Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines “tipping point” as the critical point in a situation, process or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place.

A tipping point was reached quickly in 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fast-forward to today, when the question is whether a tipping point is about to be reached — or perhaps already has been reached — regarding measles, an acute contagious disease caused by a morbillivirus and marked especially by an eruption of distinct red circular spots.

Using the 1950s as an example, measles, along with its “enemy cohorts” chicken pox and mumps, were almost a rite of growing up until the measles, mumps and rubella (German measles), or MMR, vaccine was developed a few years later.

Published reports state that 2.6 million measles deaths worldwide occurred per year prior to immunization becoming common. That number reportedly decreased to 122,000 deaths as of 2012, mostly in low-income countries, and between 2000 and 2018, vaccinations had decreased measles deaths by 73%.

The U.S. declared measles eliminated 25 years ago, and the World Health Organization considers measles eliminated in countries where there is no endemic spread for at least 12 months under a robust tracking system.

However, the growing measles outbreak in West Texas poses a threat to the United States’ “measles eliminated” accomplishment. The troubling situation currently multiplying could have been avoided.

About the issue of the tipping point:

In an article published in the May 2 edition of the Wall Street Journal, Stanford University’s Dr. Nathan Lo, an assistant professor of infectious diseases, expressed the viewpoint that this country “is really on this tipping point.”

Meanwhile, according to the Journal, some public health leaders and epidemiologists believe that if the months-long Texas outbreak, which began in January, lasts longer than a year, the U.S.’s elimination status would be endangered, and be demoralizing and embarrassing.

“The U.S. losing its elimination status would underscore the ground the country has lost in its fight against measles,” the Journal said.

In its May 2 report, the Journal noted experts’ opinion that the MMR vaccine might be a victim of its own success — and it is easy to agree with that theory, since many people of this country never have encountered measles and, thus, don’t feel any urgency to have their children immunized.

Perhaps what is happening in Texas — and which already has spread to some other states — will cause them to believe otherwise.

Anyway, it should.

Measles has claimed its first lives in this country in over a decade, and to say merely that that is troubling is a gross understatement.

People’s lives are now much more mobile than they were in the 1950s. There are so many more opportunities now for measles to spread, either by way of modes of travel or the multiple interactions that are part of 2020s people’s lives.

Actually, it is amazing that the spread of the disease has not been much more rampant. If, or how soon, will measles become a significant health nuisance in the Southern Alleghenies region? If what is happening in the South isn’t brought under control quickly, it might not be long.

Even some vaccine opponents might experience a twinge of concern the next time they see a vehicle bearing a Texas license plate passing through or parked in their neighborhood.

More and more, those words “tipping point” are not words to consider lightly.