There’s no question that the world was alert and ready for the final installment of Phase three of the Marvel universe with “Avengers: Endgame.”
The movie grossed a little more than $350 million in North America and accumulated $1.2 billion worldwide in just one weekend – shattering projections and records – with many analysts believing it will surpass “Avatar” as being the highest grossing movie of all time.
And this shockingly deadly thing occurred at a midnight premiere of “Avengers: Endgame” at a midnight showing in Los Angeles, California.
Movie theaters are largely a safe place for a night of escapism.
Unfortunately, tragically, on a fateful night in July 2012, that wasn’t the case when James Eagan Holmes, dressed in tactical clothing, released a tear gas grenade at a Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado and opened fire on an audience watching “The Dark Night Rises.”
Twelve people were killed and seventy others were injured at the midnight showing for the finality of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.
But are there other deadly dangers you should fear when attending a movie?
The anonymous woman from Placentia allegedly contracted the illness while she was traveling overseas and was unaware of her sickness when she attended the blockbuster event.
She’s also a nurse who was likely contagious when she worked the hospital emergency room in Orange County just south of Los Angeles.
Measles cases have been exploding across the United States over the last month.
CNN reported that it was the highest on record too “since the disease was declared eliminated nationwide in 2000.”
So far in 2019 alone, America has seen 704 individual cases across 22 states, but they’ve been largely centered around communities with low vaccination rates.
The Centers for Disease Control recommends that children receive two vaccinations against measles, administered along with vaccines for the mumps and rubella.
Measles is highly infectious, resulting in the signature red spots and rashes along with a high fever, cough, runny nose and red, watery eyes, the CDC says.
Complications can start with ear infections and then lead to permanent hearing loss, pneumonia, swelling of the brain and death. Out of every 1,000 children who contract the disease, one or two will die.
Usually, this happens because of anti-vaxxer parents refusing to administer vaccines to their children.
Many of these parents strongly believe that vaccines can cause autism, although that’s only happened in a low-percentage of children who were administered vaccines.
Before the measles vaccination program was started in 1963, an estimated 3 to 4 million cases were reported in the U.S. each year. Of those cases, 500,000 were reported to the CDC each year, and between 400 and 500 deaths were reported among those patients, as well as 48,000 hospitalizations.
And unfortunately, parents who don’t vaccinate their children subject others who have been vaccinated to the virus even though it was declared eliminated in 2000.
But this was a case of someone contracting the virus overseas and carrying it unknowingly back into the United States and inadvertently spreading the illness.