from the sick-of-this dept
Measles is so back, baby! I know, you had thought we were done talking about this vile disease. After all, the outbreak that started in Texas among communities that are relatively unvaccinated finally slowed down at the tail end of the summer. That came after that outbreak almost single-handedly generated more cases of measles in America than had occurred since 1992, as well as caused three deaths. This all occurred under the watch of RFK Jr. as head of HHS. Kennedy is largely responsible for the disease’s return, thanks to his long anti-vaccine advocacy and due to his direct mismanagement of the measles outbreaks. He also blames the victims of the disease, too.
Those who wanted to cover for Kennedy and the Trump administration attempted to point to the Texas outbreak starting before Trump was in office. That’s both not really true and besides the point since the explosion of cases happened well into the year, but it’s also a moot point since there are more outbreaks than just that one. 44 outbreaks, in fact, according to the CDC, compared with only 16 outbreaks in all of 2024. And, as always, the cases largely effect children and the unvaccinated.
And to give you yet another real world example of how this is all playing out, an outbreak is South Carolina has resulted in the necessary quarantining of 150 children due to their being unvaccinated.
Last week, officials in Greenville identified an eighth measles case that is potentially linked to the outbreak. Seven outbreak cases had been confirmed since September 25 in neighboring Spartanburg, where transmission was identified in two schools: Fairforest Elementary and Global Academy, a public charter school.
Across those two schools, at least 153 unvaccinated children were exposed to the virus and have been put in a 21-day quarantine, during which they are barred from attending school, state officials said in a press conference. Twenty-one days is the maximum incubation period, spanning from when a person is exposed to when they would develop a rash if infected.
As the ArsTechnica post goes on to note, Spartanburg has more unvaccinated children as a result of religious exemption than anywhere else in the state. South Carolina as a whole used to have the 95%+ vaccination rate that experts indicate provides the kind of herd immunity that keeps everyone safe, but that has dropped in the past several years to 93.7%. That might not seem like a big deal, but it is. And it’s even worse nation-wide when it comes to school-aged children.
The latest data indicates that the MMR vaccination coverage for US kindergartners was just 92.5 percent in the 2024–2025 school year, down from 95.2 percent in 2019–2020. Non-medical exemptions are now at 3.4 percent, an all-time high.
I am confident that any Almighty that may exist, and certainly any one worth believing in, doesn’t want you to get measles. If we don’t reverse the trend on our MMR vaccination rates, these outbreaks will continue to sprout up and more people will become infected. Eventually more of them will die.
But I don’t see that trend reversing while RFK Jr. is still in charge of American healthcare.
Filed Under: cdc, health and human services, measles, rfk jr., south carolina, vaccines
