Samoa’s measles epidemic is part of a global, unprecedented resurgence of cases

Imagine a disease outbreak so severe that if you’re not vaccinated, you flag your home with a red cloth outside your door — so vaccinators can find you. That is what is happening in Samoa, a Pacific Ocean island country, amid an unprecedented measles epidemic. Businesses, social services and schools have shut down for two days this week to conduct a massive vaccine drive. “A lot of our people have been so safe in the sense that this was not the kind of disease that resulted in deaths, that they seem to take a kind of lackadaisical attitude to all the warnings we had issued,” said Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi at a news conference this week. On this small island of just 200,000 people, 4,000 have come down with measles, and at least 60 have died since the outbreak. Nearly four years ago, in 2016, measles hit an all-time low around the globe,...