This is what happens when the person who can’t do sixth-grade math thinks they’re a virologist
The United States is experiencing its worst measles outbreak in more than three decades. Over 1,200 cases have been reported across 39 states so far in 2025 — a staggering number for a disease that was declared eliminated in the US in 2000, and a 33-year high, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Why? The virus is surging because a significant number of Americans have come to reject science.
At the heart of this regression is a confluence of bad information, broken trust, and opportunistic figures — including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and President Trump — who have each played their part in undermining confidence in vaccination. It is a public health calamity (see my colleague Matt Robison’s excellent explainer of the consequences) — but it also reflects something bigger: People increasingly ignore reality.
The outbreak was entirely preventable. The MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine is safe and extraordinarily effective — two doses provide about 97% protection. To achieve herd immunity and prevent outbreaks, about 95% of a population needs to be vaccinated — but US coverage has fallen to around 92.7%, with some counties — like Gaines County, Texas — reporting non-medical exemption rates above 14%. When vaccination rates dip below the threshold, the virus returns. And it doesn’t just affect those who refuse the vaccine: Infants, the immunocompromised, and even some vaccinated individuals are put at risk.
Why do people fall into the anti-vaccine trap? We should understand, not to excuse them but to more effectively counter their beliefs.
Some skeptics, especially in marginalized communities, carry legitimate historical grievances. Black Americans recall the Tuskegee syphilis study, in which US government researchers deliberately withheld treatment from hundreds of black men with syphilis for decades in order to observe the progression of the disease. Indigenous people remember forced sterilizations.
Others distrust pharmaceutical companies, viewing them not unreasonably as greedy corporations more interested in profit than public good. Gallop recently found that only 18% of Americans (and plummeting) had a very or somewhat positive view of them — far below the figure of accountants or (unbelievably enough) airlines. All this may not justify rejecting vaccines, but it’s a factor.
Then there’s the blowback to public health mandates during COVID-19 — the lockdowns, mask rules, vaccine requirements. For many, especially on the political right, these felt authoritarian and eroded trust in public institutions. And when rare vaccine side effects or anecdotal injury stories arise — even if scientifically unsubstantiated — they spread like wildfire through social media. So much of this nonsense, essentially, is the late cost of COVID.
All of this is compounded by a broader cultural shift toward conspiracy thinking, which has only accelerated in the digital age. During the pandemic, millions of people, isolated and frightened, turned to online echo chambers. Once-trusted sources of information — doctors, journalists, scientists — became targets of suspicion. In their place rose YouTubers and grifters who promised secret knowledge and presented easy villains.
It’s not just about vaccines, and far from an American phenomenon only. Large portions of the public in many places — especially in poorly educated or heavily politicized populations — are primed to believe almost anything that challenges mainstream consensus. In parts of the Arab world (which spawned the 9/11 terrorists), it’s common to hear that “the Jews did 9/11.” In America, QAnon believers assert that liberal elites are harvesting adrenochrome from children. RFK Jr. has promoted the baseless idea that Wi-Fi causes cancer and suggested that vaccines are part of a grand scheme to control humanity. This isn’t just fringe nonsense — these is a growing global audience for bullshit.
Social media platforms amplify the bullshit, benefitted from a strange convergence of extremes: the hyperliberal-progressive idea that all perspectives deserve equal weight, and the anti-intellectual-rightist instinct to sneer at the educated (who are, generally, er … not on the political far right).
Viewed through this prism, growing skepticism about vaccines is part of a wider rejection of expertise being driven by the political extremes on all sides in many places. Part of what makes people think it’s OK to reject true expertise is the illusion of one’s own knowledge born from internet access and algorithm-fed echo chambers. People can now Google a few articles—or skim some memes—and come away convinced they know more than immunologists.
The result? People who would be struggle to calculate the square root of 36 holding forth online about spike proteins, mRNA technology, and herd immunity—often ending their rants with something like “the government is injecting us with 5G nanobots to control our thoughts.” We’ve democratized knowledge so thoroughly that we’ve forgotten some things aren’t up for a vote.
As a result, getting back to measles, the damage is global. In Europe, measles cases soared past 127,000 in 2024 — the continent’s worst year in 25 years. Austria, Germany, and Romania are among the hardest-hit, with far-right parties exploiting vaccine skepticism for political gain. In Serbia, anti-vax groups have grown more vocal and more organized, fusing nationalism with pseudoscience. Kennedy’s anti-vaccine messaging, translated and amplified across social media in French, German, and Italian, has found fertile ground abroad.
So we should remember the truth: The success story of vaccines is one of the greatest in history. The World Health Organization estimates that vaccines have saved at least 154 million lives over the past 50 years — 94 million from measles alone. So naturally, and insanely, Trump pulled the US out of the WHO.
Polio, which once paralyzed hundreds of thousands of children annually, is nearly extinct thanks to decades of vaccination. Smallpox, which killed 300 million people in the 20th century, was eradicated globally by 1980. Every year, vaccines prevent between 3.5 and 5 million deaths worldwide, especially among children.
Who doesn’t get it? Well, a Harvard survey found that while 79% of Americans support school vaccine mandates, that support drops sharply among Republicans — especially self-identified MAGA voters. A third of Republican parents say they’re unsure if the MMR vaccine causes autism, despite the claim being thoroughly debunked. And although most Americans still view vaccines favorably, trust in the institutions that recommend them — the CDC, WHO, and HHS — has plummeted.
That’s certainly due to the nonstop drumbeat of GOP incitement against them. And this has reached its apotheosis with the head of HHS being someone who spent decades attacking the very concept of vaccination. Kennedy, now dressed in the legitimacy of office, continues to undermine public health by spreading pseudoscience, firing officials who deal with vaccinations, rolling back school immunization rules, and promoting unproven “natural” treatments like cod liver oil. Trump, who once urged Americans to “get the shots,” now largely stays silent — perhaps afraid to alienate the anti-vax constituency that supports him.
A society that cannot agree on basic facts cannot solve its most urgent problems. Vaccines, climate change, election security — all are undermined by the same rot: a rejection of expertise and a celebration of ignorance.
What can we do? First, we need leaders — in government, media, and tech — who treat science with the seriousness it deserves. That means removing ideologues from positions of authority and reinstating public health officials with the credibility and courage to speak plainly. Second, platforms must treat vaccine disinformation with the urgency they once gave to terrorism — because the death toll can be just as high. Third, we need public education that teaches not just facts, but how to think: how to evaluate evidence, check sources, and resist the comforting allure of conspiracies.
Finally, we must take the anti-vaccine beliefs seriously, and address them – not just dismiss and ignore. A massive public outreach campaign is needed.
Either way, it’s important to understand that when a parent refuses to vaccinate their child, they are not just making a personal choice — they are making a selfish one, with consequences that ripple far beyond their family. In the case of measles, they’re helping resurrect a virus that kills one to three children per 1,000 cases, even in wealthy countries with modern care.
Not all beliefs are equally valid and not all skepticism is noble. The measles outbreak, presently still at controllable levels, is about something bigger: A wide swath of human society has lost its grip on reality. That is the real virus.
