Measles Cases Hit New Record in U.S., as Stupid-Americans Reject Vaccines

Teddy Rosenbluth, reporting for The New York Times:

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that there have been 2,318 confirmed cases of measles so far this year. The case count toppled the record set last year, when measles infected more than 2,200 Americans and killed two unvaccinated children. More measles cases have been reported in the United States in the last two years than in all the years from 2000 through 2024 combined.

Reversing course on measles would require a nationwide push to improve vaccination rates, a prospect that experts said seemed unlikely under the leadership of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He has halted funding for vaccine hesitancy research, downplayed the risks of measles and spearheaded a hunt for evidence that vaccines are unsafe.

Nilay Patel, endorsing Kamala Harris for president in 2024: “A Vote for Donald Trump Is a Vote for School Shootings and Measles”. (He missed “quagmire war with Iran”.)

“tarltontarlton” on Reddit last year: “Stupid-Americans are the New Irish-Americans, Trump is Their JFK”. I continue to think about this post frequently.

Isaac Asimov, in a column for Newsweek in 1980:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”.

I continue to think about this frequently as well.

★ Saturday, 25 July 2026