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.
The health and economic repercussions of declining MMR coverage in the United StatesChad R. Wells, Abhishek Pandey, Yang Ye, Carolyn Bawden, Rebecca Giglio, Charlene Wong, Velda Wang, Chelsea Cipriano, Lamia Ayaz, Gergely Röst, Seyed M. Moghadas, Meagan C. Fitzpatrick, Burton H. Singer, Alison P. Galvani
medRxiv 2026.02.19.26346619; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.02.19.26346619
From the abstract:
The United States is experiencing a resurgence of measles amid recent declines in childhood MMR vaccination. Using mathematical modeling informed by spatially resolved data on vaccination coverage, incidence, and associated economic costs, we quantified both the current and projected financial burden of measles in the United States under continued declines in coverage. For 2025, we estimated that measles imposes a cost of $244.2 million nationwide, with substantial heterogeneity in cost per case across counties driven by gaps in population immunity. Even modest annual reductions in vaccine coverage among young children generate a nonlinear increase in cases and hospitalizations, with costs totaling $7.77 billion over a five-year period.
From the article:
In summary, the resurgence of measles in 2025 reflects the combined effects of declining vaccination coverage and increased importation pressure. Between 1994 and 2023, measles vaccination prevented an estimated 104 million cases and 85,000 deaths in the US (51). Continued erosion of MMR coverage threatens to reverse these gains, imposing substantial and rapidly escalating health and economic costs. Sustained investment in vaccination policy, public health infrastructure, and global immunization efforts is therefore paramount to protect population health and alleviate the socioeconomic impact of measles.
Three people died from measles last year: two children in Texas and one adult in New Mexico, all of whom were unvaccinated.
“That’s in that range of one to three deaths per 1,000 (cases). So, can we expect another death? Yes, I think we’re getting there where we can expect another death,” said Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious disease physician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “And it is unconscionable.”
“When more people are choosing not to vaccinate their children, you’re going to see more disease, more suffering, more hospitalization and more death,” he said. “Children are dying from a vaccine-preventable disease because their parents are choosing not to vaccinate them, and they’re choosing not to vaccinate them because they fear the vaccine more than they fear the disease.”
More than half of US states have reported a measles case so far this year, and there are at least three large outbreaks happening across the country that continue to grow.
