This is one of those stories that should not even exist anymore. Measles was eliminated in this country. That was not an opinion. That was the result of decades of boring public health work that nobody noticed because it worked. Now it is back and spreading and people inside the system are saying out loud that this was predictable.
South Carolina just quarantined hundreds of people. West Texas buried two children. Those sentences should not sit next to each other in 2025 America, but here they are.
Measles outbreaks are spreading across the U.S., and the nation is likely to lose its status as a country where the disease is eliminated, something that infectious disease specialists say is directly related to President Trump’s appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
South Carolina this week quarantined at least 254 people after confirming more than two dozen measles cases in the state. It’s the latest in what has been the worst year for measles in the U.S. in recent history.
An outbreak in West Texas this year saw more than 700 confirmed cases since January and the deaths of two children. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there have been 47 reported outbreaks in the country this year.
“This is a very clear example of the damage that the anti vaccine movement has done in the United States,” said Fiona Havers, adjunct associate professor at the Emory School of Medicine and a former infectious disease staffer at the CDC.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5647002-measles-status-outbreaks-kennedy/
What is striking is how tired the experts sound. They are not panicking. They are not exaggerating. They are explaining something they have been warning about for years and watching it finally happen. The disease spreads quietly at first. Then the holidays hit. Travel happens. Families gather. And suddenly it is everywhere again.
That pivotal moment, he said, materialized this month.
Health officials had already been monitoring the spread of measles in pockets across the country. Nationally, more than 1,900 measles cases have been reported so far this year, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Three unvaccinated people, including two children, have died.
But the latest rise in South Carolina cases has deeply concerned health officials who worry that the holiday season, a time for family gatherings, may further spread an already highly contagious disease, especially among children.
Linda Bell, the state epidemiologist, noted this week that travel around Thanksgiving had most likely contributed to the current rise in cases.
The disruptions from the outbreak, which started in October, have been significant, even for those who are not sick. For instance, unvaccinated people exposed to the virus have been asked to quarantine for 21 days; some students have had to do so twice already.
“That’s a significant amount of time,” Dr. Bell said in a news conference. “Vaccination continues to be the best way to prevent the disruption that measles is causing to people’s education, to employment.”
In the 2024 25 school year, about 90 percent of students in Spartanburg County had all of the required childhood immunizations, including the measles, mumps and rubella shot, commonly known as the M.M.R. vaccine. That’s slightly below the national average and below the 95 percent target that experts consider necessary to stem the spread of measles.
The level of worry in Spartanburg, though, appears to be correlated with whether or not one believes in the general efficacy of vaccines, an “anti vax” notion that has been spearheaded in part by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s health secretary.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/13/us/a-measles-outbreak-brings-with-it-echoes-of-the-pandemic.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8U8.YBCu.QaQhFSPyCdpo
Ninety percent sounds high until you realize it is not enough. Measles does not care about vibes or politics or distrust. It spreads anyway. It finds the gaps. It always has. That is the part people forgot. Or chose to forget.
Once a country starts reopening arguments it already settled, the cost shows up fast. Not in think pieces. In quarantines. In missed school. In hospital rooms. In funerals.