This last week, Idaho bumped up to three measles cases. The latest in Bonner County has arrived alongside others in Kootenai and Bonneville counties; the first two are thought to be part of a local spread, and the latter “imported.”

Three is hardly an epidemic, of course - so far. But you can expect there will be more. And that will have implications for health and, inevitably, these days, politics.

These Idaho cases are a small part of the first major measles outbreak nationally in decades. There may be reasons more social and political than medical that it is resurfacing now.

That’s not just speculation. The Johns Hopkins health tracker (one not hobbled by federal budget cuts, at least not yet) shows that with one outlier exception in 2019, total measles cases in the United States nev

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