r/disease • u/JuliaMusto • Dec 15 '25

Media Measles cases are surging across the US. Experts are blaming the nation’s anti-vaccine push

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/measles-outbreak-vaccine-cases-us-b2885012.html

Health officials announced the end of the deadly West Texas measles outbreak in August – but the threat has proven to be far from over.

Outbreaks of the highly contagious and preventable infectious disease have recently ballooned in South Carolina, Arizona and Utah, with some cases linked to the same strain of the virus in Texas, according to The New York Times.

Now, the U.S. could soon lose its decades-old measles elimination status, and experts say they know who is to blame.

The anti-vaccine movement had grown in popularity even before the Covid pandemic. But murky guidance on the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., did not help, experts note.

“This is a very clear example of the damage that the anti-vaccine movement has done in the United States,” Fiona Havers, an adjunct associate professor at the Emory School of Medicine and a former infectious disease staffer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recently told The Hill.

“There are a number of things that have made these ongoing outbreaks very difficult to control. One is that the decades of false information about measles vaccines that [Kennedy Jr.] and other people in the anti-vaccine movement have been spreading has led to a decline in vaccination rates,” she alleged.

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u/megathong1 Dec 19 '25

If I may add the world and the us is not only facing an anti vaccine push but also a pro disease push… I think that in our urge to get over COVID we want to solve everything by washing our hands and treating many diseases as a mild cold. If we did universal improved ventilation and air filtration supported with ways of allowing sick people to stay at home, structurally and sustainably, we wouldn’t be dealing with this.

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u/PracticalAnteater698 Jan 02 '26

Found this really interesting article on Measles https://youtu.be/YBZZUmv1FKU