VANCOUVER – After years of labouring in the unrewarding, dead-end job of being a curable disease, hoping for some sort of breakthrough evolution that would allow it to regain its full epidemic potential, measles today announced that such a leap appears to no longer be necessary.

“This is because, for reasons that we as a nucleic acid molecule in a protein coat cannot fully comprehend, people have stopped vaccinating their children,” said a spokesvirus for the nearly 1500-year-old disease, speaking from a SkyTrain station’s escalator handrail, in Vancouver, B.C.

“We can only assume that, despite their assurances otherwise, it’s because they don’t love them enough,” the single-stranded, negative sense, enveloped RNA virus added, matter-of-factly. “Why else would a parent voluntarily opt-out of death avoidance for their dear little mutations?”

The disease says that being able to once again infect entire populations that had previously been rendered immune by the 1963 discovery of an effective vaccine against it, “Greatly exceeds even the wildest of expectations that we went into our online campaign against vaccines with.”

“That’s correct,” the capsid-covered particle adds, confirming that it just said what we thought it just said. “We, the measles, started the anti-vaxxer movement, for obvious reasons. But we never actually thought that shit would catch on. Who the hell believes a shot causes autism? Even after it’s been disproved 106 to Sunday by peer-reviewed studies. Not that we’re complaining.”

The measle says that when the virus began to see the surprising effectiveness of their half-assed trolling of the proven science of vaccines, they realized that maybe they didn’t need to evolve after all.

“Why bother, if people are going to go out of their way to catch the same classic formula? It’s like we always say: ‘If it ain’t permanently cured, don’t fix it.'”

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