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.
There have been at least 733 confirmed measles cases reported across the nation, the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed Friday.
In just a few weeks, the United States reported four times as many cases than typically seen throughout an entire calendar year, the CDC said.
Before last year, which had a record breaking 2,276 cases, the U.S. averaged 180 cases annually since measles was declared eliminated in 2000.
The record numbers come as South Carolina is dealing with the largest outbreak recorded in recent memory.
Meghan Bartels at Scientific American:
A straightforward case of measles is nasty—but the disease’s complications are even worse. One of those complications has been confirmed in the ongoing, record-breaking measles outbreak in South Carolina: encephalitis, or brain swelling.
South Carolina state epidemiologist Linda Bell confirmed the complication was occurring there during a media briefing on February 4, according to Wired. Bell did not specify the number of people who were affected or how serious their cases were.
Encephalitis occurs in about one of every 1,000 measles cases and kills about one in five people who develop it. The complication is not well understood but appears to be the result of the virus prompting the immune system to attack a certain protein that some brain cells produce.
As of February 3, South Carolina had reported 876 cases of measles related to the outbreak in its upstate region. Most of those cases are in children who were not vaccinated against the disease. Since January 2025, nearly 3,000 people have been reported as infected with measles in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University’s independent tracking. The 2,267 cases that occurred in the U.S. last year represent the nation’s highest annual total since 1991. The virus’s continued spread is likely to end the 25-year streak in which measles has been officially deemed eliminated in the U.S., experts say.
