At the end of February, the United States saw its first measles-related death in a decade. Nearly a month later, Tennessee confirmed its first measles case on March 21 — right in Rutherford County.
With a measles case in close proximity to MTSU, health officials are keeping a close eye on the spread. However, because of MTSU’s immunization policies, they remain unconcerned.
Measles is a highly contagious disease that can cause a rash, fever, dry cough, runny nose, sore throat, inflamed eyes and Koplik’s spots. Measles can be deadly for at-risk groups, including young children and the elderly.
The disease spreads through an infected person’s coughs, sneezes or droplets that can hang in the air for approximately one hour or last on a surface for several hours.
“If you’re not vaccinated and you’re in a classroom with somebody who has measles, it’s close to 100% chance you’ll get it,” Dr. Eric Clark, the medical director of MTSU Student Health Services, said. “That’s how contagious it is.”
To protect against measles, doctors recommend administering the MMR (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) vaccine about a year after a child is born. It’s generally given in two doses: the first at 12-15 months and the second at 4-6 years old.
Many public schools require children to have the MMR vaccine to enroll, including schools in Tennessee since 1967. Because of the mass immunization movement at the end of the 20th century, measles was declared eliminated in 2000 in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control. Unlike eradication, elimination is the limited spread of a disease in a specific geographic area; it does not mean that all cases are gone, just that they are severely limited.
“The MMR vaccine works great,” Clark said. “If you’ve got two MMR vaccines, it would be very difficult for you to get measles. If there’s ever a really bad outbreak on a college campus, sometimes they’ll talk about a third one. But immunity is excellent.”
MTSU is no different than other Tennessee public schools in requiring full-time students to have the MMR and Varicella (chicken pox) vaccines. There are religious exemptions from the vaccinations, though, and part-time MTSU students are not required to have the vaccines (though the MTSU Health Center still recommends it).
“I respect anybody’s opinion, and people have different reasons why they choose to do things,” MTSU Student Health Center director Richard Chapman said. “And why do they choose to wear a seat belt or not wear a seat belt? Whether they wear a helmet when they ride a bike or not … People make their own decisions.”
Some MTSU students have similar views on vaccines and people’s decisions to abstain from them. Freshman nursing student Ceandra Reynolds believes that students should make the right decisions for themselves, and that the current religious exemptions at MTSU are reasonable.
“I don’t think vaccines should be forced on anyone,” Reynolds said. “If you don’t want to vaccinate, that’s your American right. You don’t have to do that. As far as going to school and being around others, just know … what you could possibly attract and what you could possibly give others, which can be very harmful to yourself and other people.”
In the event of an outbreak, the MTSU Student Health Center plans to work closely with the Tennessee Department of Health on matters such as contact tracing and immunization, Chapman said. After the COVID-19 pandemic, the health center staff became more accustomed to outbreak procedures.
Junior interactive media student Terrell Williams is worried about a measles outbreak because of the anti-vaccination movement.
Anti-vaxxers, those who follow the anti-vaccination movement, generally believe that vaccines can cause a myriad of health issues. The MMR vaccine anti-vax movement originally stemmed from a debunked 1998 study that linked vaccinations with autism. The study became well-known, and public figures, including Jim Carrey and current U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., used their large platforms to further perpetuate the retracted research.
Kennedy recently praised an anti-vax doctor in Texas for treating “some 300 measles-stricken Mennonite children” with aerosolized budesonide and clarithromycin. However, on that same trip to Texas, he paid a visit to the family of a child who died from measles, during which he said that the MMR vaccine was the most effective way to treat the disease.
The anti-vax movement is especially prevalent in places including Tennessee and Texas, Williams said.
Tennessee led in MMR vaccinations until recent years, when religious exemptions grew from 1.8% to 3.4% from 2020 to 2024. Fully vaccinated kindergarteners — those who received all required vaccines for public school — dropped from 95.2% in 2020 to 92.8% in 2023. To maintain elimination in the U.S., vaccination rates should stay above 95%, according to a National Library of Medicine study.
Connor Sandel, a junior accounting major, shared similar beliefs to Williams. He connected the increase of measles to the increase of anti-vaxxers.
“The anti-vax movement is right in line with measles coming back,” Sandel said. “That’s definitely a little bit of an easy correlation to draw there, especially in Texas, where that opinion is quite rampant.”
Even though Williams and Sandel think the measles outbreak is connected to the anti-vax movement, they believe that students should be able to make their own decisions about their health, agreeing with the current MTSU policies on vaccine requirements.
“I think it’s important to have that, but I also think that the people that have reasons for it, like religious reasons, should be respected for that,” Williams said. “Especially if the people with the vaccines won’t necessarily be affected. And if you believe in something like that, I believe you should have the right.”
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