Usually when you visit South Carolina your only setbacks are hot, humid weather, your iced tea has 500 calories of sweetener, you can’t get into most of the top restaurants unless you booked LONG before you planned your trip and how to react when everyone you see on the street says, “Hi!!” But now there is a fair chance you could get measles.
Measles??? Wasn’t it eradicated in the U.S. in 2000?
Technically, yes but the Palmetto State has 847 cases as of last week adding more than 670 cases in 2026 alone with children making up 91.7 percent of the cases. There are an additional 557 people in quarantine meaning they may have been exposed to measles and don’t have immunity through vaccinations or prior infections.
Measles is exceptionally contagious—the virus can linger in the air for up to two hours after an infected person leaves. This extreme transmissibility means that when vaccination coverage drops below 95% of any local population, the virus can spread rapidly through schools, churches, restaurants, fitness centers, and other public spaces.
Cases in North Carolina, Washington and California have also been linked to the South Carolina outbreak.
In our own lovely state, more parents are claiming religious or personal belief exemptions to avoid mandatory vaccinations although I have yet to find a passage in the Bible, The Torah or the Quran that says God is perfectly OK with a disease that can kill your kids. Within South Carolina, some counties have fallen into "very high risk" categories, with fewer than 60% of children under age 5 receiving one or more measles vaccine doses. Many people who deliberately decline vaccination for their families are also skeptical of seeking medical care in general, or of public-health officials investigating outbreaks.
The Trump administration has repeatedly downplayed the benefits of immunization, while exaggerating the importance of unconventional treatments, including vitamin A, a steroid and an antibiotic for combatting measles. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has also spent decades repeating disproved claims that vaccines such as the measles-mumps-rubella immunization can cause autism.
So, what’s a tourist to do? Stay out of the upstate area, especially around Spartanburg, the apparent epicenter of the outbreak? Hold your breath for the duration of your stay? Dig those COVID masks out of the bottom of your purse?
Or simply Ignore the SC tourism slogan “Smiling Faces. Beautiful Places” and go to a state where your smiling face isn’t covered by a highly contagious rash.