Post and Courier23%
SC measles outbreak changes some minds, but will it reverse vaccine hesitancy? 24%
By Tom Corwin19%
8/3/2026, 2:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Unattributed Quote, and Optimism Bias, with Anecdotal as the most egregious example at 12.5% saturation with 109 hits. Analysis detected 1,091 faulty-reasoning hits from 869 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 30.1% and a BS Rank of 24% (22,328 of 29,340 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 76.10% of the article peer group.
As the massive measles outbreak in the Upstate spread earlier this year, Dr.
Stuart Simko of Prisma Health Pediatrics in Greer started to hear from vaccine-hesitant parents.
“They would call me and say, ‘I know I’m the last person you’d expect to be calling you and asking you about, should we get this vaccine?
But it’s in our backyard.
What do you think?’
” Simko said.
“I was surprised by how many people reached out that didn’t do vaccines, but they got their child at least the” measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, or MMR.
Dr.
Eliza Varadi at Pelican Pediatrics in Charleston said she has had several new patient families whose kids went “from zero to fully vaccinated” in recent months.
But that was at the beginning of the school year.
As measles cases swept across schools, and unvaccinated students who were exposed had to quarantine for weeks at home, vaccinations in the area and across the state began to go up, at least for MMR.
Since October, when the measles outbreak began in Spartanburg County, until March, when the last cases appeared, there were 19,238 additional vaccinations compared to the year prior, according to a Post and Courier analysis of public health data.
The vast majority were in the Upstate, with 14,695 additional MMR vaccinations, including 3,788 in Spartanburg County alone, the analysis found.
The response was encouraging to Simko, the pediatrician on the front lines.
“It created some hope that we are moving in the right direction,” at least with the MMR vaccine, he said.
“But I don’t think people are lining up to say, ‘Let me get my kids all the shots they need.’
”
Varadi in Charleston, who is the immunization representative for the South Carolina chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, polled the group’s leadership and found a disparate effect across clinics.
Those parents who were pro-vaccine before the measles outbreak are even stronger advocates and are pushing to get their kids vaccinated early, particularly with MMR.
Those who were vaccine hesitant or resistant, the outbreak “didn’t seem to affect them too much,” Varadi said, except for some in the outbreak area.
Talking to parents concerned about vaccines is part of daily life for pediatricians, and doctors said they should meet parents where they are in terms of those questions in a respectful way.
“As a pediatrician, if you can come from a non-judgmental perspective from the get-go, it really helps because when that family’s ready to have that conversation, you can be there for them,” Simko said.
“We love questions because we want to educate,” Varadi said.
“I think when you give people the correct information and the scientific background in a way they can understand, they’re much more likely to understand why those vaccines are important and how they’re protective of their child.”
A long-debunked link between vaccines and autism is still out there and was recently given new life by U.S.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.
Kennedy Jr., a long-time vaccine critic, who is reportedly pushing for more studies despite decades of evidence to the contrary.
Vaccines do not cause autism, but because most of those cases are diagnosed around age 2, after children have had many childhood vaccinations, the timing causes some parents to link the two, Varadi said.
“Correlation does not equal causation,” she said.
Many parents also question why their child would need a vaccine when they haven’t had the shot before and appear to be doing fine without it, Varadi said.
To this she answers with the seatbelt analogy: When you get in the car to drive somewhere, you don’t know if or when you might get in an accident, so you put on a seatbelt just in case it is today.
“It’s the same thing with vaccines,” Varadi said.
“You just don’t ever know when you’re going to encounter that infectious disease that could put your child at risk.”
If the child is unvaccinated, “once you encounter it, it’s too late.”
Parents in Spartanburg, Greenville and some surrounding counties found that out the hard way.
And while there were no deaths, children were harmed.
There were at least 21 hospitalizations, although there may have been more because they are not reportable to public health.
The largest burden of the 997 cases was borne by unvaccinated children — 95.3 percent of all cases were unvaccinated, 91.2 percent of all cases were in those age 17 or younger, a Post and Courier analysis found.
Whether that pushes more parents to vaccinate ahead of this school year is yet unanswered.
Simko said he would like to think so, but doesn’t expect the rate to change soon.
Varadi thinks it may have had an impact in some areas, but perhaps not much elsewhere in the state.
But all are hopeful the measles outbreak, and the expense and misery it caused for many, leads to something better.
“There was definitely harm that happened because of it, both indirect and direct,” Thacker said.
“And so, gosh, I hope that our communities have learned from this experience, and make something good from the harm that reached these communities.”
Speakers
3speakers54%attributed speech401writer words
Selected voice
92%flagged-word coverageEliza Varadi
322 attributed words69% of attributed speech55% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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Analysis
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