Week of Feb. 12, 2026

From the publisher’s desk

Last weekend, I spent some time doing something that is SO VERY 2026: I went through my childhood records to confirm that I had, in fact, gotten the measles vaccine.

I was pretty sure I had been vaccinated, and I even had a recollection of getting measles at one point when I was young—but stories like this, from Wired, prompted me to want to be 100 percent sure:

Some children affected by measles in the ongoing South Carolina outbreak have developed a serious complication of the disease called encephalitis, or swelling of the brain, state epidemiologist Linda Bell said on Wednesday.

The South Carolina measles outbreak began in October with a handful of infections. As of February 3, cases have climbed to 876, with 700 of those being reported since the beginning of the year. The surge could mean another bad year of measles for the United States, which had more than 2,267 cases—the highest in 30 years—in 2025. Declining vaccination rates across the country are driving the resurgence.

Encephalitis is a rare but severe complication of measles that can lead to convulsions and cause deafness or intellectual disability in children. It usually occurs within 30 days of an initial measles infection and can happen if the brain becomes infected with the virus or if an immune reaction to the virus causes inflammation in the brain. Among children who get measles encephalitis, 10 to 15 percent die.

Yikes. I am very far from being a child, but seeing as measles is even worse on adults than it is on children … better safe than sorry.

Fortunately, I was able to find my records fairly quickly. According to the handwritten “Immunization and health record” tri-fold card my mom gave me a while back, I know that I indeed received the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine when I was a year old. As for that recollection of having measles, I was mostly correct: When I was 7 (as a student at Elko Grammar School No. 2!) I got German measles, also known as rubella, despite being vaccinated.

Because there were still outbreaks in schools and even colleges in the late 1980s, the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1989 recommended students get a second shot—and I indeed received an MMR booster vaccine that year, when I was 14 years old, when I was a freshman at Wooster High School. This two-dose recommendation became the standard and is credited with helping the U.S. get to the point where measles was declared eradicated in 2000 (and rubella was declared eradicated in 2004).

So far, we have not had to deal with a lot of recent measles cases in Nevada. The Nevada Office of State Epidemiology dashboard shows two reported cases in the state in 2025. One of those cases was local: An unvaccinated adult man who was hospitalized tested positive on Dec. 26, according to Northern Nevada Public Health. It was the first reported measles case in Washoe County since April 2018.

It’s almost certain that we’ll be seeing more local measles cases. A recent data piece by The Washington Post showed that Nevada’s MMR vaccination rates for kindergartners has fallen from 95 percent before the pandemic to 91 percent now—below herd-immunity status.

The story includes a searchable database, where you can look up schools that reported data. My alma mater, Elko Grammar School No. 2, is down to a 90.7 percent MMR vaccination rate.

Here’s the national measles-case chart on the Centers and Disease Control and Prevention website as of this writing—and the trend is clear and disconcerting:

As the United States heads toward having its “measles eradicated” status revoked, take note: If you’re not sure you’re fully vaccinated, check your records and/or talk to your doctor. Inept, corrupt and should-be-jailed people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are in charge now, and as a result, measles is back—in an increasingly big way.

—Jimmy Boegle, publisher/executive editor