Do you ever feel like the United States is amid an inexorable backslide into an intellectual dark age from which there is no hope of escape?

The head of the Health and Human Services is an anti-vaxxer who, in a previous generation, would have been cast as the Marlboro man. And while bird flu sweeps the nation, and a historic tuberculosis outbreak ravages Kansas like this was cowboy times, we now have a measles outbreak tearing through Texas.

Measles, an extremely preventable childhood disease, is currently being welcomed with open arms in the state of Texas, as at least 48 cases have been reported in the rural South Plains region over the past month. As you'd expect, the cases are mostly in children and teenagers, though health officials fear that the actual number of infected people might be way higher.

Measles is a highly contagious virus with symptoms including fever, rash, coughing, and watery eyes. Most of the people who get measles will recover from it, but it can be deadly in younger children. It can lead to pneumonia or encephalitis that can kill your kid, or leave them blind or with brain damage. Measles is so infectious that, according to the CDC, "if one person has it, up to 90% of the people close to them can also become infected if they are not protected by vaccination."

None of this would be an issue for a child or a teenager if they received their measles vaccine, as was customary for all children for decades until the anti-vax movement hit the nitrous boost and went turbo mode.

Around the world measles cases exploded by 20 percent in 2023, which resulted in 10 million cases and 100,000 deaths. In the United States, measles had been officially declared as "eliminated" way back in 2000. That doesn't mean it can't still show up in isolated cases or in smaller communities where vaccination rates are low and herd immunity thresholds have not been reached.

That seems to be what's going on here, as this outbreak is heavily concentrated in a rural Mennonite community that does not have access to healthcare facilities and where vaccination rates are low. A spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services says that the low vaccination rates have nothing to do with the Mennonite's religious beliefs, instead arguing that "It's all personal choice and you can do whatever you want."

That's an actual quote from someone who probably thinks they're good at their job as an employee of the Department of State Health Services.