The measles outbreak in West Texas didn't happen just by chance. The easily preventable disease, declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, ripped through communities sprawling across more than 20 Texas counties in part because health departments were starved of the funding needed to run vaccine programs,

With cuts at the Centers for Disease Control, Texas and other states will have to spend more on public health. The biggest expense of a measles outbreak is the public health response in shutting down the outbreak.

Recent cuts by the Trump administration have pulled billions of dollars in COVID-19 related funding—$2 billion of it slated for immunization programs for various diseases.