The Amish family thought the chills and fever that had hammered their second oldest son was strep throat. Then a ringing came from the phone shack in the yard: A friend was calling to say the measles had been lurking at a horse auction in Lancaster, Pa. The 15-year-old boy and his father, an Amish horse breaker, had been there just a few days before.
“We knew it was the measles,” Emma Miller, the boy’s mother, said. Measles cases have been reported in 45 states in 2026. In Pennsylvania — where state officials say five have died in connection with the outbreak — and Ohio, the Amish people are bearing the brunt of the sickness. They are also taking a share of the blame from outsiders, owing to a lifestyle that tends toward shutting out modern medicine.
But two days of traveling with a health practitioner through the pastoral Amish country of northeastern Ohio found that despite the stereotype, the Amish are not anti-vaccine. Their reasons for rejecting vaccination are more nuanced. Like most other Americans, many had never seen a case of measles before, and were not aware of how dangerous the virus could be. They thought measles would not find them, and it did.
The contagion ripped through the Miller family over the summer, sickening six of the seven children and their mother. It skipped only their father, Marvin Miller, and one daughter, Mary Ann. Both had been vaccinated. Vaccination was a matter of personal preference, families said. Often it came down to family practice or tradition. Vaccination rates are low because the Amish generally do not have commercial health insurance or credit cards. They pay for medical appointments in cash.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing