In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread. Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio. A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.
Polls show that many Americans either believe the myth or think it could be true.
Trump has spread this myth and withdrawn the US from the World Health Organization.
From the South Carolina Department of Public Health:The South Carolina Department of Public Health (DPH) is reporting 15 new cases of measles in the state since Tuesday, bringing the total number of cases in South Carolina related to the Upstate outbreak to 126 and the total number reported to DPH this year to 129.
Thirteen of the new cases are from known household exposures, one was from a neighborhood contact and another was from an unknown source still being investigated.
Eduardo Medina and Nick Madigan at NYT:
The level of worry in Spartanburg, though, appears to be correlated with whether or not one believes in the general efficacy of vaccines, an “anti-vax” notion that has been spearheaded in part by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s health secretary.
In interviews on Friday, some residents dismissed the rise in measles as an overblown problem.
“It’s not really an outbreak,” said Tim Johnson, a native of Belarus who immigrated to the United States 10 years ago. “We have to be careful about what we do and who we’re with, but not everything is worth looking into.”
South Carolina is the epicenter of what state officials call an “accelerating” measles outbreak. Hundreds of people are in quarantine, and the outbreak has sickened at least 111 individuals, most of whom—105—were not vaccinated against the disease. The rash of cases is merely the latest in a string of measles outbreaks across the U.S. this year. Each of these outbreaks has brought the country ever closer to losing its measles-free status after more than 25 years.
As of December 10, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 1,912 measles cases, most of which were linked to 47 outbreaks of the disease, this year. For comparison, 2024 saw just 16 outbreaks and 285 cases. At least two children have died of measles in the current outbreaks.
A growing decline in vaccination rates in communities across the country is driving these grim trends. Measles vaccines are generally given as part of the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot, two doses of which are 97 percent effective against the disease. The U.S. effectively eliminated measles in 2000 because enough people got the vaccine to suffocate the virus’s spread through the population.
