Back in the year 2000, the United States had done such a spectacular job of vaccinating against measles that it was essentially eradicated. What followed was a steady increase in paranoia-fueled mistrust of vaccine science that has, today in 2025, resulted in the most measles cases since 1992.As of this year, 1,288 cases have been reported nationwide, according to the CDC. Experts believe the true number may be even higher.Two unvaccinated children in Texas and one adult in New Mexico died from measles, representing the first measles-related U.S. deaths in over a decade. Most cases are tied to a massive outbreak in West Texas, particularly in Gaines County, where only 82 percent of kindergartners received both MMR doses. That’s well below the 95 percent needed to stop measles from spreading like wildfire at a toddler’s birthday party.The situation echoes the 2019 outbreak in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York, where low vaccine uptake fueled 1,274 cases. Back then, aggressive vaccination campaigns, including mandates and 60,000 doses administered, shut the outbreak down. This time around, at a federal level, we have anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. appointing a handful of anti-vaxxers to the CDC’s vaccine panel. On a state level, Texas is ill-equipped to handle the sudden influx of measles, especially since the CDC cut $11.4 billion in COVID-19 public health funds specifically allocated for fighting disease outbreaks. Since each measles case costs around $50,000 to manage, costs are adding up fast. Not that Texas health officials even think people should be vaccinated in the first place.It should come as no surprise that, according to vaccination experts who spoke with NBC News, all of this is directly tied to declining vaccination rates and rising medical misinformation. National MMR vaccine coverage among kindergartners dipped below 93 percent in 2023-24.It doesn’t help when a nation’s Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr., is pushing unproven remedies like vitamin A while suggesting that vaccine immunity wears off quickly when it absolutely does not, since two MMR doses are 97 percent effective for the rest of your life. That isn’t a BS statistic I pulled from an untrustworthy source. That information comes directly from the CDC website.Measles laughs in vitamin A’s face. The only thing that can prevent your kid from getting measles and potentially dying from it is to get two doses of the MMR vaccine, a fact federal and Texas state health officials would rather you not know for reasons they could not explain without sounding like a bunch of paranoid conspiratorial kooks.The post The U.S. Is Having Its Worst Measles Outbreak in Over 30 Years appeared first on VICE.