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.
Since Trump took office in 2025, the U.S. has recorded more confirmed measles cases than in the previous 20 years combined.
Antivaxxers downplay the human and economic costs of measles.
Naema Ahmed, Lena H. Sun and Aaron Steckelberg at WP:
Half a million dollars.
That’s about how much it cost several public health agencies to contain one small measles outbreak in the Denver area this year. Though it was a relatively modest cluster — a total of 10 cases involving nine children and one adult — it nevertheless consumed 6,785 hours of labor by state and local workers to track and snuff out the outbreak after exposed individuals traveled through grocery stores, schools, fast-food restaurants and more.
Measles is the most contagious vaccine-preventable disease, and time is of the essence to contain the spread. Most children recover after several miserable days of fever, cough, congestion and pink eye, but measles can also cause pneumonia, brain swelling, deafness, intellectual disability and death. In Colorado, dozens of investigators traced patient movements, checked vaccination records and quarantined people at risk while also examining how often air circulated through a medical clinic.
