There is an awful article by Sarah Clendenon at the Idaho Freedom Foundation on September 3, 2026 titled Victory! Idaho Freedom Foundation’s Work in Medical Freedom Shows Nearly 1/5th of Kindergartners Opt-Out of Vaccinations, per CDC. (There also is a brief YouTube video titled Idaho leads the nation in vaccine exemptions!)
Why? The Wikipedia page on Herd Immunity says that for measles a threshold of 92 to 94% is needed. Look at the map of which states have various vaccination rates (shown above) from a September 4, 2026 CDC web page about Measles Cases and Outbreaks. Just 11 states have over 95%, 20 states have 90 to 94%, 18 states have less than 90%, and data for the remaining two were not available. Idaho already has less than 90%. We don’t have herd immunity now, and things probably will get worse.
The sixth paragraph of the Freedom Foundation article claims:
“Measles is a mild, short-term infection. Contracting it naturally creates true, lifelong immunity. This is why our grandparents were all exposed and recovered easily in about 7 to 10 days.”
An article by Jamie Hansen at the Stanford Medicine News Center on May 12, 2025 titled Five things to know about measles, and its risk to the young and old says to the contrary that:
“During the current U.S. measles outbreak, nearly one in five children under 5 with measles has been hospitalized.”
The about web page for the Idaho Freedom Foundation reveals that Sarah Clendenon also is the Director of Legislative Affairs at another dubious organization, Health Freedom Idaho. It says her education background is not medical, rather it:
“…includes an Associate's Degree in Criminal Justice Administration and Bachelor Degree work in Public Law and Political Philosophy at Boise State University.”
To learn more about measles, we instead should look at an article by Steven Novella at Science-Based Medicine on May 6, 2026 titled Measles Surging As Vaccine Rates Drop. There also is a four-page article by Diego R. Hijano, Walter A. Orenstein, and Carlos R. Oliviera in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society for October 17, 2025 titled Measles Resurgence and the Fragility of Herd Immunity: Implications for Pediatric Infectious Disease Practice. Figure 1 has another map showing both vaccination rates and case counts, including a county map for Texas.
And there is still another article by Kevin Richert at IdahoEdNews on July 30, 2026 titled ‘A concern, but not a surprise:’ A resurgence of measles looms over Idaho schools.
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