On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Department of Health "confirmed two measles-associated deaths in Pennsylvania." Both people were not vaccinated against measles. These are the first measles-related deaths in Pennsylvania in 25 years.

In response, Pennsylvania's Secretary of Health Dr. Debra Bogen spoke about how serious measles can be. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, almost 20% of people who get measles end up hospitalized. Dr. Bogen went on to say, "I want to make sure that people understand that the MMR vaccine is safe and provides the best protection we have against measles."

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, proper vaccination is 97% effective against measles.

Pennsylvania is in the midst of a measles outbreak.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health, as of Friday afternoon, has reported 379 total measles cases this year across 28 counties, with nearly one in five minors confirmed with the virus requiring hospitalization. With 83 new cases confirmed since Monday, officials expect the state totals to be an undercount, as many families dealing with milder illness from the disease treat cases at home.

According to CNN, the United States is experiencing a significant resurgence in measles cases. Through just over half of 2026, the US recorded more measles cases than in any other year since 1991, topping last year's record year.

Measles was once declared eliminated in the US, but this may not last.

The disease was declared eliminated in the US in 2000, but more cases have been recorded in the past year and a half than there have been in the previous 25 years combined. Experts expect the US will lose its elimination status, or the recognition by the World Health Organization that measles is no longer transmitting regularly within a country.

CNN has a great graphic of the increase in cases.

Why is this happening? Vaccination rates are dropping. According to Scientific American, "vaccination rates among kindergarteners have fallen from about 95 percent to 92.4 percent in the past 10 years."

Further,

For the most contagious diseases, even a small dip in vaccination can trigger population-wide problems. “Measles is the single most contagious disease that we know of,” says Adam Ratner, a professor of pediatrics and microbiology at New York University. “It is more contagious than flu or COVID or polio or Ebola or anything else you can think of.” Around 90 percent of unvaccinated people exposed to the virus will become infected.

For over two decades, some people have baselessly claimed that vaccines can cause autism in children and have caused or contributed to the growing number of autism diagnoses. Although a worrying movement of vaccine skepticism started before the 2020 pandemic, since 2020, vaccine skepticism has only grown.

Unsurprisingly, Trump and his top officials have made the existing problem worse. Since he came on the political scene in 2016, Trump has worked tirelessly to undermine the pursuit and recognition of truth. He creates and enforces his own truths through sheer force of will.

Trump has undermined support for those with expertise and in positions of authority, except, of course, for him and those who support or enable him. He has encouraged his supporters to distort or reject scientific evidence in favor of what they (or often he) believe or want to be true.

He has fostered among his supporters an extreme pursuit of individual wants and needs (as long as they generally align with his) while simultaneously encouraging them to denigrate and disdain those who do not conform to their world view and desires. He has positioned himself and his supporters in a place of offensive authority while simultaneously he and his ardent supporters claim victimhood at the hands of a powerful, underhanded cabal that, for some reason, wants America to fail.

And, when it comes to public health and vaccines, those chickens are coming home to roost.

But, this is not all Trump's fault. Trump did not cause millions of Americans to reject the credible search for objective truth or to turn their back on life improving/saving vaccines. He certainly did not persuade most of the millions of vaccine-skeptics who opposed him at the polls. No, he merely nurtured and exploited seeds that were already there.

Rising vaccine skepticism and the resurgence of preventable disease is just another example of the decadence of modern American society and the flaws apparently inherent in humanity. Things have been good for so long that many people have forgotten or do not realize how bad certain illnesses were before vaccines.

Although the Enlightenment and the advent of the scientific method have dragged society into our modern age, much of humanity has only come along kicking and screaming. As we can see from vaccine skepticism (and many other elements of Trump-support), many people do not understand and even reject the rational, evidence-based pursuit of objective truth.

Instead, they are nothing more than modern mystics who base their beliefs on gut feelings, faulty reasoning, a desire to avoid feeling inferior to smarter or more knowledgeable experts, and a longing to belong to and fit in their discrete social or political tribe. Not too many generations ago, this type of behavior would lead to beliefs and behavior that most of us would find absurd today.

For instance, a seemingly healthy baby in the village suddenly became sick and died. An academic in an ivory tower from a far-off city suggested that the baby could have suffered from a genetic condition or was infected by tiny, unseen creatures. Meanwhile, some assertive, prominent villagers loudly proclaimed that the academic is a clueless moron who can't see the obvious: The baby's death was actually due to witchcraft at the hands of the strange, isolated old woman at the edge of the village. Or, perhaps, faeries replaced the baby with a changeling. Many, many of our ancestors would be inclined to seriously entertain or even believe the confident accusations of witchcraft or stories of faeries.

It is hard for many people to grapple with uncertainty and negative things they do not understand, particularly if loud, credible-sounding people have simple explanations that give others a feeling that they actually have some control over the matter. Perhaps it is easier to believe that autism is caused by a flaw within vaccines and thus can be addressed (by not vaccinating and persuading others not to) rather than a being complex, unavoidable consequence of biology or genetics.

We may think we are a modern, advanced people, but we routinely prove that, deep down, many of us are the same mystical rubes that we believe our ancestors to have been. Many of us do not understand or truly believe in the scientific method or the principles of the Enlightenment. Because most of us are too young to have experienced firsthand the scourges of diseases nearly eradicated in the 20th century, many of us seem hellbent on gaining some firsthand experience in order to understand the virtues of vaccines, even if it ends up in the death of some of our children. Today, it is vaccine skepticism. Perhaps tomorrow it will be skepticism of germ theory and washing our hands with soap.