Ontario is in the midst of its worst measles outbreak in 30 years. So is Texas.
Last week, a school-aged child in Texas died of complications of measles, the first such death in 22 years. Last spring, a pre-school child died of measles complications in Hamilton, the first such death in 35 years in Ontario.
There are, increasingly, sporadic cases and outbreaks across North America, from New Brunswick to New York – not just cases of travellers from countries where preventable childhood illnesses like measles are endemic, but, with increasing frequency, domestically spread cases as well.
Every one of these infections and outbreaks is a tragedy, and the utterly unnecessary deaths doubly so.
A quarter-century ago, we eliminated the domestic spread of measles in North America. Now we’re frittering that accomplishment away.
What almost all the cases have in common is that they are occurring in the unvaccinated – principally children. Their parents are making a deliberate choice to eschew one of the most effective medicines on Earth: the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine.
Why? Because of conspiracy-driven fears that the vaccine is harmful, that it can cause autism, or that it is the vaccine itself spreading the illness, not the virus it protects against. Every one of those myths has been debunked time and time again. The MMR vaccine is, without a doubt, safe and effective.
And yet, here we are, in the 21st century, plagued by an easily preventable medieval illness.
Ontario has recorded 142 measles cases so far in 2025, more than half of them in the past two weeks; 18 people have been hospitalized, including one child who ended up in intensive care.
The outbreak, centred around the Grand Erie region of southwestern Ontario, is part of a “multi-jurisdictional outbreak,” according to Public Health Ontario.
It started in late October when an infected person travelled from the Philippines to a wedding in Fredericton. Fifty people were infected in New Brunswick, and some of them travelled to Ontario (172 cases and counting) and Manitoba (five cases to date). Quebec has its own outbreak, with 30 cases so far.
The origin of the Texas outbreak, with 146 cases recorded to date, is unclear. But it is centred in an Old Colony Mennonite community where vaccination rates are low. Mennonites do not have a religious prohibition against vaccination, but old-order Mennonites don’t tend to engage with modern technology or mainstream public health. The problem grows much worse when measles begins to spread outside of cloistered communities.
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Thankfully, we still have a good firewall. The vast majority of children are vaccinated, particularly with the MMR vaccine. But in recent years, the numbers have been steadily falling, with vaccine skepticism driven largely by false information about the purported risk of vaccines.
The small but growing minority of parents refusing to vaccinate their kids may be well-intentioned, but they’re misinformed.
Public health officials, as well as medical professionals, have to do a better job of education and fear mitigation in a difficult social-media environment.
It doesn’t help when powerful public officials are quacks like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The new head of U.S. Health and Human Services is a long-time anti-vaxxer, though he claims to be just a “skeptic.”
When a child died in Texas last week, he showed his true stripes, shrugging off the death by saying outbreaks happen all the time. Previously, Mr. Kennedy has claimed that “measles outbreaks have been fabricated to create fear … for the sole purpose of fattening industry profits.”
So-called “health freedom” groups are also claiming, falsely, that the current outbreak is being caused by vaccines themselves and urging parents to hold “measles parties” to bolster their children’s immune systems.
This, of course, is complete nonsense. And one can only imagine how much harm this sort of attitude will cause.
Measles is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s one of the most infectious pathogens on Earth. Every carrier infects, on average, 12 to 18 others. It is notoriously difficult to control. If and when measles outbreaks grow, we will see resurgences of other vaccine-preventable childhood illnesses like mumps and whooping cough.
When we recognize that too many children are sickened and die by preventable illnesses, we will come to appreciate vaccines once again.
A line from a Joni Mitchell song springs to mind: “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”