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Measles Outbreaks Abound Under RFK Jr.’s Inaction
from the needless-suffering dept
You may be tired of hearing about measles by now, but measles is not tired of infecting Americans. It’s worth reminding ourselves that this is a disease that was declared gone in America. Cases and transmission rates were so low in 2000, thanks almost entirely to the widespread promotion and adoption of the MMR vaccine, that we officially put the disease on America’s pay-no-mind list.
But thanks to RFK Jr.’s promotion of vaccine conspiracy theories, ironically demoted in preference of conspiracy theories more recently of Tylenol and circumcision, fewer people got themselves or their children vaccinated and the case counts began to rise. The ultimate betrayal of our public health system was performed by Donald Trump and his compliant drones in Congress in putting Kennedy in charge of HHS and America’s health. That was combined with whatever that whole DOGE experience was supposed to be, which helped to reduce HHS staffing by at least 1/8th of its previous workforce. Once that was done, the consequences for disease control became inevitable.
You will have heard about the huge measles outbreak that began in Texas. We also just talked about another outbreak that is currently underway in South Carolina that is seeing hundreds of children in quarantine. But those are certainly not the only places where measles cases in at least double digits are popping up in 2025. Here’s a map that shows where cases are occurring, with the larger circles being a large number of cases.
It’s basically everywhere, including in Alaska and Hawaii. That map is also lagging behind CDC’s reported counts, which itself lags weekly, as the reporting is only updated every Wednesday. And those numbers? Yeah, they are almost certainly wildly under-reported.
Nearly two months after a deadly, massive measles outbreak in Texas was declared over, the highly contagious disease continues to spread across the country. The U.S. has now confirmed 1,596 cases this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the highest annual number in more than three decades.
But the true total could be even higher, says Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“If you talk to people on the ground, including not only in Texas, but other states, they all say the same thing, which is that the numbers are much worse than that. Probably closer to 5,000 cases,” Offit says. “And it’s not done.”
Not by a long shot. If you’re not from the Southwest, you probably haven’t even heard about the new outbreak occurring along the border of Arizona and Utah, where over 130 total cases of measles have been reported just this year. That’s about half the number of measles cases that occurred in 2024 nationally. Minnesota also is seeing a surge in new cases very recently. While the officially reported case count there is listed at 20, experts expect that to grow as those cases have been popping up these past few weeks.
So how many outbreaks have there been this year? Way more than you probably think, and definitely way more than Kennedy or anyone at HHS is talking about.
All told, the CDC has confirmed 44 measles outbreaks in 41 states this year. The agency defines an outbreak as three or more cases that are linked. The vast majority of cases were in people who were unvaccinated; 27% percent have been in children under the age of 5. About 1 in 8 measles cases have resulted in hospitalization.
This is all preventable. We can’t seriously want to go back to the days like in 1990 when there were nearly 28,000 cases of measles… can we? And what horrible, painful thing do we have to do to make sure more people, and especially children, aren’t getting this horrific and deadly disease?
Well, if you believe the libtard nerds over at Harvard, you just have to get a couple of shots.
While news about measles in recent months may have been a surprise, it’s also alarming. Experts warn that the number of cases (and possibly deaths) are likely to increase. And due to falling vaccination rates, outbreaks are bound to keep occurring. One study estimates that between nine and 15 million children in the US could be susceptible to measles.
But there’s also good news: we know that measles outbreaks can be contained and the disease itself can be eliminated. Learn how to protect yourself and your family. Engage respectfully with people who are vaccine hesitant: share what you’ve learned from reliable sources about the disease, especially about the well-established safety of vaccination.
Too late, Harvard. This country has been conditioned to distrust “experts” and “knowledge” and “data.” We do shit on vibes now.
This is going to get worse before it gets better. The story of how we eliminated measles long ago is found in that same 1990 statistic I cited earlier. The public was so horrified with what was happening to children in this country that they were ready to get a safe and effective MMR vaccine to put it to an end.
Why in the hell do we have to wait for those horrors to resurface before we put this diseased genie back in the bottle?
Filed Under: cdc, health and human services, measles, preventable diseases, rfk jr.
Comments on “Measles Outbreaks Abound Under RFK Jr.’s Inaction”
Never underestimate humanity’s ability to take progress for granted. Vaccines were so effective people forgot what they were for.
Because people forgot (or never learned) how bad measles was.
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I am reminded of this quote from Will Rogers: “There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”
Unfortunately, the quote isn’t exactly accurate here. Children are forced to suffer the consequences of their parents’ neglect.
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That, and this: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/anti-vaccine-studies-flawed/681648/
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This kind of ignorance isn’t just due to people not recognizing how bad measles can be
It’s also because the Profits of Death have put in the spadework in consistent decades of lying to make themselves rich
Re: A general problem with danger management
You have survivorship bias: “nothing has happened yet, so what I am doing must be safe”.
That is particularly bad for lethal or otherwise once-a-lifetime diseases (like many viral infections ending with permanent immunity).
Learning your lesson buys you nothing if it doesn’t apply any more.
“The public was so horrified with what was happening to children”
Ha! School shootings are a part of your culture, and a part you vigorously defend at every choice. No other country in the world decided gun owners were more important than children.
Excuse me if I don’t find this argument compelling.
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Ok, you’re right, it happened by fucking magic imposed by authoritarian Deep Science who abducted people in their sleep to immunize them. Lol, what did you think the X Files was based on?
That is the “good” news. You don’t have to wait. It’ll be conspiracy theories and excuses all the way to the intensive care and then denials about reality.
This will take a generation or two, until the point where people surviving vaccine preventable diseases as invalids are a daily encounter on the streets again. And even then the denials will keep coming.
Will Rogers: “There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”
There will be some who exclaim: That tickles so good since fascists are such fans of BDSM.
prior to vaccines, upwards of 50-60% mortality by age 15
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All of the following diseases can be vaccinated against. Number is peak mortality per capita (i.e., per 100,000 people)
In 1900, the death rates for 1-4 year olds (from any cause) was 200 pc.
(Source)
Check your titers or just get a quick booster if there’s any question at all about your immunity. Fortunately enough, measles isn’t particularly conducive to meaningful evolution as it bounces from host to host among the unvaccinated. Our vaccines target enough sites, and the pathogen is stable enough, that immunity in the vaccinated should more or less hold through a measles epidemic.
Don’t wait for it to get bad. Prepare now.
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The reason that Measles doesn’t mutate to bypass vaccines is not that it sticks to the unvaccinated. Since every single time it tries to infect a vaccinated person that is a test to see if that strain of Measles can bypass the vaccination.
Which is why antivaxxers are so dangerous, they not just harm themselves and their kids, they create a larger, for lack of better description, pool of test subjects to see if a vaccination against a disease can be bypassed.
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It can’t readily be bypassed with measles. The entire virus would effectively have to mutate into something other than measles.
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I was alive in 1990. I don’t remember anyone clamboring for a measles vaccine. I DO remember the pediatrician telling me in 1993 that if I didn’t give it to my newborn child, the baby would be taken away for medical neglect.
I honestly don’t remember measles being that bad. It felt like a solution in need of a problem when they rolled out the vaccines. Now, mumps and rubella–different story. They could be really bad, deadly even. Measles? Not so much.
But I’m a conservative. All of my opinions should be discounted automatically because I do my own research instead of trusting the science.
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I hope you’re unvaccinated.
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All of my opinions should be discounted automatically because I do my own research instead of trusting the science.
Exactly! Because I suspect your qualifications around how you interpret your ‘research’ is based solely on some anti-vax nut’s opinion, rather than a consensus of thousands of scientists much smarter, and with more experience than you with both measles AND research.
Whenever I hear you people say ‘you did your own research’ I chuckle and anxiously await for the Darwin Award competition that ensues. Just like with COVID…all those ‘researchers’ clinging to life on ventilators for a non-existent virus, while the family gets to see how well they can handle a six-figure hospital bill with the insurance they don’t have.
But this time, they’re putting their children at risk. What should concern you ‘self-research’ people is that people like me have begun to really not give a shit if your kid dies from measles or has debilitating complications later.
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“Measles is no big deal” is certainly a take, I suppose….
Re: We got a self-aware one, here
Yes.
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Facts not in evidence.
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Good thing it doesn’t matter what you remember. Measles is highly contagious, and a big part of why it’s currently spreading in the US is the nonsense that RFK Jr. and his HHS is spreading.
Not sure if serious, but yes, “doing your own research” instead of listening to actual medical experts makes your opinion on the subject invalid.
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You can’t remember what you don’t deign learn. And about it being bad, look at this graph and guess when the vaccine was introduced: Rate of measles cases and deaths in the United States, 1919 to 2024
Here’s a thought: There’s no real downsides at all to being vaccinated against measles but if you aren’t the chances of you dying from contracting it is much much higher, and the younger you are the higher the chance is. This goes for almost all vaccines.
Saying measles isn’t bad is like saying eating raw chicken isn’t bad.
Perhaps you should trust the science and medical experts instead of an unreliable memory and your own bad research, but I guess you are one of those people that reasons that “I know what I know” and opinions from experts are something to ignore.
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“There is no real downsides at all to being vaccinated against measles . . . .” Do you have any proof of this?
I know I’m rare in my distrust of the government, but I don’t want them in my cell phone OR in my body. There can never be ZERO risk in putting artificial substances in a humans body. This is especially true at scale. I have never seen a true placebo trial of the MMR vaccine. And I have especially never seen one that studies the effects on a human body for 50 plus years.
I applaud your sourcing the chart, however. It does seem to suggest that 12 in every 100,000 people in 1919 died from measles. And death is worse than any condition that leave the human person remaining alive. Accepting all that, one out of every 40ish people are now autistic. When I was a child, the closest thing to autism was me. I realize placing that fact into evidence is enough to make everyone here apoplectic. But it’s a truth that should be explored, right? Or should we wait until that number is one out of every one person is autism until we try to figure out why this is?
I love all of the people who disclaim my expertise as if they know me. But, again. I’m the resident whipping-boy because I have independent thoughts.
If we went back to 12 deaths per 100,000 and eliminated autism, I think that would be a net win for society. Here’s where you get to lose your mind about how cruel I am. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
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No, it’s because you think just being an anti-expert, anti-concensus contrarian automatically makes you the smortest, specialest boi
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The problem is that you’re acting like autism is something that needs to be prevented. As long as you keep doing that, nobody will take you seriously, no matter how much you claim “I’m autistic too, so it’s okay for me to say”. It’s not.
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Yes, its called over 60 years of history since the vaccine was introduced and as far as I’m aware there have been zero deaths attributed to it in healthy people. It should be noted that people who are immunocompromised or in poor health can die from the vaccines which has happened which why it shouldn’t be given to them. About 2-3 million unvaccinated people die from measles every year.
Which government? There’s a reason I ask this.
What does the government has to do with getting vaccinated?
Do you have any idea of much artificial substances you ingest every day? Every manufactured item you surround yourself with outgas or leave particulates you breath in. Every foodstuff you buy contains artificial substances, even the “clean” water you drink contains artificial substances. Any kind of medication you use contains artificial substances. It’s interesting that you choose to forgo something that at scale is most likely more safe than the food you eat.
It is called being unvaccinated and dying to a preventable infection. Adding to that, there is no difference in autism diagnoses between vaccinated and unvaccinated people.
If you want to link vaccines to autism, I can do it the other way around for the simple reason that correlation isn’t causation which means autism actually causes vaccines!
Or perhaps there has been progress in medicine, neurology and how to diagnose people, people who in earlier times was called “village idiots”, “special”, “eccentric”, “blessed”, “wild children”, “retarded” and “anti social”. I can go on, but I hope you get the point.
Is has been explored, extensively. But do keep repeating talking points from a discredited charlatan, Andrew Wakefield, that was paid to produce a fraudulent study linking vaccines to autism.
If you have to ask this question I can only conclude that you willingly ignore facts and instead go looking for anything that reinforces your belief. That’s not doing research, that’s confirmation bias.
So far I haven’t seen any expertise. What you do have though, are beliefs and you think your “independent thoughts” make them facts. Being contrarian just because you don’t like or agree with the consensus of experts is certainly one way to make one’s life more interesting and possibly deadly. Being skeptical is a healthy trait, but substituting known facts with conspiracy theories and opinions from random people on the internet is just stupid.
I do hope some of your relatives, grand children and friends die to an easily preventable disease. You may think I’m cruel but this is exactly what you are arguing for and your arguments for this are based on alternate facts, conspiracy theories, fraudulent studies and lies the anti-vax nutters spew. You also have the abhorrent idea that it’s better being dead than being diagnosed with autism.
Essentially, you are an ignorant death cultist.
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I knew I could get you to the point where you would hurl invective rather than deal with my argument. Happens all the time.
I note with interest that you pivoted from “no downsides” to “deaths.” Maybe there haven’t been any deaths in otherwise-healthy people who take the vaccine. I don’t take that as a given. However, more importantly, I can think of many things that are a “downsides” that don’t rise to the level of death.
I see you want my children to die. I get it. I have many living, productive, intelligent children. They may deserve death; I’m unaware of the reason why, though. However, to frame your response more precisely, if one or all of my children were among the 12 out of 100,000 people to die from measles without vaccination, and if that lack of vaccination prevented 2,500 out of those same 100,000 people from being autistic, then, yes. I would accept that.
I do, however, note that the general status of medical care (vaccines notwithstanding) has improved dramatically. I suspect that the death rate would be much lower than 12 per 100,000 if the population were not forced to accept these vaccines.
I am not a medical, immunological, virological, or other scientific expert or researcher. I am a litigator. I’ve battled dozens of times to prove crazy things to skeptical juries in the United States (the government I do not trust, btw). I win far more often than I lose. My perspective is important because of this one fact: like the tobacco companies before them, the vaccine manufacturers sought and received immunity from lawsuits in order to provide their poison. How do I know it’s poison? Because you wouldn’t need immunity from lawsuits for putting beneficial things in people’s bodies.
Call me kooky and a conspiracy theorist. Hurl invective. Engage in ad hominem all you like. But just once, let me sue them and let me force them to produce their evidence in a courtroom. I bet I could get 12 people anywhere in this country to agree with me once the evidence is produced. Vaccines are poison.
Hopefully I will die of COVID soon. It will make everyone happy. I AM unvaccinated. Sadly, I’ve last decades. Long enough to see debate and the pursuit of truth crushed by those who don’t grapple with facts. Rather, they impose pejoratives on those with whom they disagree. Kinda Trumpian, if you think about it.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
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I didn’t hurl any invectives, I called you an ignorant death cultist – which is very fitting because you have substituted factual reality with beliefs not based on facts which leads to deaths, you even admitted to it in your closing paragraph were you think some deaths are no big deal or are you actually denying that you thought some extra deaths is just fine? If that’s not the words of a death cultist I don’t know what is.
You “note with interest”, but you didn’t actually understand what I said and are nitpicking. If I said “there are no real downsides with exercising” and then later added the caveat “unless you have heart problems”, do that negate or prove the that statement is wrong? All actions have risks attached to them, but some risks are so negligible there’s no reason to mention them unless certain conditions arise.
And this tell me you don’t know what autism is. You seem to think it’s debilitating disease that makes people unable to function and are better off dead. The death cultist have spoken once again.
There’s a reason the formal medical term is ASD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, which means you have met and interacted with a lot of people with ASD without you even knowing you did because most people with ASD is indistinguishable from anyone else in their behavior.
You really don’t understand facts, correlation and causation, do you? The above statement is so stupid and far fetched it boggles the mind.
Convincing a jury doesn’t need facts but it usually helps. And in regards to immunity from lawsuits, do you actually believe vaccine manufacturers have that in every country? VICP is something unique to the US and it was created as a response to a number of lawsuits that would have stopped the production of vaccines in the US.
And your language here proves once again that you don’t believe in facts, because you actually seem to believe vaccines are poison. The conclusion here is that you couldn’t give a shit about facts, you only want confirmation for your beliefs.
This is happened in other countries, guess what happened? I’ll just add, if your beliefs could be proved with hard evidence don’t you think some big lawyer firm somewhere outside the US would have done it because of the huge potential payout in such a case? The answer is simple, there’s no money to be had unless they want to milk the plaintiff for all their worth.
If someone says stupid things and someone points this out, and the response to that is more stupid things being said, I will call that person stupid. I don’t like stupid people because they are a drag on humanity and they tend to fuck things up for the rest of us, including making us die unnecessary. So when you think more deaths are just fine because you don’t know what autism actually entails, you are a death cultist. It’s not a pejorative or an invective, it’s a classification based on your stated beliefs.
The following statement is a fact: Adverse reactions from a vaccine < adverse reactions from the disease
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Golly gosh. Gee whiz. You got me.
But never forget: 9 out of 10 doctors prefer Camel cigarettes!
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If you only understood how ironic that you say that and how it relates to the progress of medical science, including diagnosing autism.
Just to make it clear why it’s so ironic, you’re literally the doctor 60 years later who still prefer Camel cigarettes and are promoting them.
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Hey, here’s a truth bomb for you: Being a contrarian doesn’t make you a free thinker. In fact, if the only thing you’re able to think is the opposite of what people around you say, you’re actually less free in your thoughts than average.
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“There is no real downsides at all to being vaccinated against measles . . . .” Do you have any proof of this?
Yep, my own research.
Do you see how ignorant you sound now?
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But I’m a conservative. All of my opinions should be discounted automatically because I do my own research instead of trusting the science.
Not because you’re conservative, just because you’re wrong and apparently one of those ‘vaccines cause autism’ pro-plaguers if your comment above is any indication.
You say you ‘did your own research’, maybe ditch the ego and consider that perhaps a bunch of people have done the research, have the education and expertise to know the subject better than you and say you’re wrong.
Re: Re: Research
As someone who is Autistic and has a problem with hyper fixation, I spent 2 years of covid learning about mRNA Vaccines. How they work, metabolic pathways, unintended side effects down to what the broken down mRNA “cells” do after they fall apart.
So I can say clearly, mRNA is safe. Its like a virus cell, but no payload, heck it doesn’t even have the normal stuff that holds cells together, so it falls apart in the body super quick. This means it runs around the body handshaking your cells, letting your immune system find it, and not long after goes poof as it self destructs.
But all these “Do your research” types don’t actually want to get a hyper fixation, learn all the things related to the topic at hand, they want to look at the ingredients, call something with a long name poison. They want to create Doubt, push some non vax agenda, and I guess cause people pain and harm by being carriers. They do desperately want the conspiracy to be true.
The truth is sadly rather normal, they work, really dang well too.
Enough of this
ICE and the others can NOW
Start watching OUT GOING flights for anyone with a Fever.
Why should the USA be allowed to let these persons wonder around OUTSIDE the USA.
So, all Air, Sea, water travel SHOULD BE restricted to anyone in the USA with a Fever.
I think the time of infection takes about 7-10 days Before it shows?
To tell the story,
Of a Kid in Shriners Hospital, in the 60’s. Shriners is RESTRICTED for Other children.
Family had 1 son in the Hospital and Snuck the 2nd son in the back door.
2nd son had a friend that had Measles. And that Family DIDNT TELL ANYONE.
6 kids Caught the Contagion. In a Hospital of over 200 Children Lying in Beds in a Group Hall.
2 weeks, of being knocked out. I got hit hard.
So, lets restrict Travel OUT of the USA, or the other countries, MIGHT GET UPSET. And Monitor for Fevers on LANDING. And kick peopl eout of the country.
Queue another generation or two with a LOT of dead and/or maimed kids...
Why in the hell do we have to wait for those horrors to resurface before we put this diseased genie back in the bottle?
Ego and willful ignorance, where there’s been enough time since measles was killing people directly and indirectly on the regular that people forgot just how horrific it was, on top of people who’ve been conditioned that ‘the experts’ don’t know anything and what you should really be listening to is some crank with a podcast or book because those with actual education and expertise say they’re wrong and that must mean they’re on to something.
Waiting for Polio
AND the LEAD scare to hit..
1 state had all there money SET aside for Lead repairs in Schools, DUMPED.
Why in hell has this LASTED since the 70’s.
Waiting for Polio
AND the LEAD scare to hit..
1 state had all there money SET aside for Lead repairs in Schools, DUMPED.
Why in hell has this LASTED since the 70’s.