New Year, But The Same Measles Crises Rages On
Meet the new year, same as the old year, at least as far as America’s measles problem goes. We talked a lot about this disease last year, and for good reason. In RFK Jr.’s first year as Secretary of HHS, America managed to suffer its worst measles infection count since 1991. A direct product of the anti-vaxxer bullshit Kennedy and his followers have been pushing for years, America collected 2,144 confirmed cases of measles in 2025. That number is certainly an under-count, with who knows how many undiagnosed cases existing out there. Three people, including two otherwise healthy children, died. America is all but certain to have lost its elimination status of the disease. Of all the gravel-mouthed words that spilled out of Kennedy’s mouth in 2025, there were relatively few of them reserved for this highly contagious and deadly disease that is now circulating via various outbreaks in the country who’s health he’s in charge of managing.
The start of 2026 is likely to set us up for an even worse year for measles than the last. Over 5% of the total infections of measles in 2025 were reported in the last week of the year or so. It’s not slowing down. This disaster of a train may be still pulling out of the station, but it’s picking up speed. And while the CDC’s measles website, linked above, isn’t updated more than once a week at most, health officials are reporting a ton of infections in the ongoing South Carolina outbreak alone.
In a regularly scheduled update this afternoon, the health department said 99 cases were identified since Tuesday, bringing the outbreak total to 310 cases. There are currently 200 people in quarantine and nine in isolation. However, the outbreak is expanding so quickly and with so many exposure sites that health officials are struggling to trace cases and identify people at risk.
“An increasing number of public exposure sites are being identified with likely hundreds more people exposed who are not aware they should be in quarantine if they are not immune to measles,” Linda Bell, state epidemiologist and the health department’s incident commander for the measles outbreak, said in the announcement. “Previous measles transmission studies have shown that one measles case can result in up to 20 new infections among unvaccinated contacts.”
It’s not just the unvaccinated any longer. As 2025 went on, we began to see an uptick in what are called “breakthrough cases.” Health professionals who know what they’re talking about will tell you that 2 doses of the MMR vaccine are roughly 97% effective in preventing a measles infection. That leaves 3% of people exposed at a minimum and that’s before we get into the discussion of how that number is impacted the lower we get from the 95% immunization target to achieve true herd immunity. And if you followed the reported infection statistics throughout last year as I did, you saw the percentage of infections occurring among those that had gotten either 1 or 2 doses of the MMR vaccine increase.
At the end of the year, 3% of the infected had had one dose of the MMR vaccine, and 4% had two doses. Early in the year, those were hovering between 1% and 2% and then grew. Responsible people who protected not only themselves but their fellow citizens by doing the right thing and getting their shots were put at risk and infected by those who didn’t. This failure of civil responsibility once again went largely unchallenged by RFK Jr. because of some combination of lunacy and his own financial interests.
And the real fun hasn’t even begun yet. Measles is crazy infectious and likes to hide its contagious nature early in the infection, not to mention that the disease causes immunity amnesia for all kinds of other diseases, making those infected susceptible to all kinds of diseases despite inoculation, such as chickenpox and COVID19.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which only has data as of January 6, has tallied three confirmed cases for this year (two in South Carolina and one in North Carolina, linked to the South Carolina outbreak). Since then, South Carolina reported 26 cases on Tuesday and 99 today, totaling 125. North Carolina also reported three additional cases Tuesday, again linked to the South Carolina outbreak. In all, that brings the US tally to at least 131 just nine days into the year.
Do the math. Even if we pretend for a moment that infectious diseases like measles don’t work on an exponential schedule, we’re already on pace for well over 5,000 measles infections this year. Unless something is done, it will be many, many more cases than that. And a possible resurgence of COVID19, something to which I really did think Trump would be particularly allergic.
Unfortunately, rationality appears to have gone out of style. Replaced, I suppose, by a facial rash that then descends into further complications.