Measles outbreak growing and common cold surging, hunger survey is stopping, abortion pill watch, why we can't split up MMR, and some great news!
The Dose (September 30)
Happy (almost) October! It’s the best season of the year; you can debate me, but you’ll likely lose.
Alongside all that fall goodness, we’ve got plenty of news: the common cold is still leading the charge, and a measles outbreak in Arizona and Utah is growing. The federal government will stop tracking food insecurity, and there are rumblings of an HHS scientific review of the abortion pill (file under: here we go again). Thankfully, a couple of big wins are in the “good news” column. Finally, I tackle one excellent reader question: why can’t we just split up childhood vaccines, like MMR?
Let’s go.
Infectious disease “weather report”
The common cold (gray line below) is still circulating, with a classic end-of-September surge as kids return to school and new social circles form. This should start peaking anytime.
Covid-19 peaked nationally and continues to decline. Expect the winter wave to start brewing in mid-November.
RSV & flu are still quiet. Both typically start climbing by mid-October.
When’s the optimal time to get vaccinated? Check out our Guide to Fall 2025 Vaccines.
Measles has been quiet in the headlines, but cases continue to climb. The annual U.S. count now stands at 1,527 confirmed cases—the highest in 30 years. Utah and Arizona are experiencing a single confirmed outbreak that has spread across state borders and is growing exponentially:
Utah: 44 cases. Wastewater testing has detected measles in several counties, indicating that the disease is more widespread than previously thought.
Arizona: 52 cases. Kindergarten vaccination rates are low in the two elementary schools impacted (MMR vaccination rates are 7% and 40%).
USDA will stop measuring food insecurity.
Right now, 1 in 7 families, including 1 in 5 children, experience food insecurity. That adds up to millions of Americans not having access to sufficient food or food of an adequate quality.
So, last week, an announcement came as an unwelcome surprise to researchers, public health experts, and anti-hunger organizations: The USDA announced it would stop collecting food insecurity data through its annual survey, citing “redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous studies do nothing more than fear monger.”
I asked YLE’s nutrition expert, Megan Maisano, to unpack these claims. Megan, take it away…
I cannot highlight this enough: the data is extremely insightful. The annual survey provides a snapshot of American access to food. It helps us monitor valuable trends by state and region, household type, race and ethnicity, employment, education, and disability status—metrics that inform policymakers, interventions, and food and nutrition programs. The survey has been used for 30 years to monitor the burden and severity of food insecurity in our communities. Terminating it is a significant concern, especially when the reasoning behind it is flawed.
Responses to the administration’s claims
Claim: The survey is politicized. Response: The survey has been consistently utilized by the USDA under multiple administrations, including both Republican and Democratic administrations.
Claim: The survey is expensive. Response: The food insecurity questions aren’t a stand-alone survey; they consist of 10-18 questions that are embedded once a year in a larger one (Current Population Survey). Removing them doesn’t save money.
Claim: Trends in the prevalence of food insecurity have remained virtually unchanged. Response: This is false. Over the years, food insecurity has fluctuated, as shown in the graph below.
Claim: The survey is redundant. Response: This is the go-to source for data. It provides consistent, comparable, and nationally representative measures of food security over time, which is crucial for identifying reliable trends. Other surveys do collect information on food security; however, they are less targeted, less consistent, and often drawn from different populations.
At its core, this is a question about priorities and why the administration chose to cut these programs but fund others. Public health data are as valuable as gold. Their power lies in reliability, accuracy, and accessibility—and they are one of the only ways to hold the federal government accountable.
What is the next step? The 2024 data will still be released, but the collection process will end thereafter. Stopping this survey risks leaving millions of struggling families invisible.
Mifepristone watch
The Food and Drug Administration is reviewing the safety of the abortion pill mifepristone, according to a recent letter from HHS Secretary RFK Jr. to Republican state attorneys general.
Given RFK Jr.’s track record so far (performative headlines, casual claims without supporting evidence, and in some cases, straight-up falsehoods), there’s little reason to expect this will be any different for mifepristone.
The research thus far is overwhelmingly clear: the abortion pills are medically safe—safer than other medications we routinely use, and certainly safer than childbirth. They are also highly effective for use at home. A study showed 96.9% of people who self-managed had a complete abortion using pills alone—the same high effectiveness seen in clinical studies of medication abortion effectiveness.
Catch up with this previous YLE post on the topic:
Self-managed abortion with pills: Medically safe, legally risky
Public health touches on all aspects of our lives, not just during a pandemic. Thanks to your feedback, this newsletter will continue with COVID updates but will start touching on other epidemiological topics, too. For example, women’s health. If you would
While it would be difficult for the FDA to withdraw approval outright, HHS could restrict access by tightening telehealth or mail delivery, or by limiting prescriptions to physicians only (excluding physician assistants and nurses, for example).
What this means for you: Nothing immediate, but expect more conversations from neighbors, friends, and online groups once the news hits the headlines. There’s no release date yet for the report.
Good news!
HIV prevention shots will be available for $40 per year in low and middle-income countries (LMIC). Last year, lenacapavir—a twice-yearly injection that’s nearly 100% effective at preventing HIV—was named Science’s Breakthrough of the Year. The promise was enormous: freeing patients from the daily burden of pills and offering a real chance to curb the global HIV/AIDS crisis. But there was one huge barrier: the price tag, which came in at over $42,000 per patient per year (compared to oral PrEP drugs, which can cost less than $4 a month.)
This changed last week at the Clinton Global Initiative. A new partnership was announced to make generic versions of lenacapavir available in 120 LMICs for just $40 a year. Rollout is expected by 2027 pending regulatory approval. This is a massive step forward in the fight against HIV.
Huntington’s disease was successfully treated for the first time. By providing patients with targeted gene therapies during 12 to 18 hours of brain surgery, researchers were able to slow the progression of the disease by 75%. In other words, the amount of degeneration that usually occurs over one year slowed to four. Huge discovery, huge potential for patients and their families, and yet another example of how funding science can improve lives.
Question grab bag
“Last Friday, Trump tweeted (X’ed?) that we should separate our MMR and childhood vaccines. Why do we have them spaced as we do? Could we separate MMR, and would it help those who are skeptical gain confidence in vaccines?”
The childhood vaccine schedule isn’t arbitrary; instead, it’s carefully designed based on clinical trials and chosen to minimize risk during the window when children are most susceptible.
Take the MMR vaccine, for example. The first dose is given at 12 months, a sweet spot where:
Maternal antibodies have waned
The immune system is ready to respond and establish long-term memory, and
It’s just before the age when infections become most common.
MMR can’t be broken into separate measles, mumps, and rubella shots. The claim that it should is based on a famous medical research study in history, conducted by a British physician who falsified data, lost his medical license, and investigated a stand-alone measles vaccine.
Even if we wanted to split MMR up, we couldn’t. There are no separate vaccines available on the market. Developing, testing, and distributing them would take years. And, it would actually mean more shots for kids in the end (6 shots for MMR, instead of 2), which runs directly counter to RFK Jr’s call for fewer.
In case you missed it
Tylenol and autism: with the latest evidence showing no causal link.
Bottom line
You’re now officially the most informed person in the pumpkin patch. Stay healthy out there!
Love, YLE
Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) is founded and operated by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD—an epidemiologist, wife, and mom of two little girls. YLE is a public health newsletter that reaches over 400,000 people in more than 132 countries, with one goal: to translate the ever-evolving public health science so that people are well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. This newsletter is free to everyone, thanks to the generous support of fellow YLE community members. To support the effort, subscribe or upgrade below:
I think that it’s pretty obvious why this administration wants to stop collecting data for food insecurity. They’ve cut SNAP benefits and now they don’t want the facts to mess with their fiction,
The logistics of splitting vaccine doses would be very difficult for providers and parents. For providers, each vaccine visit would require an appointment made through reception and probably a 10 minute time slot to room the patient, ask screening questions, prepare and administer the shot, and clean the room. For parents it would require an extra office visit with related loss of work time. For children it would delay protection from preventable diseases. Just giving the flu vaccine every year is a major undertaking, requiring overtime for staff and dedicated rooms for each vaccine.