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The U.S. is having its worst year for measles in more than three decades

The U.S. is having its worst year for measles in more than three decades

CNBC09-07-2025
The U.S. is having its worst year for measles spread in more than three decades, with a total of 1,288 cases nationally and another six months to go in 2025.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that the national case count surpassed 2019, when there were 1,274 cases for the year and the country almost lost its status of having eliminated the vaccine-preventable illness. That could happen this year if the virus has nonstop spread for 12 months.
This year's outbreaks, some of them interconnected, started five months ago in undervaccinated communities in West Texas. Three people have died — two children in Texas and an adult in New Mexico — and dozens of people have been hospitalized. Public health experts maintain the true case count may be higher than state health departments have confirmed.
North America has three other major measles outbreaks, with 2,966 cases in Chihuahua state, Mexico, 2,223 cases in Ontario, Canada and 1,230 in Alberta, Canada. Twelve other states have current confirmed outbreaks of three or more people -Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Utah — and four other states saw their outbreaks end.
The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is 97% effective at preventing measles after two doses.
The World Health Organization said in 2000 that measles had been eliminated from the U.S.
The CDC identified 22 outbreaks in 2019, the largest being two separate clusters in New York — 412 in New York state and 702 in New York City. These were linked because as measles was spreading through close-knit Orthodox Jewish communities, the CDC said.
It's a similar situation in North America this year, where the Canada, Mexico and Texas outbreaks stem from large Mennonite communities in the regions. Mennonite churches do not formally discourage vaccination, though more conservative Mennonite communities historically have low vaccination rates and a distrust of government.
A recent study found childhood vaccination rates against measles fell after the Covid-19 pandemic in nearly 80% of the more than 2,000 U.S. counties with available data, including in states that are battling outbreaks this year.
Only 92.7% of kindergarteners in the U.S. had the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in the 2023-2024 school year, below the 95% needed to prevent outbreaks. In Gaines County, Texas, the epicenter of the Texas outbreak, only 82% of kindergarteners were up-to-date with MMR vaccines.
State and federal leaders have for years kept funding stagnant for local public health departments' vaccination programs that are tasked with reversing the trend.
"What we're seeing with measles is a little bit of a 'canary in a coal mine,'" said Lauren Gardner, leader of Johns Hopkins University's independent measles and Covid tracking databases. "It's indicative of a problem that we know exists with vaccination attitudes in this county and just, I think, likely to get worse."
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Claim: Ozzy Osbourne died from years of illness caused by the COVID-19 vaccine. Rating: On July 22, 2025, famed heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne died at age 76. Although his family did not release a cause of death, he had been battling a range of health issues over the years, including a variant of Parkinson's disease. However, soon after his death, rumors spread that the COVID-19 vaccine caused his illness. Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones shared an old article in which Osbourne said he was "relieved" after getting his COVID-19 vaccine. Jones wrote on X in response to the article: The iconic Ozzy Osbourne has died suddenly after years of illness which mysteriously started after getting vaccinated. The Black Sabbath lead singer cancelled concerts after experiencing blood clots in his legs, and had a filter placed in his artery to protect spread to his heart and brain. Ozzy was excited when he first got his shot. He's now dead… Rest in peace Ozzy Osbourne. 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The musician has had a long history of poor health in the years before he took the COVID-19 vaccine and even before the pandemic took place. In his 2011 memoir "I Am Ozzy," Osbourne described his addiction to a range of intoxicants and how it affected his health. In one passage described experiencing a tremor in his hand in the early 1990s: I started to notice a tremor in my hand. My speech was slurred. I was always exhausted. I tried to escape from it all by getting loaded, but I'd developed such a tolerance to all the drugs I was taking, I had to overdose to get high. It reached the point where I was getting my stomach pumped every other week. I had a few very close calls. One time, I scammed a bottle of codeine off a doctor in New York and downed the whole f***ing lot. I nearly went into respiratory arrest. All I remember is lying in this hotel bed, sweating and feeling like I was suffocating, and the doc telling me over the phone that if you take too much codeine, your brain stops telling your lungs to work. I was very lucky to survive. Although, the way I was feeling, I would have been happy never to wake up again. He also described being diagnosed in 2003 with "Parkinson-ian syndrome": Finally, me and Sharon went back to [Dr. Ropper's] office to find out what the f*** was wrong with me, once and for all. "I think I've got to the bottom of this," he said. "Basically, Mr Osbourne, you have a very, very rare condition, which is caused by your mother and your father both having the same damaged chromosome in their DNA. And when I say it's very rare, think one-in-a-billion rare. The good news is that it's not MS or Parkinson's disease. The bad news is that we don't really have a name for it. The best description is probably Parkinson -ian syndrome." "Is that what's been giving me the tremor?" "Absolutely." "And it's hereditary? It has nothing to do with the booze or the drugs?" "The alcohol and some of the drugs you were taking were definitely making it worse. But they weren't the primary cause." "Can you treat it?" "Yes. But first I have to tell you something, Mr Osbourne. If you keep drinking, and if you keep abusing drugs, you'll have to find another doctor, because I won't have you as a patient. I'm a busy man, I have a very long waiting list and I can't afford to have my time wasted." I'd never been spoken to like that by a doctor before. And the way he looked at me, I knew he was serious. "OK, doc," I said. "I'll try my hardest." Because of all his health issues, Osbourne described being "relieved" that he got the COVID-19 vaccine in February 2021. In an interview he gave before getting the shot, he said he wanted the two-dose vaccine: "I want to get the shot. … I look at it like this — if I don't get the shot and I get the virus, there's a good chance I ain't going to be here." Osbourne performed his final live show a few weeks before his death. His wife, Sharon Osbourne, told the media that this performance was his goodbye to his fans. The claim about his health and the COVID-19 vaccine is consistent with a common conspiracy theory that spread online during the pandemic, falsely attributing numerous famous peoples' deaths to the vaccine. We have previously fact-checked such claims about Betty White, Lisa Loring and even Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. We also reported in 2021 that there was very little evidence tying blood clot cases to the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. An investigation by the European Medicine Agency found that the vaccine was "safe and effective." While the EMA said that it would add a warning label to the vaccine to alert doctors and patients to the extremely rare possibility of blood clots, the agency said that "benefits of the vaccine clearly outweigh the risks." Emery, David. "Did Betty White Say She Got COVID Booster 3 Days Before She Died?" Snopes, 2 Jan. 2022, Accessed July 25, 2025. Evon, Dan. "Does AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine Cause Blood Clots?" Snopes, 16 Mar. 2021, Accessed July 25, 2025. Grow, Kory. "Ozzy Osbourne on His Road Back From Hell: 'I Was Absolutely in Agony.'" Rolling Stone, 20 Aug. 2019, Accessed July 25, 2025. Liles, Jordan. "No Evidence Lisa Loring's Cause of Death Was COVID-19 Vaccine." Snopes, 31 Jan. 2023, Accessed July 25, 2025. Osbourne, Ozzy. I Am Ozzy. Grand Central Publishing, 2010. Accessed July 25, 2025. "Ozzy Osbourne Dies at 76: What He Shared About His Health Over the Years." 23 July 2025, Accessed July 25, 2025. Peters, Mitchell. "Ozzy Osbourne Says He's Feeling 'Relieved' After Getting His First COVID-19 Shot: Watch." Billboard, 15 Feb. 2021, Accessed July 25, 2025. Petridis, Alexis. "'I Don't Want to Die in a Hotel Room Somewhere': Black Sabbath on Reconciling for Their Final Gig – and How Ozzy Is Living through Hell." The Guardian, 2 May 2025. The Guardian, Accessed July 25, 2025. "Rocker Ozzy Osbourne Announces Parkinson's Diagnosis." AP News, 21 Jan. 2020, Accessed July 25, 2025. Wrona, Aleksandra. "Did Alexei Navalny Die from COVID-19 Vaccine?" Snopes, 21 Feb. 2024, Accessed July 25, 2025.

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