Firstly, I don't think the bereaved and devastated families of those 500 (virtually all children) would consider the toll not particularly high. Secondly, you seem to ignore the fact that death was far from being the only adverse outcome from a measles infection. Complications from measles include the following. Ear infections, occurring in about 1 out of every 10 children, sometimes leading to permanent hearing loss. Pneumonia, affecting up to 1 out of every 20 children and the leading cause of death from measles in young kids. Encephalitis, developing in roughly 1 out of every 1,000 children, causing brain swelling that could lead to seizures, deafness, or intellectual disability. Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE): A rare, fatal central nervous system disease that emerges years after the initial infection. Finally, one of the most insidious and deleterious effects of measles was (and is) immune amnesia. The measles virus routinely weakens the immune system, making patients vulnerable to a whole range of other unrelated infections, sometimes temporarily but also sometimes on a long-term basis lasting for years. Just to put a number on it, there were on average 48,000 hospitalisations per year because of measles in the US per, before the vaccine became available. The deaths were actually only the tip of the iceberg, as far as the overall morbidity due to measles goes.
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