When Rome's Plague Meets America's Vaccine Wars

In January 2025, a hospital in West Texas began reporting something that shouldn't exist in modern America: children sick with measles. What started in a Mennonite community soon spread across state lines, reaching over 1,800 cases by year's end. Meanwhile, a gunman fired hundreds of rounds into the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, convinced that COVID vaccines were part of a conspiracy to harm Americans.

These weren't isolated incidents. They were symptoms of something far more profound—the slow-motion collapse of the public health apparatus that has protected American lives for nearly a century.

The Roman Warning

In 168 C.E., the Greek physician Galen arrived in Aquileia to fight an invisible enemy. The Antonine Plague, likely an early variant of smallpox, had traveled with Roman troops and was devastating the empire. Co-emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus had rushed to the fortified city, but the plague proved deadlier than any Germanic invasion. Verus died fleeing the outbreak. Most of Aquileia's population perished.

The pandemic killed at least 1 million people across the Roman Empire and haunted it for the rest of the Pax Romana. But the plague's true damage wasn't just in body count—it was in the erosion of civic trust and communal bonds that held Roman society together. Food shortages, internal migrations, and overcrowding had already weakened imperial power. The pandemic spread panic and left behind mistrust, accelerating Rome's long decline.

Men famously think about Rome daily, and political commentators have nervously compared Rome's fall to potential American collapse since before America had a Constitution. But Rome's example merits serious consideration now, because one of the best measures of a society's vitality is its ability to protect citizens from disease.

America's Public Health Revolution

In 1946, when the U.S. Public Health Service founded its Communicable Disease Center, American life expectancy was just 66 years. Malaria ravaged the South. Fever diseases, tuberculosis, syphilis, and polio killed tens of thousands annually. 34 out of every 1,000 children born were expected to die before their first birthday.

What followed was nothing short of revolutionary. The CDC inherited its mandate from World War II military campaigns against infectious diseases, extending that paradigm of coordination across distances and communities to civilians. Wartime appeals for conservation and sacrifice translated into vaccination and sanitation campaigns.

The results were staggering. Since 1950, global life expectancy has risen by four years each decade. Smallpox was eradicated. Polio and malaria cases plummeted. American life expectancy increased by more than a decade, reaching 78 years by 2023. Several generations grew up without malaria, yellow fever, or typhoid on the mainland. Measles and polio—once routine childhood scourges—were pushed back by millions of vaccinations.

This wasn't just about technology. Vaccines for smallpox had existed for half a century before the 1940s without creating widespread immunity. The real revolution was a change in how people thought about themselves and their relationship to one another.

The Unraveling

But that revolution is now in reverse. According to KFF, just 83 percent of parents kept their children up-to-date on vaccines in summer 2025, down from 90 percent four years earlier. Cases are surging for diseases covered by the national vaccine schedule. Tuberculosis cases are at their highest in a dozen years. Foodborne illnesses appear rising, including regular norovirus surges.

The coronavirus pandemic accelerated these trends catastrophically. Despite all advantages, the U.S. had more confirmed COVID deaths per capita than any other Western country. Public health agencies gave confusing, sometimes conflicting advice. Conspiracy theories flourished on social media. Masking became partisan. According to Gallup, just 51 percent of Americans now favor government vaccine requirements, down from 81 percent in 1991.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now health secretary, has slashed agency budgets, stocked vaccine advisory committees with skeptics, and announced new childhood vaccine recommendations excluding rotavirus, influenza, and hepatitis A coverage. After the August CDC shooting, hundreds of current and former Health and Human Services employees singled out Kennedy as driving the rhetoric that motivated the gunman.

The Invisible Fortifications

Marcus Aurelius, the surviving Roman emperor, is famous for his Stoicism—embracing duty not for praise or material benefits, but because duty fulfills the human condition. His Meditations offered this maxim: "Do your duty—whether shivering or warm, never mind; heavy-eyed, or with your fill of sleep; in evil report or in good report; dying or with other work in hand."

This admonishment likely came from his time as a plague fighter. Facing Galen's "everlasting pestilence," Marcus had to rally the public, stock depleted armies with convicts, and order mass graves. He understood that the state was held up not just by military or territory, but by invisible webs of shared sacrifice and obligation.

The thing about bacteria and viruses—our most ancient foes—is that they're always at the gates, waiting for lean times. Among them will be pathogens worse than coronavirus. What's spurring America's slide isn't lack of information or cutting-edge medicine. Rather, the precepts of shared reality have shattered, and with them the ability to act for common cause.