Hi, this is Levi in Hongzhou, China. I just finally bought tickets for Neh Jia Tu, the new record holder for the highest grossing movie of all time in China. This podcast was recorded at 12.23 p.m. on Monday, March 10th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I will probably still be searching all the Chinese I didn't understand

in this two-hour, 20-minute movie everyone in China is talking about.

Okay, here's the show.

Well, now I know what I'm Googling after this podcast is over.

My son was telling me about this movie and the push, actually, in China, to make it the most

seen movie of all time. There's a whole PR thing behind that, too. It's really interesting.

That's fascinating. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and

correspondent. And NPR's health correspondent, Maria Godoy, joins us today. Hi, Maria.

Hi, how are you? I'm good. And this is, we should note your very first time on the politics

podcast, and we are so happy to have you today. Because today we're going to talk about measles

and how the nation is responding to an ongoing outbreak in West Texas as new cases pop up across the country.

Maria, you are health and science expert.

Let's start with a little bit of 101.

Can you just explain what exactly measles is and how infectious it is?

Yeah, so measles is probably one of the most contagious diseases known to mankind.

It's more contagious than Ebola, polio, chickenpox, you know, just about anything you can think of.

The way I'd like to explain it is like when you think of how contagious a disease is, like in a vacuum where nobody is vaccinated,

for every person who's sick with measles,

they would go on average to infect 18 other people. And for context, the original strain of the

coronavirus, you know, circa 2020, for every person that was infected with that, roughly, they went on to,

in fact, roughly three others. And we also how that went. So that gives you a great perspective on how, you know, in the wild, measles, when I say in the wild, I mean in an unvaccinated universe, how infectious it can be.

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