I have great news for Americans who think science is optional: After more than 25 years, our country is about to lose its measles-elimination status, meaning the once-eliminated virus is back, baby! (And also back in babies.)
Thanks to the hard work of clear-thinking people who believe whatever they read on the internet, and the leadership of anti-vaccine non-scientists like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., vaccinations are down and measles cases have surged, with more than 5,000 reported already since January. Compared with 2025, when a total of 2,289 cases were confirmed.
An announcement on America’s official elimination status will come Nov. 17, after a panel of scientists from the World Health Organization’s Pan American
Health Organization determines whether we’ve had more than 12 months of uninterrupted measles transition. (Spoiler alert: We have! Great job, Secretary Kennedy!)
With the return of measles, America takes 'a tremendous step backwards'
According to The New York Times, “Publicly available data shows that several chains of transmission have continued for more than a year in the United States, according to scientists who analyzed the data at the request” of the newspaper.
Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, told The Guardian: “That is a tremendous step backwards."
Nice! This is clearly a huge victory for people who believe we should reexamine the health benefits of bloodletting.
We eliminated measles, but forgot how many dumb people can be
Reaching elimination status back in 2000 was a major public health achievement for America, but it didn’t take into account that there are a lot of Americans who think they’re smarter than so-called doctors and “people who know what they’re talking about.”
Kennedy has spent much of his life feeding vaccine skepticism, using his platform as a guy with a famous name to claim vaccines are unsafe while boldly refraining from the use of sneaky science-sounding things like evidence and statistical facts.
RFK Jr. helped boost vaccine skepticism before and during the pandemic
Vaccine denialism grew during the COVID-19 pandemic, a true Golden Age for people who incorrectly think they’ve got things figured out. While Big Pharma and Even Bigger Government pushed vaccines on us simply because they were safe, effective and saved lives, sensible health influencers with degrees in “just asking questions” promoted alternative steps, like taking horse dewormer or sticking a potato in your ear.
Many of them died in that glorious battle of loud, poorly sourced skepticism vs. science. But their memories live on in the return of measles, which I’m sure is just a minor health problem and not something that, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes, can cause pneumonia, encephalitis or death in 1 to 3 of every 1,000 children infected.
After all, in the foreword of a 2021 book published by his hilariously named anti-vaccine group, Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy wrote that we have been “misled by the pharmaceutical industry and their captured government agency allies into believing that measles is a deadly disease,” and that “measles outbreaks have been fabricated to create fear.”
A mere five years later, measles is re-entrenched in America. Kennedy sure did teach “the pharmaceutical industry and their captured government agency allies” a lesson!
RFK Jr. overseeing the return of measles is a deadly achievement
By knowing little but talking loudly and scarily, Kennedy and his fellow anti-vaxxers have helped Americans rekindle their natural love of preventable diseases.
Now that’s progress!
And certainly not something that will one day be a profoundly shameful epitaph.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: US had eliminated measles. RFK Jr. helped bring it back | Opinion
