MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Now to South Carolina, which is experiencing the biggest measles outbreak the U.S. has seen in decades. Public health authorities in the state say there are now more than 970 cases. NPR's Maria Godoy visited Spartanburg County - that's the epicenter of the outbreak - to find out how it became a measles hotspot.
MARIA GODOY, BYLINE: Ambling through the quiet countryside of Spartanburg, you can get that been-to-church-and-going-for-a-drive kind of feeling...
AUTOMATED VOICE: Merge onto Falling Creek Road.
GODOY: ...Small towns, lots of land, and now an unprecedented measles outbreak.
ANGELA EDWARDS: You got it.
GODOY: To help us understand what happened here, we meet up with Angela Edwards.
EDWARDS: I'm a community health worker here in this great Spartanburg, South Carolina, where we are in the middle of a health epidemic.
GODOY: Edwards is giving us a tour of various schools because most of the measles cases are in school-age kids.
EDWARDS: This is one of the very first schools where we actually had students and families in quarantine.
GODOY: The vaccination rate at this charter school is only 21%, far below the 95% needed to prevent community outbreaks. And this is a big part of the problem. We drive past town after town with schools that have seen falling vaccination rates and hundreds of unvaccinated kids under quarantine.
EDWARDS: So it's all right here.
GODOY: Spartanburg is a solidly conservative part of the state, where vaccination has become wrapped up in politics.
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GODOY: So we drop in on Republican state Senator Josh Kimbrell.
JOSH KIMBRELL: How are you?
GODOY: Good. How are you?
KIMBRELL: Good to see you. Good to meet you.
GODOY: This home is not far from a local middle school that's seen dozens of students quarantined.
KIMBRELL: Sorry for the delay. It's been a crazy day.
GODOY: Kimbrell has been thrust into the debate over the measles vaccine. He describes himself as deeply Christian, conservative, a firm believer in parental rights. But he thinks the situation in Spartanburg has gone too far. It was over the holidays when he realized just how serious the outbreak had become.
KIMBRELL: I was worried about it when I learned about a teacher who was in intensive care through the holiday season and nearly passed away, and I knew her family. That was really a moment for me where I said, all right, this is getting out of control.
GODOY: Kimbrell fired off a letter to the district school board that said, look, this crisis is a danger to public health. We need to reexamine school vaccine policy. He says he understands why parents have grown more skeptical about vaccines in recent years.
KIMBRELL: I think the government's response to COVID was so overbearing that it broke down trust.
GODOY: He says many people in Spartanburg pushed back against lockdowns and COVID vaccine mandates during the pandemic, and that distrust lingers.
KIMBRELL: So d*** the torpedoes, we're not taking any MMR vaccine or any vaccine period. We don't believe in doctors anymore. And that is a really dangerous position to take.
GODOY: That attitude is reflected in the growing number of Spartanburg parents who are opting their kids out of school vaccine requirements, including the MMR - measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. Today, nearly 10% of students in the county have what he calls a religious liberty exemption.
KIMBRELL: You know, I know people who probably haven't set foot in a church for five years, who suddenly decide it's a religious liberty exemption. I'm like, well, I don't think you have a whole lot of religious reasons. It's just you don't want to do it. OK, that's fine, but just say that.
GODOY: At a local cafe called 121 Coffee, we meet up with a parent, Gene Zakharov. He's also the cafe owner.
GENE ZAKHAROV: Yeah, this is our coffee shop. We have a crepe station here on the left.
GODOY: We sit on the patio, just down a ways from his church. He's one of those parents who've got a religious exemption. Zakharov is part of a large Slavic community drawn to Spartanburg by its conservative politics and sunshine.
ZAKHAROV: A lot of people don't believe in vaccines.
GODOY: He says it's common among people from the former Soviet Union.
ZAKHAROV: So people that live there, they have a big distrust in the government, to say the least.
GODOY: He and his wife didn't vaccinate their two younger children. They worried about potential side effects from vaccines. But now they've changed their mind. Their 13-year-old daughter was recently exposed to measles at a friend's house and spent time in quarantine.
ZAKHAROV: You know, it doesn't hit you until you actually come in contact with something like this. You're like, well, thanks (ph) God, my kid is all right. But, you know, what if she wouldn't?
GODOY: He's not the only one changing his mind. As the measles outbreak exploded in January, local pediatrician Stuart Simko says his phone started ringing.
STUART SIMKO: So I've had several patients in the last several weeks who have said no to vaccinations in the past, who have reached out and said, hey, what do you think about the MMR? What do you think about measles? It's in our backyard.
GODOY: Simko tells parents that the vaccine can prevent serious complications from measles, like brain swelling, pneumonia and something called immune amnesia, where the virus wipes out parts of the immune system, leaving kids vulnerable to new infections for several years. And parents, they're listening.
SIMKO: A lot of people are changing their mind - not everybody.
GODOY: The rise in new cases has slowed, but to reduce the risk that the virus could take off again, even more people will have to get vaccinated. State Senator Kimbrell says that's challenging when vaccines have become so polarized, and the reasonable middle is being drowned out.
KIMBRELL: You have the hard left that says, put a needle on that arm, we don't care if you strap them down. OK, I don't agree with that. Are you going to - then the other sides going to say, hell no, not taking a vaccine no matter what, you can mix it in with my yogurt and I'm not eating it. Those both are not helpful.
GODOY: After all, he says, the virus doesn't care if you're Republican or Democrat. Maria Godoy, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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