I was reading last evening about the current measles outbreak in the U.S. Only twice in the last thirty years (2014 and 2019) have there been more measle cases in the U.S. than in 2025 and we’re barely four months into the year. Six people died of measles in the U.S. since the year 2000, and half of those died this year alone. There are almost five hundred confirmed cases in Texas. In the past, I might have gone to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to get up-to-date information on the total number of cases of measles this year to date and by state. The CDC maintains a regular summary of certain reportable diseases in U.S. communities called the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR,) Measles, as is plague, AIDS and rabies (for example) are reportable diseases through the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System (NNDSS.) This means that physicians must report new cases to the federal government (via the NNDSS.) When I last checked, there were 607 cases in 21 states of measles reported this year. This is twice the number of cases in all of 2024. A total of 97% of the cases were people (including children) who were either not vaccinated or whose vaccination status was unknown. Now, for people my age (76) who have contracted measles in childhood, the need to be vaccinated is not as urgent as others because–with exceptions–getting measles once usually confers lifelong immunity. In fact, I presently have no plans to be vaccinated again. The problem with measles comes from parents and adults who have never had measles and who refuse to get themselves or their children vaccinated. In this population, measles can spread like wildfire. In fact, measles is more contagious than any other disease. It has an R0 value as high as 18 (just above pertussis aka as whooping cough.) This means that one child or adult with measles can typically infect eighteen other people.
WHO’S WHO IN THE DEPARTMENT OF HHS
To compound the problem, there are now “wolves among the sheep” at Health and Human Services (HHS), though I mean no disrespect to the current HHS leadership by this metaphor. Physicians or administrators with advanced degrees in public health, with experience treating infections including epidemics, endemics and pandemics and conducting scientific studies are no longer in charge. Instead, they are being replaced by lay people personally loyal to Donald J. Trump with likely honorable intentions but with non-scientific minds. They are highly skeptical of the way disease prevention is practiced, are mistrustful of the pharmaceutical industry or are caught up in conspiracy theories. As a result, doctors, scientists and seasoned administrators are being unceremoniously fired, rehired, perhaps only to be fired again according to what Secretary Kennedy calls the “plan.” We’re only a stone’s throw away from seeing important data (on measles, for example) that carries inconvenient truths to conspiracy-minded folks being left out, massaged, or erased completely. Who can we trust?
TRUST YOUR PERSONAL PHYSICIAN
The short answer is you can trust your family physician, who is a graduate of an accredited medical college. They are much less likely to promote a political agenda. They are trained physicians. They run lab work, are familiar with antibiotics and they have an intensive knowledge of human anatomy and physiology. They don’t read your “aura,” read your palms, or interpret your dreams. They don’t give you St. John’s wort to chew for impotency or catnip to clear your sinuses.
MORE ABOUT MEASLES
So, let’s look a bit more at measles. Measles (aka rubeola) was first described by Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (865 AD to 925 AD), a Persian physician who differentiated measles from smallpox. Neither rubella, also known as German measles, nor roseola (also known as Sixth Disease) are truly measles and they are caused by completely unrelated viruses to the measles virus. Rubella, though not properly measles, is particularly problematic to fetuses in women who contract it in the first trimester of their pregnancy. According to AK Winter and WJ Moss writing in the medical journal Lancet:
“Common presenting signs and symptoms of include cataracts, sensorineural hearing impairment [deafness], congenital heart disease, jaundice, purpura, hepatosplenomegaly [enlarged liver and spleen] and microcephaly1 Rubella and congenital rubella syndrome can be prevented by rubella-containing vaccines, which are commonly administered in combination with measles vaccine.2“
Fortunately, most women in the U.S. have received their rubella vaccination before they became pregnant, else an estimated 16,600 babies would have been born with congenital rubella syndrome (CRS) during the first ten years of this century.
WHY DO PEOPLE REFUSE TO GET VACCINATED MEASLES?
People have different reasons or excuses to not get themselves nor their children vaccinated against measles. These can involve misinformation about the safety of the vaccine. Often, religious concerns are the problem. For example, Jews or Muslims who perceive swine as unclean animals may believe falsely that the vaccine is incubated in pigs. Others may believe that the best way to ward off measles is the “natural way” which means contracting it from others. These people sometimes host “measle parties” for children in order for them to contract measles from someone at the “party” who has it. Other Americans just don’t trust our healthcare system (or what remains of our national education system.) Still others ask themselves if it is really worth getting vaccinated against a disease that is relatively rare in this country (thanks to the many who have been vaccinated.)
People who focus on the very slight odds that a measles vaccination might lead to the death of their child forget that measles is a more certain killer, itself.
“Before the measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, it was a near-certainty that children would be infected before the age of 15 — about three or four million cases occurred every year. Most children had no complications, but a little more than 1 in 1,000 would die after developing pneumonia or encephalitis. That equates to 400 or 500 deaths a year.”
GROUND ZERO (IN TEXAS)
The current situation in Texas grew legs in Lubbock, Tx when on March 24 when
“At the Tiny Tots U Learning Academy, a center with approximately 230 infants, toddlers and preschool-age children, the outbreak began on March 24, when a little girl who had been sick with fever and vomiting tested positive. She later needed to be hospitalized for pneumonia and trouble breathing. Kids who have tested positive at the day care so far are between the ages of 5 months and 3 years old, said Maegan Messick, a co-owner of the center. None was fully vaccinated against measles.“
Yet, the CDC does have information on measles for day care centers at this website.
CONVENTIONAL VS UNCONVENTIONAL THERAPY
Messick reported that the CDC was taken back at her requests for guidance. No one has explained why. It might be due perhaps because of arbitrary staff terminations. Ground zero, however, seems to be in Gaines County, TX on the New Mexico border and two counties away from Lubbock County. Today, Secretary of HHS Robert Kennedy went to the funeral of the second otherwise healthy child who dies of measles and while he reinforced the efficacy of the anti-viral vaccine, he also extolled the work of “healers” including Richard Bartlett and Ben Edwards who are said to have healed 300 Mennonite children of Measles. Bartlett, when he is not prescribing aerosolized budesonide and clarithromycin, sometimes scrounges through hospital trash bags at hospitals in other counties. At Ector Memorial Hospital, two counties due south of Gaines, he was cited for criminal trespass. So, on his trip to Texas, Secretary Kennedy took one step forward and another step back, sending the sort of muddled message he has been known for all along.
When Secretary Kennedy suggests cod liver oil as a treatment for measles, he is courting liver failure in children or adults stricken with measles. If one thing does not permanently harm or kill then, then another thing might.
To his credit, Secretary Kennedy is correct when he notes that no vaccine is 100% safe. This is why some populations of immunocompromised children and adults are not encouraged to get measles shots. Measles shots contain an attenuated (weakened) form of the measles virus instead of the live virus (as if the virus is even alive which is a debate in high school biology classes.
So, again, be sure to check with your doctor about whether and when you should get your treatments. There is no one who knows more about health than your physician, and if there is some sort of alternative treatment that is equally efficacious, then your doctor knows about and he either recommended it to you or has discounted it already as a safe, therapeutic choice,
TREATMENT OF MEASLES
In the Middle Ages, the treatment of measles consisted of herbs, bloodletting and dietary restrictions, neither of which were effective. When measles was first included as a reportable disease in the U.S. in the early 1900’s, it was not unusual to have more than 6,000 measle-related deaths a year. At that time, the population of the. U.S. was only a third of what it is today. Measles is most commonly found in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, though it crops up in Western Countries through tourists and air passengers landing to change flights enroute or those who have their destinations in the U.K. or U.S., etc.
ASSUMPTIONS
A person who has been vaccinated for measles can still spead the disease, although it is fairly unlikely that they will. Whether they can or not depends in part on how their body has responded to the immunization. Another assumption when the CDC says that the measles vaccine is safe is that the person receiving the vaccine is in good health (e.g., not immunocompromised) and that the vaccine is given on the schedule provided by the CDC.
COMPLICATIONS OF MEASLES
Immunocompromised patients have the greatest risks of complications from measles. There are certain inherited immunodeficiencies, like those that affect the bodies T-cells or immunoglobulin proteins. And there are acquired immunodeficiences as well, such as HIV infections, diabetes, malnutrition, arithitis, lupus (i.e., SLE), myeloma, organ transplant recipients and so on.
Examples of common complications include pneumonia and encephalitis which refers to an inflammation of the tissues (meninges) that envelop the brain. These two complications are common in children under five and are potentially deadly. Measles can also inflame and damager the patient’s liver. Add to that the nonsense of giving the person unregulated doses of cod liver oil for the purpose of increasing their Vitamin A intake and you have a perfect recipe for the destruction of the organ.
If a pregnant woman in her first trimester contracts measles (rubeola as opposed to rubella), the fetus can sustain injury to its eighth cranial nerve, causing deafness. In addition, there may be miscarriage, congenital defects, and preterm birth.
AFTERWORDS
It is difficult in a free society to compel people to have some solution injected into their body against their will. I, personally, have a problem with this as well. On the other hand, when I am on chemotherapy, I become more closely attuned to people around me when it’s flu season and some sick person stands close by. I wonder whether they have had their flu shot? I wonder whether I might contract the flu from them? I wonder if I could survive the illness? So, I believe there should be a strong campaign promoting the safety and effectiveness of vaccines once those two facts have been established. For the person who has the responsibility of getting the word out that people should have their children vaccinated to then equivocate on this only undermines the efforts of the Public Health Service and opens the door for the resurgence of measles, polio and other crippling or lethal diseases, putting you and your children at risk.
FOOTNOTES
1[a smaller head size greater than three standard deviation from the mean with a smaller than usual brain size an developmental delays as well.]
2Winter AK, Moss WJ. Rubella. Lancet. 2022 Apr 2;399(10332):1336-1346. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02691-X. PMID: 35367004.
