After RFK Jr.'s Measles Flip-Flop, Here's What Still Worries Doctors About The Current Outbreak

More than 100 people in West Texas are currently sick with the illness, which is avoidable when enough people get vaccinated.

One hundred forty-six people in West Texas are currently infected with measles, a highly contagious illness that is avoidable when enough people get the measles vaccine. People are also infected in other states, including New Mexico, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and California.

Vaccination rates in the United States are dropping, which means fewer and fewer people are getting life-saving vaccines and the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases, like measles, are on the rise.

“Before the measles vaccine was introduced, which was in the early 1960s, 2 1/2 million people died of measles every year in the world ... and because we’ve had a vaccine for so many decades, that number has gone way down. In 2023 ... there were just over 100,000 people who died from measles across the globe, but most of those people were people who either lived in a space where they didn’t have access to vaccines, or they were other people who were not vaccinated,” said Dr. Elizabeth Meade, a pediatrician in Seattle and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Measles is most dangerous for children, and particularly children under 5 years old, Meade added. In Texas, an unvaccinated school-aged child died of measles last week.

At first, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ― now the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ― seemed to downplay the measles outbreak, experts say, but has since changed his tune.