Health officials outside Portland, Oregon are declaring an emergency because of a rapidly escalating outbreak of Measles, a highly contagious disease that was once en route to being eliminated.

At the beginning of last week, healthcare workers in Clark County, Washington - just across the mighty Columbia River from the favorite city of American hipsters - counted only two confirmed cases.  A week later, that has swollen to 23 confirmed cases, mostly in little kids aged one to ten years old. 

"It's alarming," said Dr. Douglas J. Opel, a pediatrician at Seattle Children's Hospital, "Any time we have an outbreak of a disease that we have a safe and effective vaccine against, it should raise a red flag."

State data shows that 7.9 percent of Clark County kids aren't immunized, way above the national rate of two percent.  A deeper dive into the numbers reveals that most of those kids didn't get the immunization that is known to be 97 percent effective because of the personal or religious objections of their parents. 

The area is known to be an epicenter of the anti-vaxxer movement, which is based on long-debunked junk science claiming that vaccines are linked to autism - they're not.  And since Measles is highly contagious, it tends to spread in areas where immunization rats are low.

"Portland is a total train wreck when it comes to vaccine rates," said Peter J. Hotez, a professor of pediatrics and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

"This is something I've predicted for a while now," he continued.  "It's really awful and really tragic and totally preventable."

Measles often begins with cold-like symptoms and a rash.  But symptoms get worse and additional complications could occur, including pneumonia and, in more serious cases, inflammation of the brain known as encephalitis, and even seizures.