Rising Measles, Dropping Trust
Terry H. Schwadron
July 12, 2026
While public attention is elsewhere, the measles outbreak is rising and spreading, proving difficult to stop amid continuing vaccine hesitation among parents in an irregular pattern across the country.
The Washington Post reports that as of this week, the number of measles cases — a disease believed eliminated in 2000 — already has surpassed totals for last year, with new infections moving beyond the few under-vaccinated states where the cases emerged first. Latest reports reflect about 2,200 cases in 39 states, the District of Columbia and New York City in half the time it took last year. In Arizona, measles are hitting an immigration detention center, forcing some quarantines there, ICE officials confirmed this week.
The numbers reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may not include all cases, since doctors unfamiliar with a disease believed eradicated may not even recognize measles. And states who have been handed the responsibility to track measles are dealing with the overall government health fund cuts that would have underwritten such efforts.
Most children recover after days of fever, cough, congestion and pink eye. But measles can also cause pneumonia, brain swelling, deafness, intellectual disability and death.
At Congressional hearings in April over budgets, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. basically has distanced himself from measles outbreaks, despite his role overseeing the CDC, and has blamed foreign sources rather than his own anti-vaccine messaging.
Instead, upon political advice from the White House, Kennedy has focused on his own, quieted Make America Health Again (MAHA) campaign for better nutrition, exercise and avoidance of chronic conditions. That campaign has seen its ups and downs, but it basically stresses self-health over anything involving chemicals and reliance on medications.
In any case, childhood vaccination rates, while high in most areas of the country, have declined, and the percentages of families filing for exemption from required vaccines on religious or other grounds have tripled or more, according to federal data.
The Measles Outbreak
State officials say there are fewer people to investigate and track cases, difficulty in collecting reliable data, and medical issues from a generation of doctors unfamiliar with a disease believed gone.
The Post quoted Utah officials, for example, whose genetic studies have said there are as many as four times more than the 680 cases reported this year. In South Carolina, which has reported a measles outbreak, officials said money cuts have left departments with fewer people to do critical work. South Carolina’s outbreak reflected a pattern in which faith communities with shared views on vaccination sustain and amplify transmission. Twenty-nine cases were linked to one church.
A new group calling itself the Measles Collaborative is developing an app to help doctors diagnose measles, create hospital checklists and guide the logistics of care for a disease that can remain airborne for hours. The group is creating TikTok and Instagram posts for parents to explain the basics and dangers of measles.
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Studies show that two doses of the childhood measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine are 97 percent effective against infection but upwards of 95% of a community needs such vaccines to achieve immunity. In 2024–2025, about eight percent of children did not receive vaccination — with wide variation among counties. Sending unvaccinated kids to school may not protect the vaccinated from measles, which is more contagious that many illnesses considered more dangerous.
The rise in vaccine hesitancy also has affected pertussis, or whooping cough and other contagious diseases.
The Trust Issue
One challenge identified by public health officials is a lack of trust in government or health institutions. So, state officials avoid using words like “quarantine,” fearing it would trigger negative feelings from lockdowns and restrictions during Covid, or other such euphemisms for isolation.
School attendance for unvaccinated children is an issue that varies by community. Many parents told a Utah health official that they felt judged when they sought medical care.
One clear source of misinformation is the federal Health and Human Services Department, where Kennedy has alternately attacked and promoted vaccines of all kinds, and has eliminated money for vaccine research.
Recently, The New York Times examined the state of Kennedy’s MAHA campaign in light of the emergence of threats from Ebola and hantavirus as well as the uncertain fate of Kennedy’s attacks on drug industries, food manufacturers and pollutants. Central to the reporting was the notion that Kennedy needed to turn down the volume of anti-vaccine messaging before the November elections as unnecessarily unpopular.
With Donald Trump’s backing, Kennedy launched MAHA a year ago on “a rising tide of skepticism and distrust. In actuality, the movement was even then a thin and contradictory coalition held together primarily by Covid resentments, which would inevitably fade with time.”
Overall, the coverage noted that Kennedy lacks a head of the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration, the Surgeon General’s office or the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, among other key jobs. Last year staffing at the Department of Health and Human Services was reduced by 25 percent, leaving huge deficits of personnel and expertise.
“The agency looks less like an army of acolytes than a barren bureaucracy. This is not an overhaul; it is an evacuation, a disemboweling,” said The Times.
Even RFK’s vaccine experts have been largely blocked by state officials across the country and MAHA has been unable to counter food and pollution policies by business-aligned Trump appointees elsewhere in the government. Campaigns against toxins, forever chemicals in pesticides and drinking water, a court case found in favor of continued use of Roundup, all have left RFK with empty hands. The hyped report trying to link autism with the use of Tylenol in pregnancy was quickly disproved by larger studies, and a memo linking 10 childhood deaths to Covid vaccination was contradicted by the agency’s own review of the evidence.
RFK is silent on the important election issue around cuts to Medicaid and supports for the Affordable Care Act that will leave millions without health insurance.
No wonder our biggest contagion is distrust.
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