Measles Cases and Outbreaks are on the Rise in the United States

 

A short post today simply because the information I want to provide you is in the link at the end here.  

With Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr now in charge of HHS (Department of Health and Human Services), there have been a lot of stories in the mainstream news and a lot of concerns about where the US is heading as far as vaccines are concerned.  RFK Jr has not made it a secret that he has some 'less than mainstream' views on the subject.  He also has expressed a lot of concerns about community water fluoridation, but that's a post for another day...

Today's post is about measles.  The disease was pretty much eradicated through a vaccine program that has been deployed since the late 1950s.  Measles is incredibly infectious and epidemics of the virus were common before the vaccine was developed.  Since its mass deployment in the late 1960s, measles *was* almost unheard of.

Then came the 'vaccine scare' that most of us are familiar with where people used little to no science to frighten the public into thinking that vaccines... any vaccine, was dangerous and caused all kinds of problems in the children they were being administered to.  That non-science based scare program resulted in many parents refusing to have their children vaccinated.  Of course parents want to protect their children; its one of our most basic and important human traits.  The problem is that, due to the scare tactics, measles and other childhood diseases began to occur again.

Measles outbreaks were almost unheard of for several decades, but now the virus and its infection are on the rebound.  

Now to the meat of today's post.  The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) put an announcement up on March 21, 2025 to discuss the current measles outbreak in the United States.  As of March 20, 2025, CDC has tracked a total of 378 confirmed cases.  Because measles is so easy to be transferred, this kind of information is important for dentists to be aware of.  Head over to the CDC webpage and get this important info.

And if you are an info geek like I am, you'll probably enjoy reading the history of the measles vaccine on the WHO (World Health Organization) website.  The page also has a brief section on the debunked scientific paper that started the entire vaccine scare.  I found the info fascinating!