The measles resurgence
- MedSpeak
- Jul 17
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 23
Measles is an airborne disease caused by a virus, and it causes a red rash all over the patient’s skin. However, the vaccine for measles has created widespread immunity to the disease all over the world. Its effectiveness has limited the disease heavily, so why is it making a resurgence now?
What does measles do?
Measles is an extremely transmittable and deadly disease if caught, usually affecting children the most. The disease is airborne, so it first affects the respiratory system, causing problems with respiration such as congestion and a persistent cough. From there, the virus multiplies and spreads to the rest of the body, where the rash is created. Before the measles vaccine, the disease would usually cause 2.6 million deaths per year, a staggering number. Once the vaccine was introduced in 1963, these numbers nearly disappeared overnight. However, not 100% of the population has been vaccinated, so there is still room for the disease to spread. And since community immunity hasn’t been achieved, outbreaks among the unvaccinated are still possible and occurring as we see now.
What happened?
Recently, in the United States, there has been a measles outbreak throughout several states among the unvaccinated. Currently, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are 378 measles cases in 18 states (in 2025) with children being 75% of the affected age group. In addition, 95% of the people who contract the disease are unvaccinated, with only 2% of the patients being people who have both MMR doses of the vaccine.
The disease is being coined as an outbreak, not an epidemic, with 2 deaths so far. While medicine has improved to treat and cure the disease, how did it come to this? How did an easily preventable disease explode in the number of cases in the US in the last year?
What caused the outbreak?
By 2000, US government agencies had been working tirelessly to market and provide vaccines for the general public to prevent disease. The idea felt new: injecting a foreign substance to prevent a different one from infecting you. However, despite the public’s questions on vaccines, they were adopted widely, and by 2000, measles had been declared eliminated from US soil. So how is there an outbreak now?
For decades, mistrust of the US government has been brewing, whether we would like to admit it or not. The Pew Research Center introduced data saying only about 20% of the public trusted in the government as of 2024, with only 2% always trusting government officials.
Vaccines are heavily dependent on the government.
The government funds vaccine campaigns and markets them to people to promote public health; when government distrust is at an all-time high, more of the population will not administer the vaccine for themselves and their family. After the COVID-19 pandemic, distrust of vaccines also grew with government distrust. When there are people in a community who aren’t taking the vaccine, that creates a gap in our elimination of the disease. With more people opting out of it, there’s more room for an outbreak. That’s exactly what is happening now.
How can we stop it?
Vaccines are the only way to stop the outbreak. If people aren’t vaccinated, the outbreak will continue to grow. So far, measles has reached 18 states. If we want to keep our communities safe, vaccine campaigns and incentives need to be more effective and actually drive up the rate of vaccination to prevent future outbreaks.
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