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By Marshall Shank
In the post Covid discourse of today, vaccines are associated with immunizations, political talking points, healthcare, and philosophical ideology. Advertisements today reference Covid, Measles, Shingles, and other assorted vaccines and boosters available to the public.
Rubeola, more commonly known as measles, is a respiratory virus that attacks the throat, lungs, and mouth. It spreads very similarly to the flu, as the virus stays in the air after an infected person coughs or sneezes and can live in the air for up to two hours after a person with measles leaves a room. Many of its symptoms are also like other common diseases, like a runny nose, choughing, and red eyes, but its main defining characteristic is a red rash that starts behind a person’s ears and spreads downward.
This virus currently has over 750 confirmed cases throughout Pennsylvania as of 2026, 4 of those cases ended with the person in death, 2 of those 4 were infants, one 18 year old, and a 44 year old. The reason that most of these people died was because they were unvaccinated, along with having underlying complications.
Many people within the country already have the MMR vaccine, which includes not only measles, but also mumps and rubella. Many states in America are very cautious and strict with young children and measles due to how highly contagious it is. In a school environment over the winter, even if you are vaccinated or not, measles can go from one child having a cough to a school wide pandemic.
“Even if you were to land a droplet on someone while coughing, or rub the disease on a mucus membrane on an eye or mouth, you would get it, it's highly contagious, especially for young students, and it incubates so long, you wouldn't even know you had it until you broke out in rashes,” said Hillary Richards, School Nurse.
Most students within the Pen Argyl School District comply with Pennsylvania's law to receive the 2 dose MMR vaccine, but there are students around the country who don't have to take the vaccine. Vaccines like MMR can not be taken if a family provides sustainable proof that that person’s philosophical, religious, or other proof and belief that they cannot take it. This is used more in private schools and other institutions, but this is used all over the nation nonetheless.
Photo Courtesy of John Hopkins University
Measles cases as of 2026 has exploded in states like South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Utah, with more growing within and into surrounding states exponentially as the year continues.
Vaccines like MMR and the Covid-19 vaccine are not automatic cures for the disease you are getting vaccinated for. A vaccine is only a weakened version of a virus that gets injected in a careful dose so that your immune system can create memory of instructions on how to remove the real virus efficiently when you get it in the future.
These vaccines cannot be administered to infants until a specific age, this is why measles had such a deadly effect on those two infants, as their immune systems, just like all other infants, are extremely vulnerable, or immunocompromised.
For students looking to attend college, university, or join the military after PAHS, MMR vaccines are required to enlist with all branches of the government and dorm at most colleges or universities in the US.
Vaccines are important to both your safety, but also others present in high school. There are students, staff, and faculty in PAHS who are immunocompromised, and a virus such as measles poses a great potential threat to those people.
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