The U.S. could see tens of millions of measles cases over the next 25 years if vaccination rates fall, according to research published Thursday by JAMA. And that’s bad news for a country where vaccine deniers have infiltrated the highest levels of government and too much of the population remains absolutely clueless about the danger of measles.
A team of researchers at Stanford University produced a simulation model that looked at how declining vaccination rates in the U.S. would impact measles, rubella, poliomyelitis, and diphtheria. In a particularly awful scenario, the model found that a 50% drop in childhood vaccinations would result in 51.2 million measles cases over a 25-year period. That same period would see 9.9 million cases of rubella, 4.3 million cases of poliomyelitis, and 197 cases of diphtheria. All of that awfulness would result in 10.3 million hospitalizations and 159,200 deaths, according to the model.
A 50% drop in childhood vaccinations would obviously be terrible and result in needless suffering—especially tragic since the U.S. eradicated measles back in 2000 and it’s only recently that terrible outbreaks have started to become a problem again. But what about a scenario where vaccination rates stayed the same as 2025? The next 25 years would still see more than 850,000 cases in the U.S., according to the model.
Even just a 10% drop in MMR immunization rates could cause a huge uptick in measles infections, with 11.1 million cases in the U.S. over the next 25 years. On other other hand, a 5% rise in vaccinations would mean the U.S. could see just 5,800 cases. The population needs a vaccination rate of roughly 95% to achieve herd immunity for measles. The researchers estimate current vaccination coverage in their models at between 87.7% and 95.6%.
Immunization varies by state. New York, for example, had an estimated childhood vaccination rate of 97.7% for the 2023-24 school year, according to the CDC. Idaho had a rate of just 79.6%.
Before the measles vaccine was released in 1963, somewhere between 3 million and 4 million Americans would get the measles each year, according to the CDC, and tens of thousands would be hospitalized. Roughly 400-500 people would die each year from the disease, but death isn’t the only big downside from measles. It causes what’s called immune amnesia, essentially resetting the immune systems of infected patients, making your body unable to fight other infections.
The U.S. is currently experiencing its worst measles outbreak in a quarter century, with at least 800 cases in 25 states, according to the CDC. Illinois just reported its first confirmed case on Thursday. Three people have died this year from the measles in the U.S., including two children in Texas and an adult in New Mexico.
The parents of a 6-year-old girl who died from measles on Feb. 26 said they didn’t regret refusing to vaccinate her, pointing out that four of their other children who are unvaccinated were alive, according to the Texas Tribune. The father of an 8-year-old girl who died on April 3 said he doesn’t regret not vaccinating his daughter either, claiming that she actually died of something unrelated to measles and poor hospital care.
Both families of the dead children talked to Children’s Health Defense, a fringe anti-vaccine group that falsely claims vaccines cause autism. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the current head of the Department of Health and Human Services, was chair of the organization from 2015 until 2023. That simple fact doesn’t give the average American much hope that we’ll see MMR vaccination rates improve over the coming years.
In fact, Kennedy recently said that he would reveal the “cause” of autism by the fall. Kennedy is leading what he calls the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, and has assembled a team of scientists to nail down what he’s dubbed an autism “epidemic.” Kennedy has also been reportedly working on a database of autism cases, pulling the private health records of Americans, according to NPR.
Kennedy recently gave a startling speech where he complained that severely autistic people don’t pay taxes or go on dates and appeared on Fox News recently to note a drop in the testosterone levels of American boys. Kennedy also suggested that many diseases were brand new or not present when he was a child.
“ADD, ADHD, speech delay, language delay, tics, Tourette syndrome, narcolepsy, ASD, autism, all of these are injuries that I never heard of when I was a kid,” Kennedy said during a speech Tuesday. “They were not part of the nomenclature. They weren’t part of the dialogue. ”
“There was zero spent in this country treating chronic disease when my uncle was president,” Kennedy continued. “Today it’s about $1.8 trillion annually. It’s bankrupting our nation. 74% of American kids cannot qualify for military service. How are we going to maintain our global leadership with such a sick population?”
The reason Kennedy may have never heard of these diseases when he was a kid is that many of these ailments were undiagnosed or not recognized as such, and when they were recognized those people were often locked up. Kennedy’s own aunt, Rosemary Kennedy, was institutionalized and lobotomized in the early 1940s due to erratic emotions and violent behavior attributed to delivery difficulties when she was born. Her existence was kept a secret for decades and her own father reportedly never went to visit her. Rosemary’s mother didn’t see her for 20 years. So, yeah, that might explain things a bit better than suggesting all of these things were caused by food dyes or whatever bullshit RFK Jr. is blaming this week.
None of this is good news, to be sure. When the nation’s top health officials are a bunch of anti-science cranks obsessed with teen sperm counts and are using the language of eugenicists, it causes understandable alarm. Especially when those officials are now compiling lists of people deemed unfit to join the military or “pay taxes.”
Kennedy and his ilk are literally going to get millions of people sick in the coming decades if their anti-vaccine nonsense is allowed to continue. And with President Donald Trump in office for the next four years (as he suggests illegally staying in office beyond that), things are going to get way worse for the nation before they get better.
