Measles is back. Vaccinated children are suffering the consequences, too
Earlier this spring, a family brought their child into a Provo, Utah, pediatrician’s office with a runny nose and a fever. Doctors treated it as strep throat.
But the child returned — and then returned again.
By the time they received a measles diagnosis, as many as 300 patients had passed through that waiting room, including more than 30 infants too young to have received their first vaccine dose.
Crisis management ensued, with doctors and staff halting their usual operations to implement outdoor screenings, create parking lot isolation tents, and send exposure notifications to hundreds of families.
This scene is playing out across the country right now, and it reveals a broader truth that gets lost in the debates about individual vaccination decisions. Measles does not just sicken children. It erodes the healthcare system that every child depends on, whether or not they were ever exposed to the virus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has already reported more than 1,800 measles cases across the United States this year. What some initially dismissed as isolated outbreaks has become a sustained national crisis.
As a pediatrician, I worry about the thousands of children sick from a preventable disease.
While measles may initially present as flu-like symptoms or a rash, the long-term consequences are harrowing. They include potentially fatal pneumonia, brain swelling, hearing loss, and significant respiratory issues.
But I also worry about other children’s care. I know that families who did all they could to avoid the disease will pay the price anyway.
When someone with measles enters a pediatric practice, the ripple effects are immediate and expensive. Nurses are pulled into contact tracing. Physicians must redesign intake and isolation procedures in real time. Well-child visits get delayed. Developmental screenings are postponed. Vaccination appointments are rescheduled. Families avoid bringing children in for routine care out of fear of exposure.
In other words, the resources a practice needs to keep children healthy get consumed managing a disease that the United States had eliminated more than two decades ago. Every patient, family, and provider in that system bears that cost, regardless of their own vaccination status.
There is, however, a clear way to prevent further spread: vaccination.
The measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine remains one of the most effective tools in modern medicine. Two doses are 97% effective at preventing infection. Most parents recognize and act on this: A new national survey found that 96% of parents trust their child’s pediatrician on vaccine recommendations.
Nevertheless, only 10 states currently maintain vaccination rates high enough to reliably prevent sustained outbreaks (95% of a population). Gaps in those communities leave vaccinated children, immunocompromised individuals, and infants too young for their first dose extremely vulnerable in shared spaces, including pediatric offices.
Families may not follow every congressional hearing, court ruling, or change in federal vaccine policy, but no one is immune to the real-life consequences. Nearly 70% of voters say they are concerned about measles spreading, and nearly 6 in 10 are personally worried about the impact on their own families, from school disruptions to unexpected exposures, missed work, and medical bills.
To parents, my message is straightforward: Your instinct to protect your child is correct, and your trust in your physician is warranted. Keep vaccination appointments. Bring questions to your pediatrician, not to social media and not to political figures whose relationship with scientific evidence has become unpredictable.
To policymakers, I am more direct: Stop politicizing the tools that protect children. Vaccine access must remain simple, insurance-covered, and guided by independent medical experts. Two-thirds of voters say they would support a candidate who protects vaccine access over one who seeks to roll it back. The public knows what they want for their children.
Measles outmaneuvered the exposed families in Provo and other hotspots around the country, disrupting care for countless families. Prevention starts with a simple commitment to stop treating children’s health as an acceptable casualty of ideological confusion.
Tina Tan, MD, FIDSA, FPIDS, FAAP, is a professor of pediatrics at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, medical director of the International Patient and Destination Services Program, medical director of the International Adoptee Clinic, and medical co-director of the Travel Medicine Clinic at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Dr. Tan is also the immediate past president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.