Measles today, polio tomorrow?

Published 4:23 am Sunday, March 8, 2026

Measles hit Spartanburg, South Carolina, hard. Reuters reported last month nearly 1,000 individuals got infected in Spartanburg County since October. The outbreak hit in places like the Global Academy of South Carolina where 21% of students had not been vaccinated, then spread to the unvaccinated at places like Costco, Publix, Goodwill, Burger King, the library, a museum, and the post office, reported the New York Times.

“This is not normal,” state epidemiologist Dr. Linda Bell said. “This is unprecedented.”

“School immunization rates statewide have dropped by nearly three percentage points since prior to the pandemic in 2020,” Reuters reported, as leaders and parents pushed back against vaccine mandates and demanded more ‘medical freedom.’ The vaccination rate among kindergarteners last year dropped to 89%, below the 95% rate shown to spark herd immunity. Nationwide, the average fell for the fourth consecutive year to 92.5%. (So far Mississippi’s rate remains good at 97.5%.)

In 2025, 2,281 measles outbreaks hit 45 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as the share of children exempted from vaccination rose to an all-time high.

Frighteningly, through just two months of 2026, the CDC has reported 1,136 cases in 28 states.

The declining trend of childhood vaccinations has caught the attention of those fighting a more heinous disease.

“After decades of American children routinely receiving polio vaccines, the virus that had doomed many to paralysis (look up “iron lungs”) was nearly eliminated,” reported CBS Sunday Morning. “But vaccine avoidance today may allow the crippling disease to return.”

“The virus still circulates in certain parts of the world. If that virus comes to the United States and we have a significant percentage of the population unvaccinated, polio is going to come back,” said David Oshinsky, author of Polio: An American Story. “It’s only a plane ride away.”

This fear was spurred in part when Dr. Kirk Milhoan, head of the CDC’s advisory committee for immunization practices, controversially suggested it might be time for the polio vaccine to become optional.

Rotary Clubs have been global leaders in the fight to eradicate polio, helping immunize over 2.5 billion children worldwide since 1988. So, it was no surprise for the North Jackson Rotary Club to focus on the issue last week.

“The fight against polio has been a core concern of Rotary,” said club administrator Don Roberts after playing the CBS documentary. Noting that many in attendance might not recall the horror of polio, he said much of the club’s Paul Harris Fellow donations to the Rotary Foundation over the years have been dedicated to the fight.

Could polio return? Well, the measles was declared eliminated in the U.S in 2000.

Crawford is an author and syndicated columnist from North Jackson.