Measles in Australia. It was never the enemy.

Natural Immunity: Must be emphasised as superior and lifelong, contrasting with vaccine limitations. Herd immunity may only be achieved with natural immunity.

As of February 28, 2025, Australia is experiencing an uptick in measles cases, with several states reporting incidents linked to both imported cases and emerging local transmission. While Australia eliminated local measles transmission in 2014 due to its robust vaccination program, as confirmed by the World Health Organization, the disease continues to appear through travellers returning from regions with active outbreaks, such as Southeast Asia, and has now shown signs of spreading within communities, according to the Australian Centre for Disease Control.

Historical perspective of measles in Australia

Determining the exact incidence of measles in Australia and Victoria during the 1960s is tricky because comprehensive national data from that era is scarce. Measles wasn’t consistently tracked as a notifiable disease across all Australian states until later decades, and systematic records were incomplete before widespread vaccination began in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Still, historical data and studies offer a rough sketch of how common the disease was in this pre-vaccine period.

Australia in the 1960s

Before the measles vaccine was introduced in Australia in 1968, with broader rollout in the early 1970s, measles was endemic, circulating constantly in the population. Experts estimate that nearly every child caught it by adolescence. With Australia’s population growing from about 10.3 million in 1960 to 12.5 million by 1969 annual case numbers likely hit between 300,000 and 500,000. This guess draws from patterns in the United States, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 3-4 million cases yearly in a population of 180 million during the 1950s—scaled down for Australia’s smaller size. Measles’ contagiousness, infecting 90-100% of susceptible people in close communities, supports this range.

The Vital Statistics Report from the 1950s noted that measles cases were “poorly reported because a large proportion of the cases are never seen by a physician,” yet 600,000 annual cases were typical then. By the 1960s, reporting might have improved slightly with better healthcare access, but no exact national tally exists. Death rates offer a hint: before 1963, measles killed about 1 in 1,000 cases in developed countries like Australia, per the World Health Organization’s historical data. If 50-100 deaths occurred yearly—a conservative estimate based on Victorian records scaled nationally—this implies 50,000-100,000 reported cases, though the true number was likely far higher due to underreporting.

Victoria in the 1960s

In Victoria, where the population rose from 2.8 million in 1960 to 3.4 million by 1969 (Australian Bureau of Statistics), we get a clearer view from state-specific insights. Measles hit in cycles every 2-5 years as new batches of susceptible kids emerged. A study by Gregory et al., published in the Medical Journal of Australia in 1971, reviewed hospitalisations and deaths in Victoria between 1960 and 1970. It found that during four major epidemics in this decade, 600-800 children were hospitalised per outbreak, with 146 measles-related deaths recorded over roughly that period. If epidemics struck every 2-3 years, annual hospitalisations averaged 200-300 in peak years, with many more cases handled at home.

Assuming hospitalisations were 1-2% of total cases—a standard ratio in pre-vaccine times, per Langmuir’s 1962 study in *Public Health Reports*—each epidemic might have seen 10,000-40,000 cases in Victoria. In quieter years, annual incidence likely fell to 5,000-10,000 as immunity slowed spread. Averaging this, Victoria’s yearly measles incidence in the 1960s could have been 10,000-20,000 cases, or 3-7 cases per 1,000 population. This fits its reputation as a near-universal childhood illness, with parents and doctors seeing it as routine, according to oral histories.

Context and Limitations

These numbers lean on retrospective studies, patchy records, and educated guesses from hospital and death data, since no centralised system logged every case. The measles vaccine, licensed globally in 1963 and rolled out in Australia by 1968 (with Victoria starting in 1969, began cutting cases late in the decade. By the 1960s, Australia’s case-fatality rate had dropped to 0.05-0.1%, down from earlier centuries thanks to better nutrition and care. Complications like pneumonia and encephalitis still sent kids to hospitals, but deaths were rare.

Back then, measles was just part of growing up, barely tracked with precision.

The abject failure of our health authorities and the leaders of the medical profession.

The resurgence of measles in Australia as of February 28, 2025, is a glaring testament to the abject failure of health authorities, whose blind fixation on vaccine-induced immunity has trampled the superior, time-honoured shield of natural immunity and plunged us into a manufactured crisis over a disease once tamed by mothers with common sense, cod liver oil and nutritional home care. Victoria’s eight cases—already eclipsing 2023’s measly seven—alongside NSW and Queensland’s bumbling response to imported infections, reveal a system rotting in its own arrogance, a far cry from the 1960s when measles swept through 300,000 to 500,000 Australians yearly, including tens of thousands in Victoria, as a mild rite of passage. Back then, before the vaccine’s 1968 debut, measles, mumps, and chickenpox were gentle childhood visitors—fevers and rashes that mothers managed with home remedies like cod liver oil, rich in vitamins A and D, and other natural tonics, not the panic now peddled by the Victorian Department of Health. These illnesses, far from the scourge authorities paint, were gateways to robust adult health, with emerging research—like that from the National Institutes of Health—suggesting early exposure might even guard against cancers and chronic diseases later in life.

Yet today, with local transmission creeping back a decade after the World Health Organisation crowned Australia measles-free in 2014, the Department of Health and Aged Care flails, issuing feeble alerts via NSW Health and Queensland Health while cases climb—56 in 2024, a third of that in just two months now. They cling to their precious MMR, touting its 99.7% efficacy (Doherty Institute), as if waning protection and breakthrough infections don’t laugh in its face—a pale imitation of the lifelong immunity nature once granted freely. Where were the border clamps when Vietnam’s 38,000 cases last year screamed red flags? Where’s the real-time tracking as global outbreaks, mapped by the CDC, spill over, threatening the 7% unvaccinated and infants too young for shots (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare)?

This isn’t vigilance—it’s a grotesque betrayal. The National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance boasts of 90% coverage, yet Dr. Katherine Gibney’s limp claim that it “should” hold rings hollow when it’s already failing. Authorities scapegoat vaccine hesitancy, a buzzword buzzing on X Corp, to mask their own sins: ignoring natural immunity’s primacy, dismissing the wisdom of past generations who nursed these viruses with care, and erasing the protective legacy of childhood exposure—all for a sterile, brittle reliance on needles.

Measles was never the enemy; this cowardly, shortsighted bureaucracy is, stripping away health’s natural foundations while fumbling a disease they’ve turned into their own undoing.

My Notes

• Natural Immunity: Emphasized as superior and lifelong, contrasting with vaccine limitations.

• Mild Illnesses: Measles, mumps, and chickenpox are manageable, with historical acceptance.

• Home Remedies: Cod liver oil (vitamins A and D) and maternal care highlighted, drawing from traditional knowledge. IV vitamin C for sepsis.

• Protective Exposure: Linked to NIH research on potential long-term benefits, reinforcing the rite-of-passage narrative.

• Criticism: Authorities are slammed for neglecting these truths, botching containment, and over-relying on vaccines.

Ian Brighthope