospitals were overwhelmed.
All we did was set a clear bar for people to meet if they wanted life to return to normal. They could weigh up the risks and make their own choices. And even then, if they chose not to, they still received medical treatment, wage subsidies, and other financial support.
Because that’s what a decent society does.
The principle I’ve been arguing for here is exactly the same: universal care, consistent public standards, and respect for individual choice.
That may have been your attitude, but it was not a widespread one, here on TS – where people where indeed vilified for their choices not to be vaccinated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voices_for_Freedom#Flyers
You’re too predictable, sadly, and you start lashing out when challenged instead of addressing the substance of a reply to you and/or answering pertinent questions directed at you.
You deflect & divert when challenged and often resort to whataboutery, etc.
Has it occurred to you that this is a sign of biased & selective memory? In any case, if you were making sensible comments about the Covid-19 vaccine at the time I would not have challenged you (much).
Anyway, for your information, I did a quick count of my comments between the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 and the end of 2023 and I counted 387 comments that mentioned vaccin*, so there are likely heaps more related to that topic.
So, next time when you have no decent counter argument and nothing to say of substance, stay silent and move on, as you’re never shy in commenting here on all sorts with a distinct RW flavour and the über-confidence of a genuine polymath.
There are all sorts of people with an authoritarian bent who want that but it's not good public health approach.
And where does it stop? People who smoke? People who climb mountains? Beneficiaries who are perceived as lay abouts? Why not top end cheats?
What you end up with if you punish people is people being punished and even less likely to access healthcare.
Amazing how most commentators on TS were much more judgemental over COVID vaccination choices:
Option one will already be hyper-conscious over any possiblity of infection – and will be keeping their kids at home, or home-schooling already. These are the kids who are at risk of the standard 'flu' let alone measles.
The remainder should bear the consequences of their choices.
I'd also like to know just which 'informed decision' you think is valid (apart from those covered by bullet point one). In most cases, they'll be covered by bullet point 3 (I've done my own research….)
You've also missed the biggest tranche – parents who just don't care.
Citation for it being the biggest. I think you have a bee in your bonnet about this for some reason, but fail to take into account the well documented public health issues of access. I've named some of them, and you've ignored that, so I can only assume it's wilful ignorance at this point.
So we now have a flavour of how the little Napoleon would have handled COVID.
yep. We were so lucky last time, let's hope we will be as lucky next time.
Exactly, Pee wee would likely have been in the “let it rip”, keep the borders open school of dealing with COVID.
Measles and other such diseases were taken very seriously when I was growing up in the UK in the 1950s. I can remember the warning notes pasted into every library book: if an infectious disease should occur in your house (they said), don't bring the item back; inform the library and follow instructions.
I wasn't vaccinated and duly caught the disease at around six years of age. Quite possibly it affected my eyesight, with pronounced myopia developing not long afterwards. No other lasting effects, but I still can't forget those chilling NZ TV ads from the late 70s, showing a child severely brain-damaged as a result of not getting vaccinated.
In conclusion, I do wish the media would use the correct terminology. Measles is an infectious disease, meaning you can catch it even without making physical contact with someone who has it. The virus can linger on any surface or in any atmosphere where an infected person has been. People who think they might have been exposed to it should stay the hell away from school or workplace, and be damned to the idiocies of Brown & Co.
(Oh, and shouldn’t it be “gamble”, not “gambit”?)
Nope. People who are vaccinated have a very, very low chance of catching the disease (completely unlike COVID). And, if you haven't caught it – you can't pass it on.
If you are unvaccinated then you should stay at home if exposed (or, preferably get vaccinated ASAP).
3/100 might be low in terms of personal risk, but the issue is transmission during an outbreak.
You can't transmit measles unless you've actually got it (well, possibly, except for a medical professional in a high virus environment in a hospital, carrying it out on their clothing).
But in a school environment, you're not going to pass it on, unless you've caught it. And you (almost certainly) won't catch it if you're vaccinated.
That's *why* we have herd immunity. The people surrounding case zero can't catch the infection, and therefore can't pass it on.
Measles is very different to COVID.
I imagine all high touch areas are pretty gruesome e.g. door handles, sport's equipment handles/masks.
Still can't catch it if you're vaccinated.
Actually mobile phones are probably an issue. Kids hold them close to their face, breath/talk all over them and touch them. They'll put them close to other kids faces to show them what they are looking at.
If the school puts them in a central repository then they can all cross-contaminate and then if kids dive into get their own they can also touch other kid's phones.
Given that the kids are all congregating in the classrooms and playgrounds (not to mention in dozens of venues outside of school) – I don’t think that the very minor risk of surface contamination via mobile phone is a serious issue.
AI tells me that Measles (like Covid) is "transmitted easily through the air via infectious droplets from an infected person's coughing, sneezing, or talking."
So touching handles and phones is not the problem. Remember when we all started furiously disinfecting our hands at the start of Covid, only to be told later that touching objects wasn't how it was transmitted.
"Measles can also be spread after touching tissues, toys or other surfaces contaminated with an infected person's nose and throat secretions (snot and saliva)."
https://info.health.nz/conditions-treatments/infectious-diseases/about-measles/measles
According to the CDC: "Measles is infectious 4 days before and 4 days after rash onset."
However, if the surrounding people are vaccinated, it is highly unlikely that anyone will contract the infection…..
High levels of vaccination stops a measles epidemic in its tracks.
It's a much better solution than some form of quarantine.
Vaccination and quarantine have different goals and timelines. In any case, you should wait at least four weeks between the first and second shot for measles.
Yes. Which is why we routinely vaccinate toddlers.
It's not rocket science.
thanks, I understand what herd immunity is, and how measles differs from covid. We don't have herd immunity for measles at a sufficient level to prevent outbreaks. Therefore we need to do thing in addition to vaccination. Right now, because there is an outbreak.
In that context, 3 in 100 vaccinated people getting measles is not insignificant.
According to this NZ study from the last NZ outbreak (2019), 9.6% of cases were from people who had one dose of vaccine and 5.3% have had two doses.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X24009393
They also say "Breakthrough measles infections can still occur due to primary vaccine failure, whereby the recipient fails to develop an immune response, or secondary vaccine failure, where vaccine immunity declines over time."
However, for transmission to progress beyond that unfortunate individual – you have to have a second failure in immunization in their immediate contact group.
What happens:
The chances of progression further are below reasonable probability in a highly immunized community.
This is what herd immunity is.
NZ has been pretty much been always under 95% coverage and it's got worse in recent times – only 78% of kids are up to date with immunisations at 2 years (MMR is given at 1 year and 18 months I believe) as at July 2025.
Audrey Sonerson – No health background – a career public servant – hops from job to job at speed. see: https://www.linkedin.com/in/audrey-sonerson-97747371/details/experience/
Just a quick note to Belladonna – your statement that "you can't catch measles if you're vaccinated" is not quite correct.
No vaccine is 100% effective: MMR (after 2 doses) will give you "greater than 99%" immunity long-term but not 100%.
So, there are some people, fully immunised (2 doses of MMR) who can still catch measles (and pass it on), though rare.
when I googled it was 3/100.
NZ Immunisation Handbook is the one to check, not Google.
https://www.tewhatuora.govt.nz/for-health-professionals/clinical-guidance/immunisation-handbook/12-measleshttps://www.tewhatuora.govt.nz/for-health-professionals/clinical-guidance/immunisation-handbook/12-measles
Maybe the minister of health is best letting the experts sort out what is best, the health and education experts decide what is best on a case by case basis. Maybe an adjustment to Hanlons Razor to describe browns actions, do not attribute to malice what you can attribute to needing to keep your nose out of stuff others know far more about than you.