What is measles?
- Measles is a highly-contagious respiratory virus that infects as many as 90 percent of non-immune people exposed to its pathogens, which can exist in the air for up to two hours after exposure.
How bad is it?
- One in five unvaccinated people who contract measles require hospitalization.
- One in 1000 people develop encephalitis, or brain swelling, which can cause convulsions and permanent brain damage.
- As many as one in twenty children who get measles also contract pneumonia, which is also the most common cause of death from measles for young children.
- One to three of every 1000 children who contract measles die from complications stemming from the infection.
- Measles also has potential (though rare) longterm consequences, including risk of a deadly progressive form of encephalitis known as subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE). SSPE only occurs in about two of every 100,000 measles cases, but is an incurable neurological disorder that can begin showing symptoms six to eight years post measles infection and initial recovery.
Who is most vulnerable?
- According to the World Health Organization, “Any non-immune person (not vaccinated or vaccinated but did not develop immunity) can become infected. Unvaccinated young children and pregnant persons are at highest risk of severe measles complications.”
What’s the solution?
- The measles vaccine has been approved in the United States since 1963, with an updated version of the vaccine achieved in 1968. The vaccine is a two-dose course with one shot administered between the ages of 12 to 15 months and the second usually administered between ages four and six. The first shot is about 93 percent effective, and the second is about 97 percent effective. Due to a highly successful measles vaccination program, and the safety & efficacy of the vaccine itself, measles was declared “eliminated” in the United States in 2000.
What’s going on right now?
- The measles vaccine, though safe, proven, and effective, requires a 95 percent vaccination rate to achieve “herd immunity” against the disease. Unfortunately, only eleven U.S. states achieved herd immunity-level vaccination rates amongst Kindergarteners for the 2023-2024 school year, rendering school-aged populations extremely vulnerable to the disease across the country.
- As of March 7, 2025, there are at least 222 confirmed measles cases across twelve U.S. states. Two people have died related to the outbreak including a school-aged child in Texas and an adult in New Mexico. Both were unvaccinated for measles, and are the first measles-related deaths in the United States in more than a decade.
Where have measles cases been confirmed in 2025?
As of March 7, 2025, confirmed measles cases (broken down by state) are as follows:
| State: | TX | NM | AK | CA | FL | GA | KY | NJ | NY | PA | RI | WA |
| Cases: | 198 | 30 | 1 | 3 | 11 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Texas
- The epicenter of the 2025 measles outbreak is West Texas, where 198 cases have been identified so far this year, and twenty three people have been hospitalized. The Texas outbreak is the worst measles outbreak in thirty years. One unvaccinated school-aged child died from the outbreak in Texas in February, and thousands more have been exposed to the disease in other parts of Texas, including in San Antonio.
New Mexico
- New Mexico is experiencing a significant outbreak on its shared border with West Texas. As of March 7, 2025, Lea County, New Mexico has documented thirty confirmed cases and one death in the county and warned that “additional cases are likely to occur in Lea County and the surrounding communities.”
Alaska
- Alaska had one confirmed case of measles in January 2025 of an unvaccinated adult.
California
- California has confirmed three cases of measles, including in Los Angeles County. All three cases were reported by the state in February 2025.
Florida
- Florida has had at least eleven cases in 2025. That includes nine cases in Broward County in February, and an additional case in Polk County the same month. There are additional reports of another case as of March 5, 2025 in Miami-Dade county.
Georgia
- Three cases of measles have been reported in metro-Atlanta involving unvaccinated members of the same family. One case was reported in January, with the additional two reported by the state in February.
Kentucky
- A case of measles was confirmed in Frankfort County, Kentucky in February. It is the first case in the state since February 2023.
New Jersey
- New Jersey has reported three confirmed measles cases in the state from February 14 – February 20, 2025.
New York
- There have been two confirmed cases of measles reported in New York in 2025. Both cases were reported in February in New York City, and no cases have so far been reported in the rest of New York state.
Pennsylvania
- There has been a single confirmed case of measles in Pennsylvania in 2025.
Rhode Island
- There has been one confirmed case of measles in Rhode Island, which occurred in January of 2025. It is Rhode Island’s first confirmed measles case since 2013.
Washington
- There has been one confirmed case of measles in Washington state in February 2025, which involved an unvaccinated infant.
Has the Trump Administration responded?
- RFK Jr., the Trump Administration’s Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has responded to the crisis by pushing the benefits of “good nutrition,” Vitamin A, steroids, and cod liver oil. This response is idiotic, and has been heavily criticized by doctors and the American Pediatrics Association, for refusing to state plainly that the “best defense” against measles is vaccination. This is unsurprising given that RFK is a prolific and notorious vaccine skeptic whose disinformation campaigns related to the measles vaccine are partially responsible for the catastrophic and deadly rise of measles in Samoa in 2019.