WOODLAND HILLS—On February 2, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LACDPH) issued a press release notifying the public of a third documented case of measles.

With 2024-2025 data, 39.5 million people reside in California. Three people out of 39.5 million is 0.00000759 of one percent of the population. It’s a micro-percentage of Californians who were infected.

The LACDPH narrowed down public places the measles patients visited notating, Mardi Gras Tuesday restaurant located on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, Dunkin Donuts in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), and Disneyland.

As of December 30, 2025, there were 2,065 reported cases of measles nationwide with 11 patients needing hospitalization.

On March 3, 2025, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy reported a measles outbreak in Texas stating:

“As Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I am deeply concerned about the recent measles outbreak. This situation has escalated rapidly, with the Texas Department of Health and Human Services (DSHS) reporting 146 confirmed cases since late January 2025, primarily in the South Plains region. Tragically, this outbreak has claimed the life of a school-aged child, the first measles-related fatality in the United States in over a decade.”

An outbreak of measles raises concerns as U.S. was measles free in year 2000. The vaccine for measles was introduced in 1966, starting the decline of cases in the U.S. Reports indicate that there were 204,136 cases of measles in 1966. That was a decrease from the pre-vaccine era (1953-1962) that averaged approximately 530,000 cases annually.

There has been a steady decline since. There were 41,126 reported cases of measles in the U.S. in 1976. A total of 6,273 provisional cases of measles documented in 1986. In 1996, there were 488 confirmed cases of measles. In 2006 there were 55 cases of measles reported, and 86 cases in 2016. From January 1, 2020, to March 28, 2024, there were 338 cases of measles reported.

According to the August 2025 report from Pew Research, there were 14 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States. The U.S. has vaccine requirements in place.

A noticeable trend of health alerts and scare-tactics regarding the spread of diseases such as COVID, Monkey Pox, and Measles have been released in election years. There are 273 days until 2026 midterm elections that could decide who maintains control of the U.S. 

According to the American Hospital Association, COVID-19 was brought to the U.S. [in time for] the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.

“A National Institutes of Health-led review of more than 24,000 stored blood samples suggests that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 was present in the U.S. as far back as December 2019. The samples were collected between January and mid-March 2020 and contributed by participants in NIH’s All of Us research program in all 50 states.”