A Rash Outbreak of Measles

May 19th, 2025

Daniel Song

During a recent House of Representatives hearing, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, testified that “people should [not] be taking medical advice from me.” Perhaps that was a good thing for Kennedy to clarify, considering he just swam in a sewage-infested D.C. creek. However, Kennedy did offer a sound piece of advice when he agreed that he would “probably” vaccinate his children with the measles vaccine if he had them.

In the United States, measles has recently had a resurgence, with the CDC reporting 1001 measles cases and 3 deaths in 2025. This spread puts the U.S.’s current position of measles elimination, which means that outbreaks start from imported and not domestic cases, at risk. One of the main causes of this resurgence is falling vaccination rates as 96% of all measles patients were not vaccinated. Data from the CDC National Immunization Survey found that coverage with childhood vaccines recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices was 1.3 to 7.8% lower among children born in 2020 and 2021 than it was among those born in 2018 and 2019.

While almost three-quarters of U.S. adults support requiring that children be vaccinated against preventable diseases such as measles and over half support prohibiting unvaccinated children from attending school, either private or public, to protect children who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons, this figure has dropped since before the pandemic. As the pandemic reduced trust in our public health system and vaccine misinformation spreads faster than efforts to counter it, more families are opting out of routine vaccines with various medical, philosophical or religious reasons. Others may be recent immigrant families unfamiliar with the U.S. health system or lack English proficiency who support vaccines but end up falling through the cracks.

The increase in vaccine exemptions have fallen along political lines, with pro-Trump conservative states seeing a much higher increase in exemptions compared to pro-Harris liberal states. From 2001 to 2024, the rate of Democrats agreeing that parents getting their child vaccinated was important decreased only slightly from 66% to 63% while the rate for Republicans dropped sharply from 62% to 26%. However, the rate of children with no vaccination record shot up in both Trump and Harris states. In many states, conservative governments have reduced vaccine requirements and increased exemptions, none more than Wisconsin, where no county has a measles vaccination rate above 85%. It allows opt-out for personal-conviction reasons (along with medical and religious exemptions, which most states have), and parents only have to submit a written note, which is extremely lenient compared to other states.

Despite the measles vaccine being 97% effective, Kennedy has also exacerbated distrust in vaccines; instead of strongly encouraging people to get vaccinated for measles, he has focused energy on finding new miracle treatments for measles and other unorthodox methods like vitamin A and cod liver oil. Researchers overwhelmingly conclude that these treatments do not help stop the spread of measles or cure those who are infected. In fact, far fewer people would need to be treatments if they got the vaccine. Dr. Scott Weaver, director of the Institute for Human Infections and Immunity at the University of Texas Medical Branch, concludes that "Good nutrition is absolutely no substitute for vaccination to prevent someone's own risk for developing severe, maybe fatal, measles," he added.

Ultimately, if public health officials fail to act, measles will become epidemic and cost thousands of lives. An April 2025 study published in JAMA estimated that, if current childhood vaccination rates remain unchanged, measles may reestablish endemicity with an estimated 851,300 cases over 25 years and 850 deaths.

Extemp question: How should public health officials increase vaccination rates for measles in the United States?