New data published last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that 95% of U.S. measles cases in 2026 are classified as “Unvaccinated or Unknown.”
However, the agency’s own table makes clear that this figure does not mean 95% of cases occurred in confirmed unvaccinated individuals.
Instead, the CDC combines two fundamentally different categories—“unvaccinated” and “vaccination status unknown”—into a single percentage, preventing the public from knowing how many cases actually involved confirmed unvaccinated people.
The CDC does not disclose how much of the 95% figure represents:
- individuals confirmed to be unvaccinated, versus
- individuals whose vaccination records were unavailable, missing, or not verified
As a result, the public cannot determine whether most measles cases occurred in unvaccinated individuals or simply in individuals whose vaccination status was never established.
Hellbound and Down 