The United States of America, a nation currently engaged in a frantic race to see how quickly it can dismantle the scaffolding of the Enlightenment, has achieved a new milestone in its quest for the Middle Ages. In the humid, intellectually parched corridors of South Carolina, the measles—a disease we supposedly eradicated in the year 2000—is making a triumphant, itchy comeback. State health officials have confirmed that over 500 people and students across 15 schools are currently languishing in quarantine, serving as living monuments to the collective failure of modern society. It is a stunning achievement in regression. While the rest of the world attempts to figure out fusion energy or artificial intelligence, a significant portion of the Palmetto State has decided that the 19th century had some really underrated ideas about pediatric mortality.

The measles virus is not a sophisticated enemy. It does not have the stealth of a prion or the adaptability of the flu. It is a loud, red, fever-inducing relic that we defeated with a simple needle decades ago. Yet, here we are, watching the U.S. risk losing its 'elimination status' because the American public has grown so bored with safety that it has begun to fetishize the 'natural' beauty of a vaccine-preventable rash. The federal government, in its typical fashion, watches from a distance with the hollow, glassy eyes of a retail worker witnessing a shoplifter walk out with a television. They 'monitor' the situation. They 'issue guidance.' They do everything except address the fundamental rot that allows a eradicated disease to find a cozy home in 15 different schools. It is a bureaucratic shrug masquerading as public health policy.

On one side of this delightful outbreak, we have the 'muh freedom' crowd, whose understanding of biology is roughly equivalent to a goldfish’s understanding of the internal combustion engine. To them, a vaccine is a Marxist plot, a microchip delivery system, or a personal affront to their god-given right to be a walking biohazard. They view their children not as human beings to be protected, but as political props in a grand drama of perceived persecution. On the other side, we have the performative elite, who are so deeply invested in their own 'wellness' and 'purity' that they view modern medicine as an aesthetic violation. They prefer their immunity to be 'artisanal' and 'organic,' apparently unaware that the most organic thing a human can do is die of a fever in a ditch at age seven. Both sides are united by a staggering, breathtaking narcissism that places their own uninformed 'research' above the survival of the species.

The quarantine of 500 people is a grim farce. Imagine 15 schools turned into mini-leper colonies because a handful of adults decided that science was a suggestion rather than a description of reality. These students are now pawns in a game of biological Russian roulette played by parents who are too busy doom-scrolling for conspiracies to notice their children’s rising temperatures. The loss of 'elimination status' is more than a medical designation; it is a formal recognition that the United States is no longer a serious country. It is a signal to the rest of the world that we have surrendered to our own stupidity. We have the resources of a superpower and the medical literacy of a medieval serf, a combination that would be hilarious if it weren’t so pathetically predictable.

The irony, of course, is that this is occurring in a state that prides itself on 'traditional values.' Apparently, those values include the traditional practice of watching your neighbors get sick from something we solved while Eisenhower was in office. There is no nobility in this outbreak, only a profound, echoing emptiness where a sense of communal responsibility used to live. We have become a nation of atomized egoists, each convinced that our own ignorance is a valid alternative to expertise. As the measles spreads, it serves as a perfect metaphor for the American condition: a preventable, irritating, and ultimately destructive consequence of a society that has forgotten how to function.

As the quarantine continues and the red spots proliferate, one can only wonder what’s next on the nostalgia tour. Polio? Smallpox? Black Death? If the current trajectory of South Carolina is any indication, the future of America looks less like a sci-fi utopia and more like a dusty ward in a Victorian hospital. We are witnessing the death of the future, one fever at a time. And the most infuriating part of it all is that we chose this. We invited the plague back into the house because we thought the cure was too mainstream. So, let the quarantine bells ring. Let the 'elimination status' vanish into the ether. We deserve every itchy, miserable second of it.