Why South Carolina’s measles outbreak is so concerning — and so avoidable | Opinion

I am tempted to say South Carolina has made infectious disease great again, but that would be glib. What we are seeing is no joke and portends a future that should concern us all.

The United States is experiencing its worst measles outbreak in decades with more than 1,500 confirmed cases in 41 states this year, and South Carolina, with 16 confirmed cases so far, could climb that list.

More than 150 unvaccinated children at two schools in the Upstate are supposed to quarantine for 21 days after being exposed to the disease, and health officials suspect the outbreak is spreading.

The outbreak began in Texas in January and experts suspect the real number of cases is probably closer to 5,000. Most of the measles victims were not vaccinated against the disease.

In South Carolina, Gov. Henry McMaster isn’t concerned enough. State officials are making information about the measles available but they have no plans to conduct a comprehensive effort to encourage more people to get vaccinated.

“I think that we learned back in the COVID times that if you give people the proper information, full information, let them make their own decisions, and they will make the right one,” he said in an interview last week.

Actually, that’s not what we learned.

Instead of coming up with creative ways to increase trust in vaccines, state and federal officials have contributed to an air of distrust.

The most egregious example was the U.S. Senate confirming Robert Kennedy Jr., a man who has spent much of his adult life misrepresenting or misinterpreting data about vaccines and other medicines, to be in charge of the nation’s public health system.

He recently claimed a linkage between circumcision and autism, supposedly because doctors give babies Tylenol after the procedures. During the COVID-19 era, his boss, President Donald Trump, spoke about disinfectant and hitting the body with ultraviolet light as a potential cure.

Before reporting stopped about three years ago, COVID-19 had killed nearly 20,000 people in South Carolina during a once-in-a-century pandemic that changed the course of world history. The tragic deaths were only one facet of the greatest public health challenge of our generation. Every aspect of our lives was affected.

That contagious airborne virus strained hospital systems, shuttered schools and businesses, and made people question almost everything. Student test scores and other academic achievement measures have yet to recover. Trust in our institutions, which had been waning for years, has plummeted. Conspiracy theories have become more rooted in the American psyche.

And vaccine skepticism has skyrocketed.

Before the pandemic, in the 2019-2020 school year, 28 states did not meet the target 95% vaccination rate for measles, mumps and rubella. Last school year, it was 39. In that same five-year time period, the number of states below 90% coverage soared from three to 16.

The percentage of kindergarteners receiving all recommended vaccinations to be protected against the measles, mumps, rubella and polio has also been steadily declining in recent years.

That leaves the nation and the state woefully unprepared for the next pandemic, meaning the next virus might take more than the 1.1 million American lives COVID-19 stole from us.

It’s a sobering reality.

Despite what McMaster said, without a major push from South Carolina state health officials, fewer people are likely to take steps to protect themselves and the public. And unlike COVID, children are more susceptible to being the primary targets of diseases like the measles.

It’s true that government officials made mistakes during the COVID-19 pandemic. They didn’t trust the public enough to give us timely information about mask wearing, or adequately explain the disease’s immune-evading variants that made it more difficult for vaccines to stop the spread of that virus, or correctly express how quickly COVID-19 could or couldn’t be stopped.

It’s unfortunately true that health officials and others have lied to the public throughout American history, including during infamous studies such as the Tuskegee experiment when hundreds of unaware Black men went untreated for syphilis over decades in the name of research. That’s why not all vaccine and medicine hesitancy is illegitimate or grounded in conspiracies.

But vaccines have been studied thoroughly and been shown, time and again, to be safe and effective. Refusing to get vaccinated because of past missteps is unwise and potentially deadly.

Experts say that for every 1,000 children with measles under the age of 5, approximately one to three will die. Measles is a serious but avoidable disease because of vaccinations.

That’s the message that South Carolinians should be sharing with one another right now.

Issac J. Bailey is a McClatchy opinion writer in North Carolina and South Carolina.

This story was originally published October 15, 2025 at 5:00 AM.