2 Months Into 2026 We Are Over Half 2025’s Total Count Of Measles Cases

Failures

from the rash-and-burn dept

Measles. Yes, yes, I know you’re sick of hearing about it. For that, though, you must lay the blame at the feet of Donald Trump, RFK Jr., and this entire administration of clown-tools that isn’t bothering to do anything about what has become the worst continuous outbreak of the disease in America in several decades. Their fault, not mine.

And, yes, this is getting worse, not better. The CDC’s measles tracking site is a combination of woefully inaccurate and behind when it comes to current case counts (more to come on that shortly), but it’s at least useful in benchmarking what 2025 looked like. While certainly underreported, the CDC tallied 2,281 cases of measles in America last year. That site is updated only once a week on Fridays. Either due to that, or incompetence, or a more nefarious attempt to downplay the problem, the current case count is wrong.

The CDC site shows a 2026 case count of 982. That would be bad enough, but it’s actually worse. The actual count is well over 1,000 cases, which means we’re somewhere right around half of 2026’s case total as of right now. So you don’t feel the need to check a calendar, it’s still February.

“It is very concerning to see more than 1,000 cases in the U.S. this early in the year,” Martha Edwards, MD, president of the South Carolina Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told MedPage Today. “Already, we have more than half the number of cases seen in all of 2025, and the number of cases in 2025 was one of the highest annual case counts seen in decades.”

“As people continue to believe inaccurate information about vaccines, and as non-medical exemption rates continue to rise throughout the country, we can expect case counts to continue to rise, threatening children and immunocompromised individuals with a disease that was nearly eliminated in our country through vaccination,” she added.

The true number is going to be even higher than that. There are outbreaks of one size or another in many, many states. South Carolina alone has nearly 1,000 reported cases. The truly frustrating thing about all of this is that this problem is a simple one to fix. More people need to get vaccinated for measles via the widely available MMR vaccine.

To achieve that, the government needs to do two simple things. First, cut the shit when it comes to the misinformation about vaccines that is scaring the hell out of a percentage of the population. In fact, advocate for those same vaccines. Get Kennedy hopped up on those psychedelics he likes if you need to, but he needs to be front and center telling people to get vaccinated. And stop the nonsense that is going on with supposed religious exemptions for vaccinations.

Edwards highlighted the need for “accurate information about the dangers of measles virus and the complications that can ensue, in addition to communicating the safety and efficacy of the measles vaccine.”

“Raising the bar to obtain non-medical exemptions for vaccines and requiring families to gain accurate information about the dangers of vaccine-preventable illnesses and the importance of vaccines would be a huge benefit in helping to raise vaccination rates in South Carolina and the rest of the country,” she added. “We would love to see a requirement for parents to come in person to the health department, watch a video on vaccine-preventable illnesses, and have a conversation with a healthcare professional before they choose non-medical exemptions.”

Second, take the data collection and sharing about measles seriously. Along those same lines, demonstrate leadership by helping state governments and local medical facilities collect and share data, strategize protective measures to stop the spread of the disease, and pump the ecosystem full of real-time accurate information about where the disease is, how it spreads, and how to handle an infection.

That isn’t happening. Instead, you get stories like how South Carolina’s state government doesn’t require any mandatory reporting of measles cases in the state when patients are admitted. One doctor in the state had to find out that patients in her own area had been hospitalized with measles from Facebook.

Dr. Leigh Bragg, a pediatrician working a county away, wasn’t even aware that anyone in South Carolina had been hospitalized with measles-related illnesses until a short time later when she logged on to Facebook and saw someone relay the distraught husband’s comments. 

Part of the reason Bragg didn’t know is that South Carolina doesn’t require hospitals to report admissions for measles, potentially obscuring the disease’s severity. In the absence of mandatory reporting rules, she and other doctors are often left to rely on rumors, their grapevines of colleagues, and the fragments of information the state public health agency is able to gather and willing to share. 

So, what you get is South Carolina reporting that roughly 2% of its measles cases have resulted in hospitalization. Nobody with any knowledge of measles thinks that is even remotely accurate.

“A hospitalization rate at 2% is ludicrous,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and an infectious disease physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who served on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s immunization advisory committee. 

“It’s vast underreporting,” Offit said. “Measles makes you sick.”

Without that sort of accurate data, neither the state nor federal government knows where to help, nor how how much help is needed. If Kennedy and Trump wanted to actually confront this growing problem, that’s the kind of organization the federal government and its health-related agencies could help with. But this administration seems content to put its hands over its eyes and shout, “Nuh uh, I can’t see you!”

This is going to continue to get worse until real action is taken. Until then, I guess we all just try to keep an eye out for rashes.

Filed Under: health, health & human services, measles, preventable diseases, rfk jr., south carolina, vaccines