There are more measles cases in Minnesota than there were in the entire U.S. last year, but anti-vaccine activists are doing their best to defy efforts by public health officials and doctors to prevent the disease's spread, according to a report in The Washington Post.
Some local activists in Facebook group discussions have talked about holding "measles parties" — social gatherings where unvaccinated children can come into contact with infected kids — to build up their children's natural resistance to the infectious disease, while other activists urged families opposed to vaccinations to attend a meet-up in Minneapolis with associates of vaccine skeptic Andrew Wakefield.
"I'm shocked by how emboldened they've gotten," Karen Ernst, executive director of Voices for Vaccines, told the Post. "I think most people thought the anti-vaccine voices would sit home and lay low. . . . Instead, they became more public, they did more outreach."
The Minnesota Vaccine Freedom Coalition on Facebook said: "unlike the Department of Health and many doctors, we don't tell people what to do. We are about informed consent – sharing scientific data and Minnesota laws so citizens know THEY have choices and the right to make them."
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.