What sparked the nation's worst measles outbreak in decades

0:00Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software for technical computing and model-based design. MathWorks, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at MathWorks.com. WBUR Podcasts. Boston. It doesn't care about belief. I mean, it follows the rules of science. A look inside the measles outbreak in South Carolina, which a local doctor says has found a foothold in under-vaccinated immigrant communities from Eastern Europe.

0:48It's Wednesday, February 18th, and this is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley.

0:58Today on the show, it's hard to imagine progressive politics today without the work of Jesse Jackson. He wants something more than less harm. He wants something more than less bigotry. He wants justice, and he wants us to thrive. How future generations are trying to heed the late reverend's call to keep hope alive. Coming up in about 15 minutes. But first, South Carolina is at the epicenter of the nation's largest measles outbreak in decades. Nearly 1 ,000 infections have been documented since October. Compare that to the just eight cases of measles reported in South Carolina between 1991 and 2024.

1:44Almost all of the new cases are in people who were not vaccinated against the disease, according to the State Department of Public Health. Hundreds more people have had to quarantine due to exposure. Martha Edwards heads the South Carolina chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. She tells Scott Tong there have always been people who chose not to get vaccinated in the Greenville-Spartanburg area where she's based and where this outbreak is happening. But something new is going on. What happens is that we have one school in particular that has very low vaccination rates and a community that tends not to vaccinate.

2:21And often we see cases pop up in that community, but we don't see them spread because historically our vaccination rates in South Carolina have been 95 % and above. And so even if there were cases that, you know, someone traveled, came back, had a case, it didn't tend to spread outside that community. but in recent years our religious or non-medical exemption rates have been rising especially in that area and our vaccination rates have been falling and so it's just a lesson and we really need that 95 percent magic number and when we get down to 92 90 89 80 it's not good enough and it spreads out.

3:09That is shy of herd immunity, yeah. Right. And just to understand this area a little bit more, some of the schools, as I understand it, you know, have many students from families who are recent or past immigrants from Slavic-speaking countries, Ukraine, Russia, may have their own complicated distrust of authority. That's the community we're talking about? It is the community we're talking about. And often they've had experiences where, the government was mandating vaccines. Those vaccines were not necessarily stored properly. There was mistrust with the government. And they've kind of taken that same stance of not wanting to vaccinate their children in the United States.

3:49And as much as we try to reassure that these vaccines are very safe and that the disease, the risk of getting the disease is so much worse than any risk from getting the vaccine, even though we try to reassure them, they still have that hesitancy and fear. And we understand that. And in the surrounding neighborhoods, many families have this religious exemption allowing their children to go to school without vaccinations. I understand these religious exemptions are way up in the last few years. Why do you think that is? I think that there are several factors. I think that with COVID, There was the vaccine mandate, and a lot of people saw that as being government overreach at that point.

4:35This is a very conservative area. There's a big push for, you know, quote, parental rights and people making their own choices. I think that social media has played in to a very large degree. You know, I started seeing hesitancy as early as the mid-2000s just with email chains going around. And with things like Children's Health Defense, which is Robert F. Kennedy's nonprofit that he started to really promote mistrust in vaccines, that tends to fuel a lot of those posts and social media that make people concerned. And also, our health department has recently done much more online. The vaccine exemption forms are much easier to get.

5:20You don't have to speak with a physician. You don't have to have any, you know, pastor way in on what their stance is on vaccinations. Oh, you can kind of just print the form out and hand it in? Mm-hmm. And so they're much more accessible than they used to be. As you're describing, parents, families are hearing now the health secretary talk about vaccines in a skeptical way. These parents also listen to pediatricians like you. How do you listen and talk to parents who may be skeptical? Do you share some of your own experiences as a doctor? Yes, and I think we really do try to kind of find out what their concerns, what their specific concerns are.

6:06I think that all of us, you know, what we share with the parents is an intense desire to keep their children healthy and well and prevent any really bad outcomes. And so we try to make that clear. You know, we are on your team and, you know, most of us will say we vaccinate our own children. And I think what we also really try to convey to parents is that the disease risk is high and that the illnesses that we vaccinate for tend to have no easy treatments. And I think some people don't think about the illnesses anymore. They haven't seen them. They maybe confuse chickenpox with measles. A lot of kids do get through measles pretty well, but in our own state, we are seeing cases in children of brain inflammation, otherwise known as encephalitis.

6:58We're seeing cases of pneumonia. After the illness, we see immune amnesia where the immune system kind of shuts down for a while. So subsequent illnesses land kids in the hospital where they wouldn't have before. So there's a big risk of actually getting the disease instead of the vaccine. The vaccine is so much safer. And you mentioned, you know, some of these cases that we know about. Terrible to hear about, right? A seven-year-old boy with measles, encephalitis now in the area, severe swelling of the brain. It is unusual. But as a society, because we've had this vaccine for so long, have we kind of forgotten how sick people can get with the measles?

7:41I think we really have. And I mean, in my lifetime, I really haven't seen it because in all my years of practice, we had high vaccine rates. We did not have spread. And so most of us have not even seen these, even in clinical practices. I think people have amnesia with that, that we don't remember how bad it can be. We don't remember seeing iron lungs as some of our parents did. People tend to only think about the risks of vaccines. And those are just nowhere near. I've never in my 30 years of practice ever seen any kind of significant reaction to a measles vaccine. This outbreak has already popped up elsewhere in the Carolinas, multiple college campuses.

8:29Measles is so, so contagious. Where does this go? Does this go beyond measles perhaps to other outbreaks in places that don't have herd immunity? I think it will go around the United States, yes. And we've seen that, that if, you know, in a room of unvaccinated people, if you have a case of measles and you have, say, 10 unvaccinated people, at least nine of those people are going to get measles. If they're vaccinated, they will not. But that's how contagious it is. If you have that room full of 100 people and they're all unvaccinated, 90 will get measles. But if they've been vaccinated, the vast majority will not get measles.

9:12So it really is so important that we have high vaccination rates everywhere. This will appear. And we're already seeing it jump. We've seen a case from South Carolina go back to Washington State. so it's traveling extremely easily it doesn't care about politics it doesn't care about belief it cares about science i mean it follows the rules of science and it does what we've observed over centuries of watching this virus and it's a really tough one to put back in that bottle after you know we uncorked that bottle dr martha edwards is president of the south carolina chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

9:57Dr. Edwards, thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate your attention to this issue.

10:07Coming up, Peter O'Dowd reflects on the life and enduring political legacy of the late Reverend Jesse Jackson. That's after the break. www.selectquote.com

10:45to find you the best fit for your health, your lifestyle, and your budget. And they work for you for free. Get the right life insurance for you and save more than 50 % at selectquote.com slash anytime. That's 50 % off at selectquote.com slash anytime. Flags at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis are at half-staff today in honor of civil rights icon Jesse Jackson. Jackson was at the motel in 1968 when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on the second floor balcony. He spoke about that day with CBS2 in Chicago in 2018. What I was clear on, we could not let one bullet kill the whole movement. I was clear if you're playing the big game and the best player gets hurt, you can't fall off at the game.

11:30You can't run away. You've got to keep fighting. Well, today, civil rights groups across the country are vowing to continue Jesse Jackson's work after his death yesterday. Bryan Stevenson is founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, fighting racial injustice in the legal system. Bryan, thanks so much for speaking with us. Glad to be with you. So before we get started, I just want to see how you've been taking this news. I'm sure you spent time with Reverend Jackson over the years. Yeah, it's a great loss. We talked regularly. He came to Montgomery every year. He would spend time in our sites. He's been a great source of encouragement to me in the work that we're doing.

12:10He kept saying, keep building. He loved the spaces that we had created here. And so I will miss his voice, his presence, and his encouragement. But I'm really moved by his life. This is someone who was born in South Carolina, dealt with the hostility and the hatred of Jim Crow and segregation. We talked a lot about a lynching that took place in Greenville in the 1940s that really traumatized him and his community and motivated him to want to fight against the bigotry that would cause people to lawlessly torture and kill someone. And that motivated him to become an activist. And the work he did as a teenager and a young adult was just a manifestation of this burning desire to create a healthier, better world.

13:00And that's what I'm reflecting on at this time of his loss. Well, I think many people are also reflecting on, at a time like this, what's next? Where do you go from here? Where do you think the fight for civil rights, racial justice, where does that go now after his death? Yeah, I think he learned something from Dr. King. In 1966, after the Voting Rights Act had passed in 1967, Dr. King was very focused on expanding the civil rights movement to include economic justice. and he was planning a poor people's campaign when he was killed in Memphis. And I think Reverend Jackson understood that and carried that for the next five decades.

13:45His work at PUSH was about racial justice, but it was also about economic justice. And he had a vision for a multiracial, multicultural democracy that was about, yes, ending bigotry and exclusion and segregation, but also creating opportunity. And I think that vision is still the work that remains. You know, speaking of his economic work, I want to take a look back because before King was assassinated, he chose Jesse Jackson, who was just in his 20s at the time, to lead something called Operation Breadbasket, which pressured companies through boycotts to back the goals of the civil rights movement.

14:25If we could just look back for a moment, how bold was that strategy at the time? It was incredibly bold. I mean, Dr. King's inauguration into civil rights work was the Montgomery bus boycott, and it was an economic boycott. It was this idea that if 50 ,000 black people in the city of Montgomery stayed off the buses where they were 75 percent of the ridership, they could force the city and that company to accommodate change to respond to longstanding complaints. And it succeeded. It took 382 days, but it succeeded along with litigation. The thing about Operation Breadbasket that a lot of people don't understand is that this was also a consequence of Dr.

15:09King and Reverend Jackson going throughout the Black Belt in 1966 and 67 and seeing the extreme poverty and putting pressure on corporations for jobs became the consequence of that. And that's the genius behind Breadbasket. It wasn't boycotting corporations or pressuring corporations just to do something symbolic. They wanted to create jobs and opportunities for poor people, for black people, for immigrant people who had been disfavored and excluded. And at the same time, we're being forced to buy these products. And that strategy is a strategy that spread across the globe and continues to be an effective mechanism for creating change.

15:53Well, those were economic strategies. He also, of course, had many political strategies. I spoke with Reverend Jackson in March of 2020 during the Democratic primaries. He had endorsed Bernie Sanders, even though at that point Democrats were trying to coalesce around Joe Biden to make sure that Trump didn't win a second term. And here's what Jesse Jackson told me. There's a really wind that says beat Trump at all costs and Biden is all he can win. And that wind blows across the country. I submit to you, however, the absence of Trump is not the presence of justice. I'm thinking about that line still.

16:31The absence of Trump is not the presence of justice because clearly President Trump has reversed some of the gains of the civil rights movement. But there will be a day when Trump is out of office and the political winds shift again. What do you think Jesse Jackson's legacy might do to shape the future of the country at that point? I think he's always had a vision of America that is bigger, bolder, brighter, more inclusive, more hopeful than what we've achieved. And so it doesn't surprise me that he wants something more than less harm. He wants something more than less bigotry. He wants justice, and he wants us to thrive.

17:13I think his legacy is that he has offered us a way to think about what a multiracial, multicultural democracy can be, to think about a future with less poverty, where people are not food insecure in the wealthiest country in the world, where people are not homeless because they cannot afford housing. That's his vision, and I think that will be his legacy. And right now, we're seeing that vision imperiled by a lot of burdens and borders and bigotry, and that's thriving, which is why I think having hope, his lasting legacy, is something that I certainly will carry with me. When he said, keep hope alive, he was basically saying hopelessness is not an option.

17:57Hope is the enemy of justice. And if we want justice, we do have to keep hope alive. And that's what I will hear him saying in my ear for the rest of my life. And it's the legacy that I want to embrace and use to kind of do the work that I have to do. And I think we can all do that. Brian Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. Thank you. You're very welcome.

18:51episodes. We've got one more conversation on the show for you today, but before we get to it, we need your help with an upcoming segment. President Trump will get his State of the Union address on Tuesday, February 24th. Here's our question for you. If you were the president, what would you want to accomplish in the next year? Go to hereandnow.org slash stateoftheunion and tell us what your priority is and why. That's here, h-e-r-e, and now.org slash stateoftheunion. And thanks. We might use your comments on the radio or in this podcast, so I'm looking forward to hearing from all of you. We'll be right back.

19:42We've been following the deployment of federal immigration troops to cities like Minneapolis over the past few months, and the public outrage over their warrantless searches, violent tactics, and fatal shootings of American citizens. The Trump administration has accused local authorities of impeding or not cooperating with federal immigration and customs enforcement operations. But NPR found a little-known program that deputizes local police for immigration enforcement has dramatically expanded since Trump returned to the White House. WBUR's Simone Rios looked at how police departments in Massachusetts are regularly in touch with ICE.

20:23The city of Lynn has one of the highest concentrations of immigrants in the state. In November, a 23-year-old Guatemalan man was released from Lynn's police lockup after a traffic stop. That's when two ICE agents walked into the lobby. Entraron dos hombres, así, como joven, algo así. Me dijeron, OK, es migración y todo. Y dije, por qué? That's S. We agreed to call him by his first initial because he fears retaliation by ICE. According to ICE records reviewed by WBUR, agents had received communication from an officer at Lynn Police Department that S. had posted bail and would be released from custody.

21:01Fifteen minutes later, S. was in belly chains and on his way to the ICE lockup in Plymouth.

21:11He was there for 15 days before being released, pending immigration proceedings, S says he's not alone in wondering if Lynn police collaborate with ICE. Even if local police don't help out, ICE agents already know when someone's arrested in Massachusetts. After police run fingerprints through a federal crime database, that information is available to federal agents. The Lynn Police Department says that's what happened to S. After they ran as prints, ICE called to say they planned to pick him up. John Grossman oversaw the state system for accessing federal crime databases under Governor Deval Patrick.

21:54Look, we want our systems to be interoperable in case the person is wanted in some other state, you know, Kansas, for a crime. They don't want to bring somebody in, think they're not wanted, and let them go. But with mass deportations underway, Grossman says any kind of police contact with ICE, even when unintentional, can lead to mistrust locally. And so what's the level of trust between local police and primarily immigrant communities if local police are, even if not explicitly, but inevitably seen as cooperating with ICE? ICE continues to push for more cooperation from local police in places like Massachusetts.

22:35But agents are getting more help than they often admit. Even a state and local leaders look for ways to rein them in. That's just a piece of Simone's story. There's a lot more to it, and you can hear all of it right now at hereandnow.org.

22:55But that's it for the show today. Here and Now Anytime comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Joel Ryan and Will Walkie. today's editors were Todd Munt, Michaela Rodriguez and Michael Scotto, technical direction from Caleb Green and Matt Reed our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman and me, Chris Bentley our digital producers are Allison Hagen and Grace Griffin and here and now's executive producer is Alan Price thanks for listening, we'll be back with you tomorrow

23:32Thank you.