(TNS) — There is no good reason for any American to become infected with the measles virus in 2025. Effective vaccines reduced the incidence of the disease to nearly negligible figures by the 1980s, and since a brief resurgence in the early 1990s, most years have had fewer than 100 cases across this enormous country.

This year, however, is poised to become the worst year for the highly contagious illness since 1992, or even earlier. We’re only halfway through the year, and already America has seen more confirmed cases — approaching 1,300 — than during any full year in the last three decades.

Epidemiology can be a complicated science, but in the case of measles, the reason is simple as can be: Lower vaccination rates mean higher infection rates. In fact, the United States’ vaccination rate has dropped below the 95% threshold necessary for herd immunity, when enough people are protected from infection that the virus can’t circulate in the community.

There have always been insular communities where vaccination rates are low. Outbreaks in these groups, such Orthodox Jewish communities in New York (2019) and conservative Mennonite communities in Texas (2025), are partially responsible for the biggest measles numbers in recent years. In a large and diverse (and free) country, some communities will inevitably resist vaccination and some will have members get measles.

Much more worrying is the broader upsurge in vaccine rejection, which threatens to introduce community spread of measles into the wider population. This is largely based on unfounded pseudo-scientific claims, an intuitive sense that measles is not a serious disease, and a generalized distrust of established institutions, including especially corporations. Let’s briefly consider each of these.

First, as we discussed when warning that measles was on the cusp of a comeback just four months ago, the most widely circulated claim against the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine — that it is associated with the onset of autism — isn’t just debunked: It was fraudulent from the beginning. And its author, British physician (now stripped of his license) Andrew Wakefield, made a lot of money based on his lies.

Second, while measles is held in cultural memory as a minor childhood illness similar to chickenpox, that’s a sanitized version of reality. Until the MMR vaccine was widely adopted, several hundred U.S. children died of measles every year due to complications such as pneumonia and brain inflammation.

While most children do experience measles as a weeklong annoyance, about a third will experience some kind of complication, and one in 500 will die. Three have died in the U.S. this year.

Third, there are many good reasons to distrust the motives of people and organizations, especially corporations, that benefit from selling their wares to the American public. About this general principle, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is correct. This is why we have supported some of his initiatives, such as ending the use of some food dyes, especially in items marketed to children, that have documented risks while providing no nutritional benefit.

Yet these suspicions must be analyzed case-by-case. In the case of the MMR vaccine there is no evidence, nor has there ever been any evidence, that its minor risks — soreness, a touch of fever, very rare allergic reactions — are worse than the diseases it prevents. Any indications to the contrary from Mr. Kennedy, who has sent mixed signals on the vaccine in recent months, are false and dangerous.

Getting vaccinated against measles doesn’t just protect oneself: It protects one’s entire community, and in a particular way those who can’t take the vaccine due to allergies or their own weakened immune systems. There is no good reason for any American to get the measles, and that means every death is a preventable tragedy.

— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette