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measles
Polio Survivors Fear a Resurgence as Trump Adviser Suggests Scrapping Vaccine Requirement
"We don’t have a healthcare infrastructure to take care of a polio outbreak."
Feb 23, 2026
After the Trump administration official in charge of immunization policy suggested that childhood polio vaccines should be made optional, experts and survivors of the deadly disease are warning that it could make a furious comeback.
Dr. Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist who is chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, suggested on a podcast last month ending public schools' vaccine requirements for dangerous diseases, including measles and polio, which would be one of the most dramatic shifts in federal health policy in more than half a century.
Where these diseases once infected millions of people each year, Milhoan noted their dramatic decline in recent years, suggesting they no longer pose the threat they once did and that vaccines were therefore less necessary. However, he ignored the fact that the near-total eradication of these illnesses was due to society-wide vaccination in the first place.
In the first half of the 20th century, tens of thousands of people (mostly children) suffered paralysis from polio. The first vaccine was introduced in the USA in 1955. Notice the trend afterwards.(by @ourworldindata)
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— Information is Beautiful (@infobeautiful.bsky.social) January 26, 2026 at 2:55 PM
The US is already at risk of losing its measles eradication status after drops in vaccination rates caused the highest number of cases and deaths in more than three decades last year.
Measles vaccination rates had already been dipping for years amid rising anti-vaccine sentiment. But it was shifted into overdrive after vaccination restrictions were narrowed by Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who publicly spread doubt about the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine's well-documented safety and efficacy.
At its peak in 1952, nearly 58,000 people became infected with polio. Over a third of them became paralyzed, and more than 3,000 died. A vaccine was introduced for the illness in 1955. Within just two years, the number of cases had dropped by 90%, and the disease was declared eliminated in the US in 1979.
Childhood vaccination rates have dropped across the board over the past five years. Where about 95% of kindergarteners received the measles and polio vaccines in the 2019-20 school year, that number had plummeted to 92.5% in 2024-25.
But because polio is several times less infectious than measles, the current national average coverage still provides substantial protection, though localized outbreaks remain possible in undervaccinated communities.
If childhood vaccination is made optional, however, those who have treated and lived with polio fear it could also come back with a vengeance.
Survivors say US healthcare system not ready for new cases – ‘the only thing to fix polio is the polio vaccine’
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— Guardian US (@us.theguardian.com) February 23, 2026 at 2:13 PM
In an interview with the Guardian published Monday, Grace Rossow, an operating-room communications coordinator, whose leg remains paralyzed from a case of polio as an infant in India, said the vaccine had “absolutely been a victim of its own success."
“People aren’t scared of polio anymore,” she said. “People don’t really see the daily side of living with a vaccine-preventable disease. With polio, you’re never going to fix us, and that’s the problem. The only thing to fix polio is the polio vaccine.”
Polio's status as a thing of the past has not only diminished the public's understanding of why it's important to prevent, but also how to treat it. Rossow said, "We don’t have a healthcare infrastructure to take care of a polio outbreak."
Art Caplan, one of the last remaining survivors of the 1950s outbreak, who has struggled with lifelong weakness in his legs due to the disease, said he's watched as most of the medical professionals who understood how to treat it retired and died. "There’s nobody left. They don’t see it."
Gordon Allan, a surgeon who is the orthopedic residency director and the total joint reconstructive fellowship director at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, said that in the event of a new polio outbreak, most people in his field would have little idea how to treat those suffering from the illness.
“Orthopedics has really changed a lot now from the people who trained me," he said, noting that even those doctors only had experience treating post-polio symptoms.
“No one practicing has first-hand experience," he said. "Orthopedics was quite different because of polio, and all that stuff just faded away."
The last polio case in the United States was detected in New York in 2022 in an unvaccinated adult who became paralyzed from the illness.
None have been diagnosed since. But as measles has shown, outbreaks can spread very quickly in communities with large unvaccinated populations, which are often insular and religious.
Caplan said he was "furious" at Milhoan's contention that childhood vaccine requirements should be reconsidered just because polio is no longer around.
"If you could gather up the kids I saw die or become really severely disabled from 50 years ago, they would want you arrested," he said. "It’s horrifying, and the height of irresponsibility to leave the door open even a crack."
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is Making America Sick Again
Three recent stories about measles have implications that are far more consequential for the fate of humanity than Trump’s racist memes or his destabilizing antics on the world stage.
Feb 19, 2026
Not until President Donald Trump is long gone will Americans feel the full impact of his most destructive policies and his administration’s incompetence. Today’s topic: Measles.
“For children, the risks of measles are especially grave. Complications, which occur in 1 in 5 people who have the disease, can include pneumonia, blindness, permanent neurologic injury, and death. These outcomes are well-documented, particularly among young children and those with delayed access to medical care.” (Theresa Cheng, MD, JD, assistant clinical professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at UCSF-Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and a lawyer.)
Measles is preventable, but community immunity requires a 92-94% vaccination rate. Since the introduction of the measles vaccine in 1963, the incidence of the disease has decreased by over 99%, thanks to the combination of immunity through prior exposure and vaccination rates above the required threshold.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is reversing that remarkable public health achievement.
Someone who does not get vaccinated puts others—mostly children who have no voice in the critical decision to protect or jeopardize their health—at serious risk of injury or death.
Three recent stories about measles have implications that are far more consequential for the fate of humanity than Trump’s racist memes or his destabilizing antics on the world stage.
Story No. 1: Measles Outbreak in South Carolina
Between 1991 and 2024, South Carolina had a total of only 8 measles cases—6 of which occurred within a single household in 2018.
In October 2025, the state reported the first three cases in the current outbreak.
As of February 17, South Carolina had 962 confirmed measles cases; 253 involve children under 5, 615 are ages 5 to 17, 85 are adults, and nine ages are unknown.
Since the outbreak, 20 individuals have been hospitalized with complications related to the disease.
Ninety-five percent of the infected individuals were not vaccinated.
The area of the state experiencing the greatest number of cases (95% of them) also led the state in the decline in vaccination rate: Spartanburg County’s rate dropped from 93.9% in 2021-2022 to 88.9% the current school year—well below the critical threshold required for community immunity.
Story No. 2: Anti-Vaxxers Determine America’s Public Health Policy
Kennedy has gutted the Department of Health and Human Services. He has replaced scientific and medical experts with hacks who adhere here to his willful ignorance.
One of those appointees is the leader of the federal panel that recommends vaccines for Americans, Dr. Kirk Milhorn, chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. On January 22, Milhorn said that vaccines protecting children from polio and measles, and perhaps all diseases, should be optional.
“What we are doing is returning individual autonomy to the first order—not public health but individual autonomy to the first order.”
What he and his colleagues are actually doing is killing us. Kennedy has already dropped six vaccines from the childhood immunization schedule.
Story No. 3: States Are the Last Line of Defense
Only individual states, which have ultimate responsibility for vaccine schedules, have saved the country from the full destructive force of Kennedy’s anti-science, anti-vaxxer crusade. But his ascension as head of the nation’s federal public health policy has empowered his allies to target state childhood vaccination mandates.
The Medical Freedom Act Coalition includes the Children’s Health Defense—a nonprofit group that Kennedy co-founded. It is pushing legislation that would end state laws that codify vaccination schedules. Such legislation is pending in several states.
Asked about the effort, Kennedy said he was not involved, but added, “I believe in freedom of choice.”
As the impact of his attack on science intensifies, the overall public health costs will be staggering.
Earlier this month, Chris Anders, a Republican state lawmaker in West Virginia, introduced a bill that would eliminate his state’s school vaccination mandates, including the requirement that county health departments offer free shots to low-income children.
“If people decide not to be vaccinated, that is their choice,” he argued. “Just like if they decide not to wear a seatbelt or a motorcycle helmet or anything else. If they decide that, they suffer the consequences.”
Kennedy, Milhorn, Anders, and their like-minded anti-vaxxers march under the “freedom of choice” banner. It’s a red herring that omits a crucial element of the equation: Someone who does not get vaccinated puts others—mostly children who have no voice in the critical decision to protect or jeopardize their health—at serious risk of injury or death.
For a long time to come, everyone else’s kids will bear those consequences.
Epilogue: Ripple Effects
The measles vaccine is the small tip of an enormous public health iceberg. Kennedy and his anti-vaxxers in charge of public health have “sent a chill through the entire [vaccine] industry,” according to Dr. John Coller of Johns Hopkins University, a member of the executive committee of the Alliance for mRNA Medicines.
As Kennedy creates unwarranted fears about the safety and efficacy of lifesaving vaccines, some Americans will continue to believe him and vaccine sales will suffer. As he cuts research funding for new vaccine development, America will be unprepared for the next pandemic. As the impact of his attack on science intensifies, the overall public health costs will be staggering.
Future historians will scratch their heads in disbelief at what we are doing to ourselves and our children.
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Measles Outbreak at ICE Center Holding 400 Kids Called 'Predictable Outcome' of Trump Policies
One doctor warned that the outbreak "will become an epidemic if we don't act immediately."
Feb 02, 2026
Public health experts and immigrant advocates sounded the alarm Sunday over a measles outbreak at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement internment center in Texas where roughly 1,200 people, including over 400 children, are being held.
Texas officials confirmed Saturday that two detainees at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, located about 75 miles (120 km) southwest of San Antonio, are infected with measles.
"Medical staff is continuing to monitor the detainees' conditions and will take appropriate and active steps to prevent further infection," the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement. "All detainees are being provided with proper medical care."
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Sunday that ICE "immediately took steps to quarantine and control further spread and infection, ceasing all movement within the facility and quarantining all individuals suspected of making contact with the infected."
Responding to the development, Dr. Lee Rogers of UT Health San Antonio wrote in a letter to Texas state health officials that the Dilley outbreak "will become an epidemic if we don't act immediately" by establishing "a single public health incident command center."
"Viruses are not political," Rogers stressed. "They do not care about one's immigration status. Measles will spread if we allow uncertainty and delay to substitute for reasoned public health action."
Dr. Benjamin Mateus took aim at the Trump administration's wider policy of "criminalizing immigrant families and confining children in camps," which he called a form of "colonial policy" from which disease is the "predictable outcome."
Measles is a highly contagious viral disease that can kill or cause serious complications, particularly among unvaccinated people. The United States declared measles eliminated in 2000, but declining vaccination fueled by misinformation has driven a resurgence in the disease, and public health experts warn that the US is close to following Canada, which lost its elimination status late last year.
Many experts blame this deadly and preventable setback on the vaccine-averse policies and practices of the Trump administration, particularly at the Department of Health and Human Services, led by vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
US measles cases this year already exceed the total for the whole of 2023 and 2024 combined, and it is only January. Yikes.
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— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran.com) January 29, 2026 at 12:29 PM
Critics also slammed ICE's recent halt on payments to third-party providers of detainee healthcare services.
Immigrant advocates had previously warned of a potential measles outbreak at the Dilley lockup. Neha Desai, an attorney at the Oakland, California-based National Center of Youth Law, told CBS News that authorities could use the outbreak as a pretext for preventing lawyers and lawmakers from inspecting the facility.
"We are deeply concerned for the physical and the mental health of every family detained at Dilley," Desai said. "It is important to remember that no family needs to be detained—this is a choice that the administration is making."
Run by ICE and private prison profiteer CoreCivic, the Dilley Immigration Processing Center has been plagued by reports of poor health and hygiene conditions. The facility is accused of providing inadequate medical care for children.
Detainees—who include people legally seeking asylum in the US—report prison-like conditions and say they've been served moldy food infested with worms and forced to drink putrid water. Some have described the facility as "truly a living hell."
The internment center has made headlines not only for its harsh conditions, but also for its high-profile detainees, including Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old abducted by ICE agents in Minneapolis last month and held along with his father at the facility before a judge ordered their release last week. The child's health deteriorated while he was at Dilley.
On Sunday, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)—the nation's oldest Latino civil rights organization—held a protest outside the Dilley lockup, demanding its closure.
"Migrant detention centers in America are a moral failure,” LULAC national president Roman Palomares said in a statement. "When a nation that calls itself a beacon of freedom detains children behind razor wire, separates families from their communities, and holds them in isolated conditions, we have crossed a dangerous line."
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As RFK Pushes Vaccine Misinformation, Measles Cases Surge in South Carolina
The US is at risk of losing its measles-eradicated status early next year, according to Scientific American.
Dec 12, 2025
US Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Friday demanded that the Trump administration "stop lying and follow the science" as an outbreak of measles in South Carolina grew and officials warned that low vaccination rates in the affected area likely mean the crisis will continue worsening.
Since the outbreak began in October in Spartanburg County, near the state's northern border, the highly infectious disease has sickened at least 129 people. The vast majority of people who have been infected have not been inoculated against measles, which is 97% preventable via the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) shot—which has been erroneously attacked for years by anti-vaccine activists including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
As President Donald Trump and Kennedy "push deadly anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, measles is making a comeback across America," said Jayapal (D-Wash.) on Friday. "People will die because of this."
At least three people, including two children, have already died this year in US measles outbreaks
More than 1,900 measles cases and 47 outbreaks have been reported across the country in 2025, compared with 285 cases across 16 outbreaks last year.
In South Carolina, more than 250 people have been exposed to the disease in schools, a healthcare facility, and a church, forcing dozens of unvaccinated children to quarantine for 21 days; some were exposed twice and had to be isolated for two separate three-week periods.
“That’s a significant amount of time,” Linda Bell, the state's epidemiologist, said at a recent press conference. “Vaccination continues to be the best way to prevent the disruption that measles is causing to people’s education, to employment.”
But Spartanburg County's ongoing outbreak is being driven by “lower-than-hoped-for vaccination coverage,” Bell said.
Public health experts consider a 95% vaccination rate to be the level at which the spread of measles can be eliminated in a community. Only about 90% of students in the county had all required childhood immunizations. South Carolina allows religious exemptions for school immunization requirements. Many of the schools where students have quarantined have vaccination rates "well below 90%," the New York Times reported.
Across South Carolina, MMR vaccination rates among schoolchildren has fallen significantly since 2020, from 96% to 93.5%.
Kennedy has been a longtime denier of vaccine science. In 2019, his anti-vaccine group, Children's Health Defense, tried to sue New York state over its vaccine requirement, which is one of just five in the country that doesn't allow for nonmedical exemptions.
In April, Kennedy visited a Texas community where two unvaccinated children had died of measles and acknowledged in a social media post that "the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine."
“Vaccination continues to be the best way to prevent the disruption that measles is causing to people’s education, to employment.”
But during his visit he also promoted, without evidence, two therapeutic treatments that one vaccine expert told NPR are "valueless" in treating measles. In 2023 Kennedy told podcaster Joe Rogan that the vaccine was not linked to a decline in deaths.
He has recently continued fueling overall skepticism about immunizations, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) panel he assembled advising that newborn babies whose mothers test negative for hepatitis B should not receive a dose of a vaccine for the disease—sparking fear among public health experts that major progress in reducing childhood cases of the disease over the past three decades will be reversed.
In November the CDC website was changed to say a link between vaccines and autism—a theory that has long been debunked—cannot be ruled out. Two months earlier, as measles cases surged in another outbreak around the Utah-Arizona border, Trump called for combination children's vaccines like the MMR to be split up into separate shots—a call made decades ago by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who lost his medical license over his 1988 study that linked autism to the combination vaccine, which was later retracted.
High vaccine rates allowed the US to declare measles eliminated in 2000, but Scientific American reported Thursday that the current measles outbreaks are bringing the US "toward losing its measles-free status by early next year."
The worsening measles outbreak in South Carolina, said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), "is yet another horrifying consequence of Trump and RFK Jr.'s Make America Sick Agenda."
Republican Gov. Henry McMaster has urged residents to be vaccinated against measles, but said on Thursday, "We are not going to do mandates on people to go get vaccinated."
Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the US Health and Human Services Department, also continued to suggest that vaccination is principally a matter of personal liberty rather than public health, telling the New York Times that people in the affected community in South Carolina should talk to their doctors about "what is best for them."
On Thursday, Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Ranking Member Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said that along with the Republican Party's vote against extending Affordable Care Act subsidies, the Trump administration is raising questions about its push to "Make America Health Again" as it undermines "lifesaving vaccines and spark[s] disease outbreaks."
"The Trump administration," he said, "is endangering the health of the American people."
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'Absurd Yet Predictable': US Close to Losing Measles Elimination Status Under RFK Jr.
"The CDC is now completely compromised after Trump and RFK Jr. ousted or drove out real, well-intentioned, and intelligent scientists," said one physician.
Nov 21, 2025
US public health officials warned this week that the country is close to following Canada in losing its measles elimination status, a deadly and preventable setback many experts attribute to the vaccine-averse policies and practices of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials have linked the ongoing measles outbreak in Arizona and Utah with the major outbreak in Texas that began in January, both of which are being caused by the same viral subtype. With no signs of slowing, and holiday travel and gatherings fast approaching, experts worry that measles transmission could escalate and the disease will no longer be considered eliminated.
Under World Health Organization guidance, "eliminated" means an absence of endemic virus transmission for 12 months or longer in a defined geographical area under a well-performing surveillance system.
Many public health experts blame the administration of President Donald Trump—and particularly Kennedy's policies—for the measles resurgence. Kennedy, who initially downplayed the seriousness of the Texas outbreak, has endorsed vaccines, but has also made unsupported or misleading claims about the safety and efficacy of measles shots.
"Absurd yet predictable," Dr. Michael O'Brien, an urgent care pediatrician, wrote Thursday on X. "The CDC is now completely compromised after Trump and RFK Jr. ousted or drove out real, well-intentioned, and intelligent scientists. As measles approaches endemic status in the US for the first time since 2000, the CDC has abandoned science and reason."
The anti-vaccination movement is largely to blame for the continuing measles outbreak and the fact that the U.S. is going to lose our measles elimination status. Until RFK Jr. is removed from office, things are only going to get worse. @jimalwine.bsky.social and I wrote about here:
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— Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD (@elizabethjacobs.bsky.social) November 19, 2025 at 2:18 PM
The United States declared measles eliminated in 2000. However, with 1,753 confirmed cases and three deaths in 45 reported outbreaks so far this year, experts say the US is at risk of following Canada, which announced earlier this month that it has lost its elimination status, which it enjoyed since 1998.
As in the US, experts attribute Canada's measles backsliding to declining vaccination rates, mis- and disinformation, and vaccine aversion—especially among religious groups. The West Texas outbreak began in the close-knit, unvaccinated Mennonite community in Gaines County, while the Arizona/Utah outbreak originated among members of a fundamentalist Mormon offshoot.
More than 9 in 10 reported US measles cases this year are among people who have either not been vaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown.
"We are in this dire situation primarily due to the explosion of the anti-vaccine movement since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic."
Writing for LiveScience, University of Pennsylvania molecular virologist James Alwine and University of Arizona professor emerita and epidemiologist Elizabeth Jacobs warned Wednesday that measles is "a bellwether of declining vaccination rates—a wailing siren that other vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks are just around the corner."
"We are in this dire situation primarily due to the explosion of the anti-vaccine movement since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic," Alwine and Jacobs asserted. "The movement is responsible for undermining trust in scientists and vaccines via a tsunami of misinformation coming from social media accounts and podcast appearances."
The authors continued:
This was made worse when Senate Republicans confirmed Kennedy as secretary of HHS, despite the objections of tens of thousands of scientists, healthcare providers, and public health practitioners. Kennedy is an avowed anti-vaccination proponent who chaired Children's Health Defense, an organization that regularly promotes vaccine misinformation. He is also a conspiracy theorist and has claimed that Covid-19 is a "bioweapon" engineered to "attack Caucasians and Black people" while sparing Ashkenazi Jews; that WiFi causes brain cancer; and that drug use, not HIV, causes AIDS. His appointment opened the door to install anti-vaccine proponents as leaders in public health, such as replacing the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) with several individuals with links to the anti-vaccine movement. In confirming Kennedy, Senate Republicans utterly failed the people of the US and demonstrated a cavalier disregard for decades of scientific achievement.
In June, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) launched an investigation into Kennedy's ACIP purge. The following month, six major US medical organizations sued Kennedy, alleging his vaccine policies are placing children at grave and immediate risk.
"As the anti-vaccine movement continues to be nurtured by Kennedy and his followers, this threat will only continue to expand and grow more severe," Alwine and Jacobs warned. "Removing state vaccine requirements for school entry—as has happened in Florida—is demonstrative of this, and represents an unacceptable risk."
"Kennedy must be removed from office," they added, echoing a September demand by more than 1,000 current and former HHS officials. "There can be no improvements in public health or vaccination rates as long as he continues his destructive reign."
In September, Congresswoman Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) filed articles of impeachment against Kennedy, declaring that he "has violated his oath of office and proven himself unfit to serve the American people."
Advocacy groups and medical organizations have gathered more than 150,000 petition signatures calling for Kennedy's removal.
On Friday, Congresswoman Kim Schrier (D-Wash.), who chairs the Democratic Doctors Caucus, led 65 colleagues demanding that Kennedy "immediately correct" the CDC website "after it was updated to promote the widely disproven and dangerous claim that vaccines may cause autism."
"RFK Jr.’s decision to spread fringe conspiracy theories and misinformation on the CDC’s official website is reckless," Schrier said in a statement. "He’s scaring parents, undermining trust in the CDC, and putting children at risk.”
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As Florida Ends All Childhood Vaccine Mandates, Doctors Fear Preventable Diseases Will 'Come Roaring Back'
"Florida's decision to erase school vaccine requirements will cause preventable illness and death," said one immunologist. "Not just for kids in Florida, for whole communities, of all ages, across the country."
Sep 03, 2025
In a decision that has terrified medical professionals, Florida's surgeon general announced Wednesday that he would seek to end all childhood vaccine requirements in the state, which he compared to "slavery."
Currently, Florida requires children to be immunized against deadly diseases like measles, mumps, chickenpox, polio, and hepatitis in order to attend public school.
At a press conference alongside the state's anti-vaccine Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida's surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, said that he believed the decision to make these vaccinations optional would receive the blessing of "God."
"Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery," Ladapo said of the mandates. "People have a right to make their own decisions. Who am I, as a government or anyone else, to tell you what you should put in your body? Our body is a gift from God. What you put into your body is because of your relationship with your body and your God."
Many Republican-led states have rolled back requirements for residents to receive the Covid-19 vaccination and, in some cases, restricted access to it. But Ladapo, who has in the past been caught personally altering data to exaggerate the risks of the Covid-19 vaccine, is treading new ground with his pledge to eliminate "every last one" of the state's childhood vaccine mandates, something no state, red or blue, has done.
While Ladapo's decision is unprecedented, it is in step with the position of the current Republican Party, which is making health policy under the stewardship of longtime anti-vaccine influencer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, who is the secretary of Health and Human Services under President Donald Trump.
Kennedy has limited who is eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine and is reportedly considering pulling it from the market altogether. And alongside a handpicked panel of anti-vaccine activists, he has also launched an effort to revise the entire childhood vaccine schedule.
In April, as a measles epidemic swept through pockets of Texas with low vaccination rates and killed two unvaccinated children, Kennedy downplayed the disease's severity and hyped long-disproven claims about the dangers of the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine, which virtually eradicated the disease in the US for over 20 years.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of parents declining to vaccinate their children has soared across the US. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, during the 2019-20 school year, just three US states had rates of MMR vaccination lower than 90%. In 2025, that number had increased to 16.
As of July, 1,280 measles cases had been reported in the US—the most cases since 1992, before the MMR vaccine became part of the standard childhood vaccine schedule. In 92% of cases involving children and teenagers, the people who became infected were either unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination statuses.
Following news of Florida's decision to end childhood vaccine requirements, Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, told the Washington Post: "We can expect that measles will come roaring back. Other infectious diseases will follow. This is an unprecedented move that will only put our children at unnecessary risk."
Measles is not the only vaccine-preventable illness experiencing a resurgence. After the rate of whooping cough vaccinations dropped below the 95% threshold required for herd immunity during the 2023-24 school year, the number of cases of the disease doubled, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"Florida will repeat what happened in West Texas, where immunization rates are low," said Dr. Peter Jay Hotez, a pediatrician who serves as Dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. "All for health freedom propaganda, and lousy Fox News sound bites."
According to CDC data, Florida has one of the lowest rates of childhood vaccination in the country, with just over 88% of kindergarteners receiving the required shots in the 2023-24 school year. But just as they did in Texas, the effects may harm people across the country.
"Florida's decision to erase school vaccine requirements will cause preventable illness and death. Not just for kids in Florida, for whole communities, of all ages, across the country," said Dr. Andrea Love, an immunologist and microbiologist, who writes a newsletter responding to medical misinformation. "Pathogens don't follow state lines."
Dr. Robert Steinbrook, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, called the plan "a recipe for disaster and exactly the wrong approach to protecting state residents from infectious diseases."
"High immunization rates against dangerous infectious diseases such as measles and polio protect individuals as well as their communities," Steinbrook said. "If this plan moves forward, Florida will terminate one of the most effective means of limiting the spread of infectious diseases and embolden [Kennedy] to wreak even more havoc on vaccinations nationally. The Florida Legislature and state residents must vociferously reject these plans."
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Sanders Launches Probe After RFK Jr. Stacked Immunization Panel With 'Vaccine Deniers'
"These individuals have already taken steps to upend decades of scientific research and vaccine policy, threatening the health and safety of all Americans," said a letter signed by Sanders and seven other Democratic senators.
Jul 29, 2025
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday launched an investigation into U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s purge of independent experts from a panel on vaccine recommendations.
Last month, Kennedy announced that he was "retiring" all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, commonly known as ACIP, despite promising during his Senate confirmation hearing to keep the committee intact.
At the time, Sanders (I-Vt.)—chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions—warned that "firing independent vaccine experts is a dangerous, unprecedented move that will make it harder for the American people to access vaccines that are safe, effective, and essential to saving lives."
After the firings, Kennedy said, "We're going to bring great people onto the ACIP panel—not anti-vaxxers—bringing people on who are credentialed scientists."
In a letter sent to Kennedy Tuesday, Sanders and seven other Democratic senators said those fears have come to pass. Kennedy, they said, has replaced the panel of experts with "prominent vaccine deniers."
The most prominent of these figures is Dr. Robert Malone, who has described it as "high praise" to be dubbed an "anti-vaxxer."
Malone gained prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic by casting doubt on the illness's severity and baselessly suggesting that the mRNA vaccines used to treat the disease were "causing a form of AIDS."
Earlier this year, Malone also attempted to foment doubt that children had died due to the unprecedented measles outbreak in Texas.
Kennedy also appointed the former leader of his anti-vaccine organization, the Children's Health Defense, Lyn Redwood, a longtime proponent of the false belief that the vaccination for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) causes autism.
Also on the committee is Vicky Pebsworth Debold, founder of the National Vaccine Information Center—one of the longest-running anti-vaccine organizations in America—who has argued that a vaccination caused her child's autism.
ACIP is in charge of examining scientific findings to make recommendations to the public about which vaccines to get and when.
"These individuals," the senators said, "have already taken steps to upend decades of scientific research and vaccine policy, threatening the health and safety of all Americans."
When Kennedy's new handpicked committee met for the first time in late June, the members made substantial changes to vaccine policy and hinted at others coming in the future.
The most significant change they made was the recommendation that Americans receive flu vaccinations free of the preservative thimerosal—which is partially made of mercury and prevents germs and fungi from contaminating batches of vaccines.
Thimerosal, which is a component of many multidose vaccines, has never been found harmful by any scientific study. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provided a document to the committee that included 25 years of studies indicating thimerosal's safety. But that document was removed from the meeting without explanation.
When they questioned ACIP about its removal, the senators say Malone replied that it was "not authorized by the office of the secretary," which the senators concluded meant that Kennedy or one of his staff "had the document taken off CDC’s website."
Instead of credible science, Redwood presented a report likely generated by artificial intelligence, which included many debunked claims about the dangers of thimerosal, and even made reference to a CDC study on the dangers of the preservative that did not exist.
Kennedy's ACIP also determined that it would revise the childhood vaccine schedule that has been in place for decades. That schedule includes vaccines for polio, chickenpox, diphtheria, and tetanus—illnesses that once routinely killed children but have been virtually eradicated by mass immunization.
The recommended vaccine schedule, the senators noted, determines what immunizations are required to be covered by health insurance companies and government programs like Medicaid and Medicare.
"If insurance companies, Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs stop covering vaccines, Americans will be forced to pay out of pocket," the senators said. "The only people who will be able to afford vaccines will be the wealthy."
The senators warned that this, along with Kennedy and his appointees' undermining of vaccine science, would result in "a resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases."
Under Kennedy, the U.S. has already experienced its largest measles outbreak in 33 years, which has resulted in the first deaths from the disease in over a decade, following a downswing in measles vaccination.
Despite this, Kennedy has continued to downplay the disease's severity and the vaccine's well-documented effectiveness, even claiming that it causes "deaths every year."
The senators demanded that Kennedy provide information about why each of the nonpartisan members of ACIP were fired, and what criteria and vetting process was used to pick the anti-vaccine figures who replaced them.
"The harm your actions will cause is significant," the senators told Kennedy. "As your new ACIP makes recommendations based on pseudoscience, fewer and fewer Americans will have access to fewer and fewer vaccines. And as you give a platform to conspiracy theorists, and even promote their theories yourself, Americans will continue to lose confidence in whatever vaccines are still available."
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Top Medical Organizations Warn RFK Jr. Putting American Kids 'At Grave and Immediate Risk'
"Truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary... he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies," stated a new lawsuit.
Jul 07, 2025
Six major medical organizations on Monday filed a lawsuit against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. alleging he is putting American children at "grave and immediate risk" because of his policy on vaccines.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit—including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians, the American Public Health Association, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Massachusetts Public Health Association, and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine—charged that Kennedy earlier this year made a "baseless and uninformed policy decision" when he removed vaccinations against Covid-19 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) official immunization schedule for "healthy" children and pregnant women.
The organizations emphasized that unless Kennedy's decision is reversed, "all children remain at grave and immediate risk of contracting a preventable disease" and further warned that it "exposes... vulnerable populations to a serious disease with potentially irreversible long-term effects and, in some cases, death."
The plaintiffs further charged that Kennedy's directive removing the Covid-19 vaccines from the immunization schedule was "but one example of the secretary's agenda to dismantle the longstanding... science- and evidence-based vaccine infrastructure that has prevented the deaths of untold millions of Americans."
The complaint then documented Kennedy's long history of statements and articles that have peddled false claims about the safety of vaccinations and pointed to his mass dismissals of staff at HHS and his appointment of likeminded vaccine critics to argue that "it has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies."
Given this, the plaintiffs argued that Kennedy's decision to remove the Covid-19 vaccine from immunization schedules was "arbitrary and capricious" based on what they described as "vast and irrefutable evidence," including congressional testimony delivered by Kennedy in which he acknowledged that people shouldn't "be taking medical advice from me"; that Kennedy's directive directly contradicted an article published by the Food and Drug Administration days earlier stating that pregnancy was a condition that "increased a person's risk of severe Covid-19"; and that Kennedy did not identify specific recommendations from professional staff that he used as justification to restrict the availability of the vaccine.
Should courts find that Kennedy's decision was "arbitrary and capricious" as alleged by the plaintiffs, they would have the power to enjoin the policy under the Administrative Procedures Act, which was also employed recently to halt planned mass layoffs at HHS. The medical organizations urged courts to declare Kennedy's policy change "unlawful" and demanded "the restoration of the Covid vaccine recommendations for pregnant women and healthy children ages six months to 17 years" of age.
The medical organizations' lawsuit against Kennedy's vaccination policy comes at a time when infections of measles in the United States have hit a level not seen in more than three decades. The Washington Post, citing data from Johns Hopkins University, reported on Monday that there have been at least 1,277 confirmed cases of measles so far in the U.S. this year and the paper noted that this development "marks a public health reversal in defeating a highly contagious, vaccine-preventable disease as the anti-vaccine movement gains strength."
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Trump Administration Slammed for Slashing $12 Billion in Funding for State Health Services
"These are not people who want to make America healthy," said one advocate for people with disabilities. "They want to make the sick disappear."
Mar 26, 2025
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services canceled more than $12 billion in federal funding for state health departments across the nation, money that is used to track infectious diseases and provide mental health services, addiction treatment, and other critical care.
NBC News reported Wednesday that $11.4 billion of the canceled grants were earmarked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for state and community health departments, nongovernmental organizations, and international recipients following the Covid-19 pandemic. Around $1 billion worth of grants are being pulled from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
"The Covid-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago," Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement. "HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President [Donald] Trump's mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again."
This is just stunning. HHS has abruptly canceled more than $12 billion in federal grants to states that were being used for tracking infectious diseases, mental health services, addiction treatment and other urgent health issues.
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— Charles Ornstein ( @charlesornstein.bsky.social) March 26, 2025 at 1:36 PM
However, experts point to the certainty of future pandemics—like an avian flu strain that mutates to pass between humans—in urging public health policy planners to maintain or even increase preparedness and response funding.
NBC News reported that the 13 agencies overseen by HHS were sent notices starting Monday, which informed them that they have 30 days to reconcile their expenditures.
For some state and community healthcare providers, the effects of the cuts were immediate.
There was an abrupt $11B cut to local/state public health (PH) infrastructure yesterday. I don't think people realize what this means: -Want an updated system to check your immunizations instead of digging through docs? PH no longer able to carry out upgrades to immunization information systems
— Katelyn Jetelina ( @kkjetelina.bsky.social) March 26, 2025 at 11:34 AM
As The New York Times reported:
In Lubbock, Texas, public health officials have received orders to stop work supported by three grants that helped fund the response to the widening measles outbreak there, according to Katherine Wells, the city's director of public health.
On Tuesday, some state health departments were preparing to lay off dozens of epidemiologists and data scientists. Others, including Texas, Maine, and Rhode Island, were still scrambling to understand the impact of the cuts before taking any action.
In interviews, state health officials predicted that thousands of health department employees and contract workers could lose their jobs nationwide. Some predicted the loss of as much as 90% of staff from some infectious disease teams.
"We learned yesterday that the federal government has unilaterally terminated approximately $226 million in grants to Minnesota Department of Health related to the Covid-19 pandemic," Minnesota Commissioner of Health Dr. Brooke Cunningham said in a statement. "This termination is effective immediately and impacts ongoing work and contracts. This action was sudden and unexpected."
Lori Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, told CBS News that much of the funding would have expired soon anyway.
"It's ending in the next six months," she said. "There's no reason—why rescind it now? It's just cruel and unusual behavior."
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment communications director Kristina Iodice told NBC News, "We are concerned that this sudden loss of federal funding threatens Colorado's ability to track Covid-19 trends and other emerging diseases, modernize disease data systems, respond to outbreaks, and provide critical immunization access, outreach, and education—leaving communities more vulnerable to future public health crises."
The first Trump administration was widely criticized for shortcomings in these fields. A congressional panel issued a 2022 report accusing top administration officials of "failed stewardship" and a "persistent pattern of political interference" that undermined the nation's response to Covid-19, which to date has killed more than 1.2 million people in the United States and is still claiming hundreds of lives each week, according to CDC figures.
Wednesday's reportingd came as HHS, CDC, and other critical agencies braced for more cuts and layoffs ordered by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his aides are also "nearing their final decisions on a sweeping restructuring of the department," CBS News reported last week.
Last month, Senate Democrats demanded answers from Kennedy regarding the purge of more than 5,000 HHS workers after the agency "blindly followed" a "baseless directive" by Trump and DOGE that the lawmakers said is "blatantly undermining Americans' health and safety."
As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, public health experts have also condemned the administration's decision to terminate funding for Gavi, the global vaccine alliance—a move critics warned could result in the deaths of over 1 million children in the Global South.
"Investing in Gavi brings other benefits for our world and the American people," the alliance said. "Here's why: By maintaining global stockpiles of vaccines against deadly diseases like Ebola, mpox, and yellow fever, we help keep America safe. These diseases do not respect borders, they can cross continents in hours and cost billions of dollars."
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Nearly 130,000 People 'Looking Death in the Eyes' in Horn of Africa, WHO Official Warns
"I've been working on and off in this region for almost 25 years now—and in terms of accumulated emergencies, this is bad as I've ever seen it," the expert said.
Mar 10, 2023
Extreme hunger fueled by the climate emergency, violence, and disease has nearly 130,000 people in the Horn of Africa—which has entered its sixth straight failed rainy season—facing starvation, while 48 million others suffer from crisis levels of food insecurity, a United Nations expert warned Friday.
Liesbeth Aelbrecht, a consultant on health and food insecurity for the World Health Organization (WHO) sounded the alarm on what she said was the worst situation she's ever seen in over two decades of work in a region that includes the nations of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda.
"These 48 million people do include as many as 129,000 who are facing catastrophe," Aelbrecht told reporters in Geneva, Switzerland. "That means they are facing starvation and literally looking death in the eyes."
According to a report published earlier this year by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR):
The Horn of Africa region continues to experience the longest and most severe drought on record, threatening lives and livelihoods, including millions of refugees and internally displaced people. Relentless drought and high food prices have weakened many people's ability to grow crops, raise livestock, and buy food... Harvests have yielded little and water sources have dried up. Conflict and insecurity continue to intersect with the drought emergency. As conditions continue to worsen, hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee in search of safety and assistance.
UNHCR—which is appealing for $137 million "to respond to the immediate needs of affected populations" in the drought-stricken region—says 1,750,000 people have been internally displaced in Ethiopia and Somalia alone, while more than 180,000 refugees have crossed from Somalia and South Sudan into regions of Kenya and Ethiopia that are also suffering from drought.
The region is also experiencing soaring disease rates.
"All seven countries are battling measles, a deadly disease, Aelbrecht said. "Four of the countries are fighting cholera, South Sudan being one of them; they just declared an outbreak," she added. "Malaria, which we know is endemic in this region and remains the biggest cause reason for [medical] consultation, is really on the rise."
Cases of hepatitis, meningitis, and dengue are also increasing, with Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, reporting its first-ever dengue outbreak this year.
"The frequency of these disease outbreaks is directly linked to these extreme weather events and to climate change," Aelbrecht said. "I've been working on and off in this region for almost 25 years now—and in terms of accumulated emergencies, this is bad as I've ever seen it."
"We need to do anything possible to control these disease outbreaks," she added. "We know how to control cholera, what we need is really the resources to scale this up."
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