If you’ve turned on the late local news or your favorite liberal-leaning cable outlet these last few weeks, you’ve heard the story: There’s a measles outbreak that started in Texas.

You’ve also probably heard the subtext: President Donald Trump chose a noted vaccine skeptic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to run the Department of Health and Human Services. The two are supposed to be connected.

Never mind the fact that RFK Jr. has called for children to be vaccinated against measles after the outbreak began, saying in a media release that “[v]accines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons.”

Never mind, too, that out of 146 confirmed cases since late January, there’s been only one confirmed death — tragic, yes, but the first death in 10 years in the country.

Instead, Kevin Bass — an academic with a strong following on social media — destroyed the narrative of the measles outbreak being an emergency of significant proportions that Americans have to start going all Chicken Little about.

First, the facts, from Science Alert: “On Feb. 26, 2025, Texas health officials announced the death of a child in a measles outbreak – the first measles death in the United States since 2015.

“The outbreak was first identified in early February in Gaines County, Texas, where just 82% of kindergartners are vaccinated against measles, compared with 93% on average across the country.”

The article went on to note that “there have been occasional minor flare-ups” since the first commercially available measles vaccine came on the market in 1963, “usually brought in by international travelers, but by and large, measles outbreaks have been rare.” Pay attention to that fact.

The article went on to say that “the vast majority of people falling ill are unvaccinated.” This is technically untrue, according to HHS: “The DSHS reports that 79 of the confirmed cases involved individuals who had not received the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, while 62 cases had unknown vaccine status. At least five had received an MMR vaccine.” [Emphasis ours.]

There could be a number of reasons why someone had unknown vaccine status, which we’ll go over in a second. That fact is not, however, unconnected to the first fact I drew your attention to. Do keep both in mind.

So clearly, you come away from this thinking that this is all the work of treacherous anti-vaxxers — and, by extension, RFK Jr. Now, granted, RFK Jr. was a bit of an anti-vaccine crank — but he wasn’t nominated for that fact, or the fact that he was a blind squirrel finding a nut with the efficacy of the COVID vaccine mandates, but because he had the temerity to challenge the Biden administration and has a wider health agenda that involves pushing back on big pharma.

Before this, “anti-vaxxers” were mostly yoga teachers and people who bought former Playboy model/MTV host Jenny McCarthy’s spiel about vaccines causing autism, generally not a conservative bunch. Back then, the Suburu owners of America were OK with these folks. But, as Bass pointed out, while we got to the point in the 2000s when there were about 80 cases of measles reported every year in the United States, we’re now up to about 240 — and have been there for a while.

More importantly, though, looking at a 10-year rolling average of measles cases shows you that there’s no “comeback” happening, despite the outbreak.

It’s true that there have always been sporadic outbreaks.

And after the “golden period” of about 5 years in the 2000s when there were only about 80 cases per year, we’re up to about 240 cases per year now. pic.twitter.com/kyGdnIoDMT

— Kevin Bass PhD MS (@kevinnbass) February 28, 2025

And there’s more reason not to panic, as he pointed out:

There were actually the same number of deaths in 2016-2025 as in the previous ten-year period 2006-2015: one.

Yes, that’s right, during 2006-2015, there was one death. During 2016-2025, there is also one death.

Both ten year periods were record lows in number of measles deaths.

— Kevin Bass PhD MS (@kevinnbass) February 28, 2025

And here are the cases and deaths

I will do a separate thread on this tomorrow pic.twitter.com/SXkVK8zOWe

— Kevin Bass PhD MS (@kevinnbass) February 28, 2025

In other words, there’s no correlation between peak anti-vaxxerism and new peaks in measles cases or worse outcomes. So what could be driving this?

Note Science Alert telling us that “international travel” is correlated with measles outbreaks. Note, too, that 62 of the cases in the current outbreak “had unknown vaccine status.” Why might that be? In a border state? In the wake of a border crisis?

Hmm. What are the odds? And remember, it was fine for illegal immigrants to be unvaccinated during the Biden administration — but you had to get the COVID shot, at least until the courts intervened.

Of course, this isn’t to say that they acquired measles south of the border and it was dormant until now, although we don’t know how many new arrivals there are in the epicenter of the outbreak and we don’t know why the vaccination status is unknown — but it’s entirely possible this was driven by illegal immigration and not anti-vaccination sentiment.

The point is, there are plenty of ways to look at the data, not just through the lens of fear and loathing for RFK Jr. It’s helpful to push that storyline, though. It’s thoroughly unhelpful in almost every other way, but there you have our modern media, ladies and gentlemen.

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