In the year 2000, health officials declared that measles had been eliminated in the United States, thanks to a successful program to vaccinate all children against the disease.
But, thanks to Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who is now Secretary of Health and Human Services, measles is back.
RFK Jr. is often described as a “vaccine skeptic.” He would be more accurately described as a fierce opponent of vaccines.
South Carolina reported nearly 800 cases last Tuesday, and the number is likely to grow.
With 789 cases reported as of Tuesday, the South Carolina outbreak surpassed a massive outbreak in Texas, which reached 762 cases before it ended in August last year. Two children died during the outbreak in Texas…
“It breaks my heart to see that my state is the number one outbreak currently in the United States since the 1990s,” Dr. Anna Kathryn Rye Burch, a pediatric infectious diseases physician with Prisma Health in South Carolina, told CNN Wednesday. “We have this amazing vaccine that would help protect us all from getting the measles, and we are just seeing that people aren’t as excited about getting that vaccine anymore. This is why we’re seeing measles come back into the United States…”
Measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000, meaning there has not been continuous transmission for more than a year at a time.
Before 2025, there were an average of about 180 measles cases reported each year since elimination, according to US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. The US reported more than 2,200 confirmed measles cases in 2025 — significantly more than there have been in any year since 2000.
Diane Ravitch's blog 