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CHART 1 • Measles has now returned to the US
There’s an accelerating measles outbreak in Pennsylvania, which is now the United States’ biggest since 1991. The cause is declining vaccination rates, which have made some parts of the country vulnerable to a disease that was effectively eliminated in 2000.
Take a look at this chart from The Wall Street Journal and you can see how significant this is. Before 2025, cases of measles around the United States were fairly insignificant. Since then, the number of cases has increased dramatically.
The point to note here is not the absolute numbers, which remain on the low side. It’s the risk that this growth is exponential. This can lead to a sudden large rise in cases from recent low levels, and this can happen very dramatically and quickly, as it did during the pandemic.
The way to stop this is through a standard MMR vaccination, which has been done in the United States since the 1970s. Those vaccination efforts eliminated measles in the United States in 2000. Sadly, the country is now on the verge of losing that status after these recent outbreaks.
Source: Wall Street Journal
Paid subscribers get access to the other four charts: Ebola’s spread, hormonal ageing, natural population decline and rogue-pilot fatalities. Together, they show how timing, biology, geography and rarity change the meaning of risk.
