Measles in the West Coast

Measles was a disease killing thousands in the 20th century and was considered elimated in 2000. However in the past two years, the number of cases have started to spike.

As measles becomes more prevelant, it becomes increasingly important to understand the risks and chances of contact. The CDC chloropleth and bar graph are interactive and constantly updated so you can hover on each state and year to explore the data presented to draw your own informative insights. One example being a comparison between the West Coast and the Midwest, which is as follows.

As measles becomes more prevelant, it becomes increasingly important to understand the risks and chances of contact. The CDC is constntly updating information so you can interact with their data to draw your own informative insights.

The official CDC page details its history, number of cases, what you should know about it, public notices, vaccine information, as well as chlorpleths and data charts. The chlorpleths focus on weekly cases, cases across the states, and how vaccinated each state is. The data charts compare the number of cases across years, hospitalizations and deaths. The chlorpleth details the number of cases per state across three years, with lighter shades of blue signifying less cases and darker shades indicating more cases.

The U.S. Census Bureau defines the West Coast as Alaska, California, Oregon, Hawaii, and Washington as shown on the left.

The chloropleth shows many of these states as dark blue, meaning a high number of cases. Diving furthur, I pulled the number of cases from the csv table and cross-checked them and found the West Coast cases totaled 158 cases out of 2777 total cases in the U.S. While the states are dark blue, the West Coast only comprises 0.05% of cases.

Comparatively, the Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North and South Dakota) has more states but comprises only 0.08% of cases, a small increase from the West Coast. This shows there isn't a correlation with the number of states and number of cases as previously assumed raising the question of popualtion density.

Unsure of each state's population density, the image on the left lists each state's population density both alphabetically and by size in descneding order.

Using this information, it was found that the West Coast states have a higher population density than the Midwest.

The West Coast has a higher population density overall compared to the Midwest, reflecting the higher number of cases in each state.

Since these states are more densely populated, the chance of measles spreading is higher because you're more likely to be around more people who have also been in contact with someone with measles.