The NPR Politics Podcast - Measles Returns — Here's What You Need To Know

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

Hundreds have been infected and two have died as measles outbreaks have occurred in West Texas and New Mexico. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a vaccine skeptic, has given conflicting advice to people wanting to avoid infection. Why are vaccination rates declining, and what do these outbreaks mean for public health in the U.S.? This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and health correspondent Maria Godoy.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Levi in Hangzhou, China. I just finally bought tickets for Ne Zha 2, the new record holder for the highest grossing movie of all time in China. This podcast was recorded at 12 23 p.m. on Monday, March 10th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I will probably still be searching all the Chinese I didn't understand in this two-hour 20-minute movie Everyone in China is talking about Okay, here's the show Well now I know what I'm googling after this podcast is over

My son was telling me about this movie and the push actually in China to make it the most seen Movie of all time. There's a whole PR thing behind that too. It's really interesting. No, that's fascinating. Hey there, it's the NPR politics podcast. I'm Susan Davis, I cover politics. I'm Domenica Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And NPR's health correspondent Maria Godoy joins us today. Hi, Maria. Hi, how are you? I'm good. And this is, we should know your very first time on the politics podcast. And we are so happy to have you today. Because today we're going to talk about measles and how the nation is responding to an ongoing

outbreak in West Texas as new cases pop up across the country. Maria, you are a health and science expert. Let's start with a little bit of 101. Can you just explain what exactly measles is and how infectious it is? Yeah, so measles is probably one of the most contagious diseases known to mankind. It's more contagious than Ebola, polio, chickenpox, you know, just about anything you can think of. The way I'd like to explain it is like when you think of how contagious a disease is, like in a vacuum where nobody is vaccinated, for every person who's sick with measles, they would go on average to infect 18 other people. And for context, the original strain of the coronavirus, you know, circa 2020, for every

person that was infected with that, roughly they went on to infect roughly three others, and we all saw how that went. So that gives you a great perspective on how, you know, in the wild, measles, when I say in the wild, I mean in an unvaccinated universe, how infectious it can be. And how exactly does measles spread? So it's an airborne virus and basically, you know, coughing or droplets, etc. When you emit those infectious particles, they can hang in the air for up to two hours. And that means like if someone is infected with measles, they cough, they leave the room, you come to two hours. And that means like if someone is infected with measles, they cough, they leave the room, you come in two hours later, you're not vaccinated,

you could catch measles. And the other thing is that you can actually be infectious with measles for four days before you get that telltale red rash from measles and up to four days after. So you could be going around spreading measles without knowing that you're infected. Okay. So there has been this outbreak in West Texas. How many people have been impacted in this community? Well, so all told in West Texas, you know, it's in several counties. The epicenter is Gaines County. Yeah, it's like around 130 cases, but in Texas total, there's about 198 cases. And you know, right over the border in New Mexico, we just had a death and an unvaccinated adult last week. That's the second death in this outbreak. The first one was

an unvaccinated child in Texas. I guess one thing I'm curious about here is perspective, because it's not the first time there has been a measles outbreak in the country. Put this in that context. Why is it happening now? Is it typical, cyclical, or is something really deviating from the norm? We shouldn't be seeing this. The last big outbreak we had in the US was in like 2018, 2019 in New York,

and that was in an Orthodox Jewish community that was targeted by anti-vaccine messaging for years. We saw about 649 cases in that outbreak. But to put it in perspective, in this outbreak, we've seen the first two deaths in the US since 2015. That was the last reported death from measles in the US. In the early 2000s, the US declared measles eliminated, which doesn't mean eradicated.

It means we're not seeing ongoing transmission for a year. So that was the big win. be seeing sizable outbreaks. What's really changed is that we're seeing vaccination rates drop and that's been happening for years, but it's a trend that accelerated during the COVID pandemic. Yeah. I mean, Domenico, books can be written about the ways in which the pandemic has left a lasting effect on American culture and society and politics, but it certainly seems like heightened vaccine hesitation is one of those problems. It absolutely is. And, you know, NIH kind of looked into this National Institutes of Health a little bit on the public opinion side

on this. And, you know, Maria mentioned in one of the religious communities, in some religious communities, it's as low as 12% of people who are vaccinated. You could go higher than 90% among medical center employees or health care workers. Hesitancy they found was worst among younger adults, those with lower education, lower income. You know, so financial insecurity, they said, and limited access to reliable health information, and those who believe in alternative forms of immunity or different kinds of treatments were also less likely to want to be vaccinated. And there's always been vaccine hesitancy, but it really spread during the pandemic. And we're seeing the effects of this now with all kinds of vaccines.

And it's really troubling when you have something like measles, which can so quickly. You know I cover children's health as one of the topics I cover and I've been talking to pediatricians for you know the last year who've been worried about these trends you're seeing and it really was something that's been happening for years but it accelerated during COVID because the we saw how much the COVID vaccine was politicized it was almost like a political litmus test, right? If you got the vaccine or not for a lot of people. And that sort of hesitancy about the COVID vaccine,

pediatricians say has like spilled over into general vaccine hesitancy among like the regularly scheduled immunizations the kids have. And so we've seen nationally vaccination rates dropping slowly and in some places they're really low. And it can be really dangerous when you have public officials then giving mixed messages

about this. Yeah, Maria, I wanted to ask you about that because obviously this is now happening at a time when President Trump is in office, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. These are two men that have, I would say, at a minimum been tolerant of vaccine skeptical views. RFK Jr. has a well-documented history of sort of giving credence to some of those views. So how is the administration responding in real time to this latest public health crisis?

RFK Jr. made headlines last week because he published an editorial in Fox News that was later posted on the Health and Human Services website, in which he was addressing this measles outbreak. And he did say that vaccines were an important tool. You know, he said that people who are unvaccinated are more vulnerable to measles, but he didn't outright say, go get vaccinated. He called vaccination a personal choice, and he said people should be given all the facts on vaccines. And he did say that the best defense against chronic disease and infectious disease is good nutrition, which is interesting because the public health message,

historically when you're talking about measles specifically, is the best defense against measles is vaccination. The other thing that was interesting is in comments, both in that editorial and later in an interview with Fox News, Kennedy basically spent a lot of time talking about the role of things like vitamin A to treat measles. And vitamin A does have a role in measles prevention. There are studies done in lower and middle income countries that show when you have kids

who have vitamin deficiencies and vitamin A deficiencies and you give them vitamin A, it does help reduce the risk of death and severe disease. There is some evidence that even in the absence of vitamin A deficiency, measles seems to deplete your vitamin A stores. So the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics both, you know, do recommend vitamin A supplementation for kids with measles, but that's not the same as preventing measles. And it's very important to say that vitamin A can absolutely not prevent measles. And the concern is that some parents may be giving their kids vitamin

A routinely long term to help, you know, protect against measles, which of course you can't, but that could actually do damage because vitamin A builds up in the body and it can be toxic to the liver. Okay, we need to take a quick break, but more on this when we get back. This message comes from Wyse, the app for doing things in other currencies. Sending or spending money abroad, hidden fees may be taking a cut. With Wyse, you can convert between up to 40 currencies at the mid-market exchange rate. Visit WISE.com. TNCs apply.

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Dignity Memorial. In life, you plan for many important things, like weddings, retirement, and your children's education. A celebration of life is really no different. Planning and paying for your celebration of life in advance protects your loved ones and gives you the peace of mind you deserve. It's truly one of the best gifts you can give your family. Dignity Memorial will help you take care of every detail with professionalism and compassion. For additional information, visit DignityMemorial.com. And we're back. And Maria, can you talk more about the measles vaccine? It's obviously been around for a very long time and it's pretty effective.

It's highly effective. One dose of the measles vaccine is 93% effective, and that means that 93% of people who get it will have an immune response after that first dose, two doses is 97% effective. It's very safe. It's been tested again and again. It's your best defense against getting the measles. Nicole Zilberbourg And like right now, because I imagine that there might be some parents or individuals who don't know if they're vaccinated are like, oh, man, I should go get a measles vaccine. It's pretty easy to get and effective pretty quickly? Yes. Okay. So most of us will have gotten the measles vaccine because it's required for like, you know, kindergarten enrollment.

There are ways to get exemptions, but if you're not sure about your vaccination status, you can look up your records, talk to your doctor. But if you really are not sure if you've been immunized, yeah, there's no harm in getting another measles shot. You know, at worst it won't do anything and at best it'll protect you if you've been immunized. Yeah, there's no harm in getting another measles shot. At worst, it won't do anything, and at best, it'll protect you if you weren't protected previously. One of the things I should note is that people

who got vaccinated before 1968 may have gotten a weaker version of the vaccine, so they should get revaccinated. If they haven't been already, they probably have been. And people who were vaccinated before 1989 routinely, the recommendation back then was one dose, which is pretty effective. But certainly if you work in healthcare or you're heading to a place that has a measles outbreak or you live there, you want a second dose then if you haven't gotten one already.

Nicole, the politics of this, because this is a politics podcast, but it's also, as I sit here thinking about it, it's not lost on me that a very large and maybe the singularly most important contributing factor to Donald Trump's loss in 2020 was the public confidence in his ability to handle the COVID pandemic. And this, of course, is not that. But I do think that so much has changed both politically about what the public is willing to tolerate in these public health crises and also a bit of forgiveness towards Trump in the electorate this time around.

And I have to say one of the interesting things I kept finding when I talked to undecided voters I heard from, you know, several people who were, you know, certainly in that category of potentially wanting to vote for Trump but didn't like that he was pro vaccine, they said. And there's really seemingly no convincing folks like that. And we saw that sort of bubble up even this past week with the Trump's NIH nominee, who then was testifying and got into this back and forth with Senator Bill

Cassidy from Louisiana, who's a doctor. And they were talking about whether the MMR vaccine, the measles, mumps from rubella vaccine can cause autism. So here's a bit of that exchange between Senator Cassidy and the Trump administration's nominee to run the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya. Yeah, I mean, I think, as I said, Senator, I don't think that there's a link between back between, you know, the MMR vaccine and autism. I'm convinced based on that literature.

The only reason I'm not wholeheartedly saying yes to your question, which every instinct of mine is to do that, is that there are people who might disagree with me. I want to make sure that's- But that's life. Yeah. I mean, there's people who disagree

if the world is round. And I say that not to minimize these concerns, but but people's People still think Elvis is alive And so if you just say someone disagrees with me, so therefore I'm going to put precious limited taxpayer dollars to this and not To addressing issues of obesity heart disease cancer I mean, this is what's happened with the misinformation and disinformation that really sprung up during the pandemic. It certainly hurt Trump during the pandemic and into 2020 about his competence in dealing with this.

But then the entire sort of blogosphere internet, strain of people who are the do-your-own research crowd and saying that these are things that could be problems are a big portion strain of people who are the do-your-own-research crowd and saying that these are things that could be problems are a big portion of the people who voted for Donald Trump. Yeah. Maria, I hesitate to put the big burden on you, but I do think you're the one watching this closely. What are you watching for next? I mean, is the concern that this could spread? What's the response to it? Sort of what's the next turn here? So here's the thing. you want to have a really robust

response, right? Like the way you contain a measles outbreak is you vaccinate people who are unvaccinated. In terms of how big this could get, the infectious disease modelers I've spoken to say, you know, given that the nation as a whole has high vaccination rates, we wouldn't expect to see this go into the thousands of cases like we saw measles outbreaks in the past, like in the 1990s,

I think it was like a 1400 cases or so in Philadelphia. But that said, vaccination rates continue to decline like they have been. We could see that again in five to 10 years. Nicole Soule Well, Maria, thank you so much for coming on the podcast for the first time and for sharing all of your reporting with us. We really appreciate it. Oh, it's my pleasure. That is it for us today. I'm Susan Davis.

I cover politics. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. This message comes from NYU Langone. The NYU Langone Health App gives you access to your electronic health record. Keep track of your visits, lab results, and images all in one place. Better health starts with a better health system. Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working together to create a just world where all people have access

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