Measles Returns — Here's What You Need To Know

Summary

Podcast Summary: The NPR Politics Podcast – Measles Returns — Here's What You Need To Know

Release Date: March 10, 2025
Host: Susan Davis
Guests: Maria Godoy (NPR Health Correspondent), Domenico Montanaro (Senior Political Editor and Correspondent)

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Introduction

In the March 10, 2025 episode of The NPR Politics Podcast, host Susan Davis delves into the resurgence of measles in the United States, focusing on the recent outbreak in West Texas and its broader national implications. Joined by health expert Maria Godoy and political correspondent Domenico Montanaro, the discussion bridges the intersection of public health and political dynamics influencing vaccine hesitancy.

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Overview of the Measles Outbreak

Susan Davis opens the conversation by highlighting the ongoing measles outbreak centered in West Texas, with significant case numbers reported both locally and across state lines into New Mexico.

Maria Godoy provides a clinical backdrop, explaining the basics of measles:

“Measles is probably one of the most contagious diseases known to mankind. It's more contagious than Ebola, polio, chickenpox, you know, just about anything you can think of.”
[01:37]

She elaborates on measles' infectiousness, noting that in an unvaccinated population, one person can infect an average of 18 others, starkly contrasting it with the transmissibility of COVID-19.

---

Current Impact and Statistics

Focusing on the outbreak's reach, Maria details:

“In West Texas, it’s in several counties. The epicenter is Gaines County, with around 130 cases. In Texas total, there's about 198 cases. Right over the border in New Mexico, we just had a death in an unvaccinated adult last week. That's the second death in this outbreak. The first one was an unvaccinated child in Texas.”
[03:03]

This marks the first measles-related deaths in the U.S. since 2015, underscoring the severity of the current situation.

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Historical Context and Rising Vaccine Hesitancy

Susan Davis questions whether this outbreak is part of a cyclical pattern or indicative of a deeper shift in public health trends. Maria Godoy responds by contextualizing:

“The last big outbreak we had in the US was in like 2018, 2019 in New York... We saw about 649 cases in that outbreak. But in this outbreak, we've seen the first two deaths in the US since 2015... What’s really changed is that we're seeing vaccination rates drop. And that's been happening for years, but it's a trend that accelerated during the COVID pandemic.”
[04:28]

Domenico Montanaro reinforces this by discussing findings from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on public opinion:

“Vaccine hesitancy was worst among younger adults, those with lower education, lower income... and those who believe in alternative forms of immunity or different kinds of treatments were also less likely to want to be vaccinated.”
[05:38]

He emphasizes the alarming acceleration of vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting its long-term impact on public health initiatives like measles vaccination.

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Political Influences and Administration Response

The discussion shifts to the political landscape, particularly during President Trump's administration. Susan Davis probes the administration's stance:

“RFK Jr. made headlines last week because he published an editorial in Fox News... he did say that people who are unvaccinated are more vulnerable to measles. But he didn't outright say, go get vaccinated. He called vaccination a personal choice...”
[06:47]

Maria Godoy clarifies the potential misconceptions arising from such statements:

“...vitamin A can absolutely not prevent measles. The concern is that some parents may be giving their kids vitamin A routinely long term to help protect against measles, which of course it can't...”
[08:40]

This nuanced explanation underscores the importance of clear public health messaging amidst political rhetoric that may inadvertently fuel vaccine skepticism.

---

Vaccination Efficacy and Recommendations

Addressing concerns about the measles vaccine, Maria Godoy provides reassurance on its effectiveness:

“One dose of the measles vaccine is 93% effective... Two doses is 97% effective. It's very safe... Your best defense against getting measles is vaccination.”
[09:25]

She advises individuals uncertain about their vaccination status to consult healthcare providers, emphasizing the minimal risk and high benefit of receiving the vaccine.

---

Political Ramifications and Misinformation

Domenico Montanaro explores the political fallout from vaccine misinformation:

“This is what's happened with the misinformation and disinformation that really sprung up during the pandemic... a big portion of the people who voted for Donald Trump...”
[12:57]

He references an exchange involving Senator Bill Cassidy and Jay Bhattacharya, a Trump administration nominee for the NIH, highlighting ongoing debates about vaccine safety:

"Jay Bhattacharya: '...I'm going to put precious, limited taxpayer dollars to this and not to addressing issues of obesity, heart disease, cancer.'”
[12:36]

This segment illustrates the persistent conflicts between scientific consensus and political narratives that undermine public health efforts.

---

Future Outlook and Public Health Measures

Concluding the discussion, Maria Godoy outlines the necessary steps to contain the outbreak:

“The way you contain a measles outbreak is you vaccinate people who are unvaccinated in terms of how big this could get. We wouldn't expect to see this go into the thousands of cases... But if vaccination rates continue to decline... we could see that again in five to ten years.”
[13:37]

She stresses the urgency of reversing the trend in vaccine hesitancy to prevent future public health crises.

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Closing Remarks

Susan Davis wraps up the episode by thanking Maria Godoy for her insights, reinforcing the critical connection between public health policies and political actions in managing infectious disease outbreaks.

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Conclusion

This episode of The NPR Politics Podcast meticulously unpacks the multifaceted crisis of measles resurgence in the United States. By intertwining expert health perspectives with political analysis, the discussion illuminates how declining vaccination rates—exacerbated by political discourse—pose significant threats to public health. The episode serves as a clarion call for reinvigorated vaccination campaigns and coherent public health strategies to avert future outbreaks.

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Notable Quotes:

• Maria Godoy on measles' contagiousness:
  “Measles is probably one of the most contagious diseases known to mankind...”
  [01:37]

• Maria Godoy on current outbreak statistics:
  “Right over the border in New Mexico, we just had a death in an unvaccinated adult last week...”
  [03:03]

• Domenico Montanaro on vaccine hesitancy demographics:
  “Vaccine hesitancy was worst among younger adults, those with lower education, lower income...”
  [05:38]

• Susan Davis on political impact:
  “RFK Jr. made headlines last week because he published an editorial in Fox News...”
  [06:47]

• Maria Godoy on vaccine efficacy:
  “One dose of the measles vaccine is 93% effective... Two doses is 97% effective...”
  [09:25]

• Domenico Montanaro on misinformation effects:
  “This is what's happened with the misinformation and disinformation that really sprung up during the pandemic...”
  [12:57]

---

This summary is intended to provide a comprehensive overview of the podcast episode for those who haven't had the opportunity to listen. For the full discussion and additional context, listeners are encouraged to tune into The NPR Politics Podcast.

Transcript

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[Levi]

Hi, this is Levi in Hangzhou, China. I just finally bought tickets for NE ZHA 2, the new record holder for the highest grossing movie of all time in China.

[Susan Davis]

This podcast was recorded at 12:23pm on Monday, March 10.

[Levi]

Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I will probably still be searching all the Chinese I didn't Understand in this 2 hour, 20 minute movie everyone in China is talking about. Okay, here's the show.

[Susan Davis]

Well, now I know what I'm googling after this podcast is over.

[Domenico Montanaro]

My son was telling me about this movie and the push actually in China to make it the most seen movie of all time. There's a whole PR thing behind that, too. It's really interesting.

[Susan Davis]

No, it's fascinating. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

[Domenico Montanaro]

I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

[Susan Davis]

And NPR's health correspondent Maria Godoy joins us today. Hi, Maria. Hi.

[Maria Godoy]

How are you?

[Susan Davis]

I'm good. And this is, we should note, your very first time on the Politics podcast. And we are so happy to have you today because today we're going to talk about measles and how the nation is responding to an ongoing outbreak in West Texas as new cases pop up across the country. Maria, you are health and science expert. Let's start with a little bit of 101. Can you just explain what exactly measles is and how infectious it is?

[Maria Godoy]

Yeah. So measles is probably one of the most contagious diseases known to mankind. It's more contagious than Ebola, polio, chickenpox, you know, just about anything you can think of. The way I'd like to explain it is like when you think of how contagious a disease is, like in a vacuum where nobody is vaccinated for every person who's sick with measles, they would go on average to infect 18 other people. And for context, the original strain of the coronavirus, you know, circa 2020, for every person that was infected with that, roughly, they went on to infect roughly three others. And we also how that went. So that gives you a perspective on how, you know, in the wild measles, when I say in the wild, I mean in an unvaccinated universe, how infectious it can be.

[Susan Davis]

And how exactly does measles spread?

[Maria Godoy]

So it's an airborne virus and basically, you know, coughing or droplets, et cetera, when you emit those infectious particles, they can hang in the air for up to two hours. And that means, like, if someone is infected with measles, they cough, they leave the room, you come in two hours later, and you're not vaccinated. You could catch measles. And the other thing is that you can actually be infectious with measles for four days before you get that telltale red rash from measles and up to four days after. So you could be going around spreading measles without knowing that you're infected.

[Susan Davis]

Okay, so there has been this outbreak in West Texas. How many people have been impacted in this community?

[Maria Godoy]

Well, so all told, in West Texas, you know, it's in several counties. The epicenter is Gaines County. Yeah, it's like around 130 cases. But in Texas total, there's about 198 cases. And, you know, right over the border in New Mexico, we just had a death in an unvaccinated adult last week. That's the second death in this outbreak. The first one was an unvaccinated child in Texas.

[Susan Davis]

I guess one thing I'm curious about here is perspective, because it's not the first time there has been a measles outbreak in the country. Put this in that context. Why is it happening now? Is it typical cyclical, or is something really deviating from the norm?

[Maria Godoy]

We shouldn't be seeing this. The last big outbreak we had in the US was in like 2018, 2019 in New York. And that was in an orthodox Jewish community that was targeted by anti vaccine messaging for years. We saw about 649 cases in that outbreak. But to put it in perspective, in this outbreak, we've seen the first two deaths in the US since 2015. That was the last reported death for measles in the U.S. in the early 2000s, the U.S. declared measles eliminated, which doesn't mean eradicated. Means we're not seeing ongoing transmission for a year. So that was the picture. Big win to be seeing, you know, sizable outbreaks. What's really changed is that we're seeing vaccination rates drop. And that's been happening for years, but it's a trend that accelerated during the COVID pandemic.

[Susan Davis]

Yeah, I mean, Domenico books can be written about the ways in which the pandemic has left a lasting effect on American culture and society and politics, but it certainly seems like heightened vaccine hesitation is one of those problems.

[Domenico Montanaro]

It absolutely is. And, you know, NIH kind of looked into this National Institutes of Health a little bit on the public opinion side on this. And you, you know, Maria mentioned in one of the religious communities, in some religious communities, it's as low as 12% of people who are vaccinated, and you could go higher than 90% among medical center employees or healthcare workers. Hesitancy, they found, was worst among younger adults, those with lower education, lower income. You know, so financial insecurity, they said, and limited access to reliable health information. And those who believe in alternative forms of immunity or different kinds of treatments were also less likely to want to be vaccinated. And there's always been vaccine hesitancy, but it really spread during the pandemic, and we're seeing the effects of this now with all kinds of vaccines. And it's really troubling when you have something like measles, which can spread so quickly.

[Maria Godoy]

You know, I cover children's health as one of the topics I cover. And I've been talking to pediatricians for, you know, the last year who've been worried about these trends you're seeing. And it really was something that's been happening for years. But it accelerated during COVID because we saw how much the COVID vaccine was politicized. It was almost like a political litmus test, right, if you got the vaccine or not for a lot of people. And that sort of hesitancy about the COVID vaccine, pediatricians say, has, like, spilled over into general vaccine hesitancy among, like, the regularly scheduled immunizations the kids have. And so we've seen nationally vaccination rates dropping slowly, and in some places they're really low.

[Domenico Montanaro]

And it can be really dangerous when you have public officials then giving mixed messages about this.

[Susan Davis]

Yeah, Maria, I wanted to ask you about that because obviously this is now happening at a time when President Trump is in office. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. These are two men that have, I would say, at a minimum, been tolerant of vaccine skeptical views. RFK Jr. Has a well documented history of sort of giving credence to some of those views. So how is the administration responding in real time to this latest public health crisis?

[Maria Godoy]

RFK Jr. Made headlines last week because he published an editorial in Fox News that was later posted on the Health and Human Services website in which he was addressing this measles outbreak. And he did say that vaccines were an important tool. You know, he said that people who are unvaccinated are more vulnerable to measles. But he didn't outright say, go get vaccinated. He called vaccination a personal choice. And he said people should be given all the fact on vaccines. And he did say that the best defense against chronic disease and infectious disease is good nutrition, which is interesting because the public health message historically, when you're talking about measles specifically, is the best defense against measles is vaccination. The other thing that was interesting is in comments both in that editorial and later in an interview with FOX News. Kennedy basically spent a lot of time talking about the role of things like vitamin A to treat measles. And vitamin A does have a role in measles prevention. There are studies done in lower and middle income countries that show when you have kids who have vitamin deficiencies and vitamin A deficiencies and you give them vitamin A, it does help reduce the risk of death and severe disease. There is some evidence that even in the absence of vitamin A deficiency, measles seems to deplete your vitamin A stores. So the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics both, you know, do recommend vitamin A supplementation for kids with measles. But that's not the same as preventing measles. And it's very important to say that vitamin A can absolutely not prevent measles. And the concern is that some parents may be giving their kids vitamin A routinely long term to help, you know, protect against measles, which of course it can't, but that could actually do damage because vitamin A builds up in the body and it can be toxic to the liver.

[Susan Davis]

Okay, we need to take a quick break, but more on this when we get back.

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[Susan Davis]

And Maria, can you talk more about the measles vaccine? It's obviously been around for a very long time and it's pretty effective.

[Maria Godoy]

It's highly effective. One dose of the measles vaccine is 93% effective, and that means that 93% of people who get it will have an immune response after that first dose. Two doses is 97% effective. It's very safe. It's been tested again and again. It's your best defense against getting the.

[Susan Davis]

Measles and, like, right now. Cause I imagine that there might be some parents or individuals who don't know if they're vaccinated, are like, oh, man, I should go get a measles vaccine. It's pretty easy to get and effective pretty quickly.

[Maria Godoy]

Yes. Okay, so most of us will have gotten a measles vaccine because it's required for, like, you know, kindergarten enrollment. There are ways to get exemptions, but if you're not sure about your vaccination status, you can look up your records, talk to your doctor. But if you really are not sure if you've been immunized, yeah, there's no harm in getting another measles shot. You know, at worst, it won't do anything, and at best, it'll protect you if you weren't protected previously. One of the things I should note is that people who got vaccinated before 1968 may have gotten a weaker version of the vaccine. So they. They should get revaccinated. If they haven't been already, they probably have been. And people in who were vaccinated before 1989, routinely, the recommendation back then was one dose, which is pretty effective. But certainly if you work in healthcare or you're heading to a place that has a measles outbreak or you live there, you want a second dose, then if you haven't gotten one already.

[Susan Davis]

Domenico the politics of this, because this is a politics podcast. But it's also, as I sit here thinking about it, it's not lost on me that a very large and maybe the most important contributing factor to Donald Trump's loss in 2020 was the public confidence in his ability to handle the COVID pandemic. And this, of course, is not that. But I do think that so much has changed, both politically about what the public is willing to tolerate in these public health crises, and also a bit of forgiveness towards Trump in the electorate this time around.

[Domenico Montanaro]

And I have to say, one of the interesting things I kept finding when I talked to undecided voters, I heard from, you know, several people who were, you know, certainly in that category of potentially wanting to vote for Trump, but didn't like that he was pro vaccine, they said. And, you know, there's really seemingly no convincing folks like that. And we saw that sort of bubble up, even this, you know, this past week with the Trump's NIH nominee, who then was testifying and got into this back and forth with Senator Bill Cassidy from Louisiana, who's a doctor, and they were talking about whether the MMR Vaccine, the measles mumps from rubella vaccine can cause autism.

[Susan Davis]

So here's a bit of that exchange between Senator Cassidy and the Trump administration's nominee to run the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya.

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Yeah, I mean, I think, as I said, Senator, I don't think that there's a link between, you know, the MMR vaccine and autism. I'm convinced based on that literature. The only reason I'm not wholeheartedly saying yes to your question, which I every instinct of mine is to do that, is that there are people who might disagree with me. I want to make sure.

[Jay Bhattacharya]

But that's life.

[Carvana Ad]

Yeah.

[Jay Bhattacharya]

I mean, there's people who disagree that the world is round. And I say that not to minimize these concerns, but people still think Elvis is alive. And so if you just say someone disagrees with me. So therefore, I'm going to put precious, limited taxpayer dollars to this and not to addressing issues of obesity, heart disease, cancer.

[Domenico Montanaro]

I mean, this is what's happened with the misinformation and disinformation that really sprung up during the pandemic. It certainly hurt Trump during the pandemic and into 2020, that about his competence in dealing with this. But then the entire sort of blogosphere, Internet, you know, strain of people who are the do your own research crowd and saying that these are things that could be problems are a big portion of the people who voted for Donald Trump.

[Susan Davis]

Yeah. Maria, I hesitate to put the big burden on you, but I do think you're the one watching this closely. What are you watching for next? I mean, is the concern that this could spread? What's the response to it? Sort of. What's the next turn?

[Maria Godoy]

So here's the thing. You want to have a really robust response, right? Like, the way you contain a measles outbreak is you vaccinate people who are unvaccinated in terms of how big this could get. The infectious disease modelers I've spoken to say, you know, given that the nation as a whole has high vaccination rates, we wouldn't expect to see this go into the like, you know, thousands of cases. Like we saw measles outbreaks in the past, like in the 1990s, I think it was like a 1400 cases or so in Philadelphia. But that said, if vaccination rates continue to decline like they have been, we could see that again in five to 10 years.

[Susan Davis]

Well, Maria, thank you so much for coming on the podcast for the first time and for sharing all of your reporting with us. We really appreciate it.

[Maria Godoy]

Oh, it's my pleasure.

[Susan Davis]

That is it for us today. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

[Domenico Montanaro]

I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

[Susan Davis]

And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics podcast.

[Terry Gross]

This month. Short Wave is featuring a science and dog collab for the ages, because sometimes scientists need help and have to call in dogs to get the research done. Their powerful noses have earned some of them a job as conservation detection dogs, helping biologists sniff out things that are hidden or hard to find, like whale poop in the ocean. Here are the surprising ways dogs are pushing conservation work forward on Short Wave, the science podcast from npr.

[Bill Burr]

Hi, it's Terry Gross, host of FRESH air. I just talked to comic Bill Burr. He's known for his anger fueled humor, which he connects to his upbringing. Let's talk a little bit about your childhood.

[Maria Godoy]

Oh, Jesus.

[Domenico Montanaro]

People are driving to work here, you.

[Maria Godoy]

Know, let's try to give him something uplifting.

[Bill Burr]

He was hilarious and introspective in the interview, and it was a wild ride. You can hear a special extended version of this interview on the FRESH AIR podcast from npr and whyyy.