While every death is tragic, seven deaths nationally over the course of two years hardly sounds on its face like an epidemic. That is, until you consider the context: Those seven deaths since January 2025 were related to measles infections — and they represent more than twice as many measles fatalities than America had seen over the previous two decades combined.
Add to that the sustained new surge in non-fatal measles cases — almost 2,300 last year and more than 3,400 so far this year, for a disease that before that was generally under 100 cases per year since the turn of this century — and the scope of the issue comes fully into focus.
When people reference the culture wars now raging in America, it’s a metaphorical description of our deep socio-political divisions these days. But in the realm of measles vaccinations, it’s no longer just a metaphor. In a real way, the culture wars are now logging thousands of casualties annually and a small but growing number of deaths.
The cause of that phenomenon isn’t a mystery. Since the COVID pandemic six years ago politicized what should be the strictly medical issue of vaccination science, vaccine hesitancy has spread like, well, a virus, leaving us all vulnerable to a threat that knows no political party. ...
Measles, of course, is a highly infectious airborne viral disease that causes fever and rashes, and in extreme cases can trigger pneumonia, swelling of the brain and other life-threatening conditions.
The modern American tendency to dismiss measles as a benign childhood rite of passage has never been accurate. Statistically, it’s fatal to between 1 and 3 children out of every 1,000 who contract it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The World Health Organization reports some 95,000 measles deaths globally in 2024 alone.
America has been shielded from that deadly reality for more than a generation now, thanks to highly effective measles vaccines and (until recently) Americans’ almost-universal acceptance of them. The disease was declared effectively eliminated in the U.S. in 2000.
From that year until last year, there were just three measles-related deaths in the entire country (two in 2003 and one in 2015), according to the CDC. Then 2025 alone saw three deaths — two in Texas and one in New Mexico.
Four more deaths have been reported so far this year, all in Pennsylvania, which is currently experiencing the worst outbreak in the country, with some 700 reported cases. There as everywhere, the vast majority of cases are in children, and the vast majority were unvaccinated (including all four fatalities).
While Missouri hasn’t seen the kinds of numbers plaguing some other states, the 10 cases reported here so far this year is the most it’s seen in at least two decades. It’s no coincidence that the outbreak comes as the state’s vaccination rate has dipped below 90% — well short of the 95% rate considered necessary for herd immunity — according to data gathered by KFF. That too is reflective of the trend nationally.
Like so much of what ails America today, the resurgence of measles can’t be laid entirely at President Donald Trump’s doorstep but must be laid partly there.
After presiding over the lightning-fast development of the COVID vaccine during his first term, Trump inexplicably held that miraculous achievement at arm’s-length, following the political right's culture warriors down the anti-vax rabbit hole rather than leading them out. Trump’s second-term appointment of long-time vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary has done nothing to reverse that dangerous course.
No amount of ideological debate changes the scientific facts: Measles vaccines are safe, effective and necessary.
So wear any color hat you like, watch any cable news you like, vote how you like in November — but please don’t endanger your children and others by mistaking a medical issue for a political one.
