This month marks the 20th anniversary of RFK Jr.'s infamous article "Deadly Immunity," which spread the lie that vaccines cause autism. He is now HHS secretary and reaping the whirlwind of his vile dishonesty.
There have now been more measles cases in 2025 than in any other year since the contagious virus was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, according to new data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The grim milestone represents an alarming setback for the country’s public health and heightens concerns that if childhood vaccination rates do not improve, deadly outbreaks of measles — once considered a disease of the past — will become the new normal.
Experts fear that with no clear end to the spread in sight, the country is barreling toward another turning point: losing elimination status, a designation given to countries that have not had continuous spread of measles for more than a year.
“It’s a huge red flag for the direction in which we’re going,” said Dr. William Moss, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who has studied measles for more than 25 years.
Most of the cases this year have been tied to the Southwest outbreak — the largest single outbreak since 2000 — which began in January in a Mennonite community in West Texas and has since jumped to New Mexico and Oklahoma.
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Efforts from local public health officials to contain outbreaks have also been hamstrung by the new health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has downplayed the outbreak, offered only muted support of vaccines and endorsed unproven treatments for the virus. The federal health department has also tried to cut funding to state health departments.
