There is no good reason for any American to become infected with the measles virus in 2025. Effective vaccines reduced the incidence of the disease to nearly negligible figures by the 1980s, and since a brief resurgence in the early 1990s, most years have had fewer than 100 cases across this enormous country.
This year, however, is poised to become the worst year for the highly contagious illness since 1992, or even earlier. We're only halfway through the year, and already America has seen more confirmed cases — 1,300 — than during any full year in the last three decades.
The reason is simple: Lower vaccination rates mean higher infection rates. The United States' vaccination rate has dropped below the 95% threshold necessary for herd immunity, when enough people are protected from infection that the virus can't circulate in the community.
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Insular communities have always had low vaccination rates. Outbreaks in these groups, such as Orthodox Jewish communities in New York (2019) and conservative Mennonite communities in Texas (2025), are partially responsible for the biggest measles numbers in recent years. In a large and diverse (and free) country, some communities will inevitably resist vaccination and some will have members get measles.
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Much more worrying is the broader upsurge in vaccine rejection, which threatens to introduce community spread of measles into the wider population. This is largely based on unfounded pseudo-scientific claims, an intuitive sense that measles is not a serious disease, and a generalized distrust of established institutions, including especially corporations. Let's briefly consider each of these.
First, as we discussed when warning that measles was on the cusp of a comeback just four months ago, the most widely circulated claim against the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine — that it is associated with the onset of autism — isn't just debunked: It was fraudulent from the beginning. And its author, British physician (now stripped of his license) Andrew Wakefield, made a lot of money based on his lies.
If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were your electrician, you’d get a shock every time you touched a light switch. As U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, he is dangerously steering us away from one of the greatest public health victories in human history.
Second, while measles is held in cultural memory as a minor childhood illness similar to chickenpox, that's a sanitized version of reality. Until the MMR vaccine was widely adopted, several hundred U.S. children died of measles every year due to complications such as pneumonia and brain inflammation. ...
While most children do experience measles as a weeklong annoyance, about a third will experience some kind of complication, and one in 500 will die. Three have died in the U.S. this year.
Third, there are many good reasons to distrust the motives of people and organizations, especially corporations, that benefit from selling their wares to the American public. About this general principle, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is correct. This is why we have supported some of his initiatives, such as ending the use of some food dyes, especially in items marketed to children, that have documented risks while providing no nutritional benefit.
Yet in the case of the MMR vaccine, no evidence suggests its minor risks — soreness, a touch of fever, very rare allergic reactions — are worse than the diseases it prevents. Any indications to the contrary from Kennedy, who has sent mixed signals on the vaccine in recent months, are false and dangerous.
Getting vaccinated against measles doesn't just protect oneself: It protects one's entire community, especially those who can't take the vaccine due to allergies or weakened immune systems. Every death is a preventable tragedy.
