I’ll be honest with you: I don’t want our site to become a place that just posts about every Tesla Cybertruck wreck, just because (and David’s review of the truck was actually fairly positive; it’s an impressive machine) — even the wrecks that may be at least in part caused by Tesla’s Level 2 semi-automated driving software, still confusingly-named Full Self Driving (FSD). But sometimes there’s just a perfect storm of irony and eye-rollery and embarrassing fanboyism and powerful, important lessons about the sometimes serious limitations of Level 2 driving systems. This is one of those times, thanks to a tweet that is going viral which hits all of these key points, and has a dramatic picture as well. It’s really the total package. We have to talk about it, at least a little.

I should mention that while the Cybertruck here looks pretty badly messed up and is likely totaled, nobody was actually hurt, so that’s good. Modern cars are very good about not killing the beings inside them in wrecks, and we’re seeing a great example of that here.

In fact, that’s one of the key points of the tweet, which has been seen by 2.4 million people:

Here’s a bigger screenshot of the text:

Complimenting The Car That Helped Cause The Crash To Keep The ‘Haters’ Away

What many seem to find amazing, and the reason the tweet is going viral, is that the poster seems worried about what the dashcam footage of his wreck will do for the “bears/haters” after his car crashed itself into a pole.

There’s an awful lot here to unpack. Of course, the first thing that jumps out to most people is how the Cybertruck owner thanks Tesla for “engineering the best passive safety in the world.” I don’t know if that’s actually true, though the Cybertruck does have some impressive passive safety features, and like many modern vehicles, it is generally safe in a wreck, and it is genuinely amazing that the owner here came out without a scratch. And then in the next sentence the owner states that the Cybertruck “failed to merge out of a lane that was ending (there was no one on my left) and made no attempt to slow down” which resulted in the Cybertruck hopping a curb and smacking right into that large streetlight pole, as you can see in the photograph included with the tweet.

Notice I said “owner” there instead of “driver,” because that leads to the next, far more important point. There’s the irony, of course, of thanking Tesla for making a vehicle that’s so safe in a wreck, and then going on to mention that the very same vehicle caused the wreck. It’s very good at dealing with the problem it created!

It’s Proof That These Level 2 Systems Are Problematic

Now, where this gets more complex, and leads to the owner/driver distinction I mentioned before, is that exactly who or what was in control of that 6,000+ pounds of Cybertruck is not clear. The tweet definitely makes it seem like Tesla’s FSD software (noted in the tweet to be version 13.2.4, which is less than a month old) was in full control of the car, which made the decisions that led to crashing into that light pole, and the fact that despite the car heading towards the pole, the human inside did nothing to stop the situation, pretty clearly showing they were not in control or paying attention.

This, of course, is precisely how one is not supposed to use a Level 2 system, which requires constant driver vigilance, and is also the fundamental reason why all semi-automated driving systems are doomed: because people are terrible at using them. And, even worse and more paradoxically, the better a job the Level 2 system does, the worse it is for people to actually use and the more likely it is to be abused, as we see in this situation.

By the way, if you don’t remember what those automated driving levels are, here’s the chart. Remember, the levels don’t indicate how good or advanced the system is, but rather dictate the relationship between the human and the machine when it comes to how the driving responsibility is shared:

All Tesla FSD systems on the road today are Level 2 systems, meaning the human is always responsible, no matter how well the system works or how long it’s been since your last intervention. Under FSD, you have to be ready to take over at a moment’s notice, unless you’re cool with, say, smashing your $100,000 stainless steel truck into a huge post.

Other tweets by the owner seem to suggest a pattern with taking FSD at its name and just treating it like an actual Level 4 or 5 self-driving system – which, again, it isn’t – as you can infer here:

Sometimes I decide to go somewhere and turn on @Tesla FSD and then I forget where I decided to go and then it starts turning into Taco Bell or whatever and I'm like wtf is it doing and then I'm like oh right Taco Bell

thank you for coming to my TED talk

— Jonathan Challinger (@MrChallinger) January 6, 2025

So, the Twitter-poster here gets in his Cybertruck and turns on FSD and is so distracted he doesn’t even remember where he asked it to go? Even when there’s Taco Bell at the end? Bizarre.

This is, of course, precisely the worst way to use any sort of Level 2 driving-assist system and remains the biggest issue with such systems. People are genuinely confused about just how much a driver-assist system does, and even when they’re not confused, people still get incredibly distracted when using driver-assist systems that they’re supposed to be monitoring, because of course they do.

We’ve known this would be a problem since 1948, when Mackworth’s famous study “The Breakdown of Vigilance during Prolonged Visual Search” demonstrated that intense and prolonged vigilance to a mostly independently-operating system is simply not something people are good at. At all. Tesla’s FSD not only calls itself a “Full Self-Driving” system, which sets up unrealistic expectations, but it’s also generally quite good at what it does, which means it is very easy for people to end up in the same situation as Mr.Pole-Pegged Cybertruck over here: too comfortable and then ultimately fucked.

Because no matter how good FSD may be most of the time, it’s not actually a Level 4 or 5 system, and even if it’s been doing fantastic for months, you have no idea when it may suddenly decide to not realize a lane is ending and crash into a pole. I know it’s tempting for ardent defenders of FSD or other automated driving systems to blame these sorts of wrecks on lighting or weather or confusing environmental setups, calling them “edge cases” and suggesting that these circumstances are uncommon, and not worth making a big fuss about.

But here’s the thing about “edge cases”: the world is full of edge cases. That’s what reality is! Messy, chaotic edge cases, with some veneer of order slapped down over everything. Look at where this wreck happened, for example, on that map of a section of Reno, Nevada there. That’s not a particularly challenging area, really. It looks like it was dark, but we’re not talking about some labyrinthine narrow, crowded streets in an ancient European city or anything like that: these are big, well-lit roads that aren’t even particularly dense, traffic-wise. I’m sure the FSD instance in that very same Cybertruck has navigated far more complex situations than this (FSD is a thoroughly impressive system). But, this time, for whatever arcane reason made up of ones and zeros, it got confused and drove right smack into a pole, like an idiot.

The owner should have been able to see this coming with plenty of time to react. If I understand what happened correctly, then the wreck is his fault, no question. He was using this software in a stupid way, and thankfully that stupidity didn’t hurt anyone else. But while the owner is likely entirely to blame, at the same time, that blame is shared with the very concept of a Level 2 driving system itself, which has been shown time and time again to foster this sort of dangerous inattention.

Yes, it appears our Cybertruck-lover wasn’t being particularly smart here, but he was guided to that idiocy by a technology that is technically very advanced, but practically crude and foolish. You can’t ask a machine to take over 90% or more of a task and then expect a person to remain alert and vigilant, at least not all the time. This wreck seems stupid on pretty much every level possible, the driver’s stupidity and the inherent stupidity of Level 2 semi-autonomy working hand-in-hand to make sure this person no longer has a working car.

We’ve reported on these sorts of wrecks before, we’ve told you about the studies and findings and research, and we will continue to do so, because wrecks like this show that the message is still not being heard. FSD, no matter what version number, no matter how few interventions you saw on some YouTube video of a drive, does not drive a car by itself. There still must be a human there, ready and able and willing to take over when it screws up. Which it may never do. Or it may do in the next minute. The point is, you just don’t know.

It’s sort of ridiculous we still are letting all this happen without really trying to find better solutions for the goal of self-driving. Sure, L2 is a great way to get self-driving data, but the way these systems are set up is kind of backwards. When the concept is that the machine is in more control and the human is watching or observing or monitoring, the tendency will always be less vigilance on the human’s part. If this was reversed, and a human was always in control with the software being ready to assist in emergencies or to compensate for driver failure, you could get all the data without introducing these vigilance-induced problems.

Of course, that’s a lot less sexy, and people want to not pay attention if they don’t have to. So here we are.

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(Topshot: X, Jonathan Challinger)

The post Tesla Owner’s Viral Tweet Praises Safety Of Cybertruck In Wreck Caused By Cybertruck appeared first on The Autopian.

I’m going to come out and say it: if you’re buying a car because it has the most advanced software or assisted driving features or the biggest touch screen or the best wifi or whatever, you’re doing it wrong. To put it as delicately as possible, you’re being a drooling simpleton being bent over and brutally mistreated by pretty much every automaker. But don’t feel too bad, because it’s not entirely your fault; the whole way we approach tech in cars is kind of stupid, and we should rethink it all.

The fundamental problem is this: electronic technology advances far too rapidly to be something that gets permanently integrated into a car that you may want to own for more than, say, five years or so. There’s nothing that ages an otherwise perfectly-fine car more dramatically than integrated technology that was cutting-edge when the car was new.

Don’t believe me? Look at the center-stack display/infotainment system from this 2010 Maybach Zeppelin, a car that cost almost $500,000 when new:

(Photo: Maybach/Mercedes-Benz)

At the time, this was hot shit, the bleeding-edge of automotive tech at the time. Today, the crappiest Mitsubishi Mirage has a display with far better resolution than this gleaming chariot of the elite. And that was only 15 years ago; the lifespan of a car like a Maybach should be far, far longer than that! Is it not a precision engineered machine? Is it not an ultimate expression of driving comfort, luxury, and refinement?

And yet, when almost anyone gets into this thing, one of the first things they’ll notice is how embarrassingly backwards the tech inside is. That doesn’t seem fair, right? If we look at a Maybach from close to century ago, they don’t suffer from this issue. Look at the dash of this 1933 Maybach DS-8 Zeppelin:

(Photo: Bonham’s)

So what’s different here? It’s not like this car is free of technology; it is technology. But it’s a different sort of technology, and, more importantly, the intent of the technology is different.

(Photo: Bonham’s)

Of course, the dashboard here is full of dials and gauges; this car was extremely well-instrumented for its era. But the intent of all of this instrumentation wasn’t to showcase the absolute latest tech; it was just the application of the best available tools for the job. These are not the sorts of machines that change and advance dramatically. A good mechanical speedometer or tachometer or temperature gauge is still a good speedometer or tachometer or temperature gauge eight decades later. The fundamental technology hasn’t changed, and as a result, the instruments themselves can wear their age with pride, secure in their timelessness.

There’s a reason why absurdly expensive cars like the Bugatti Chiron decided against having any sort of center-stack screen:

(Photo: Bugatti)

Sure, I have my issues with cars like these Bugattis, but I do think they understood this fundamental concept: technology can date a car deeply. And rarely well.

There are some exceptions to this rule: some kinds of extremely-advanced tech can age well, or at least interestingly, not from a perspective of usability, but from a novelty perspective. This really only works if something is among the first of its kind, like the CRT touchscreens in 1980s Buicks:

(Photo: GM)

…or perhaps the CRT dashboard instruments of the Aston Martin Lagonda:

What these systems have in common is interesting hardware that was way ahead of its time. Neither would be great in a daily driver perspective, but from a historical interest perspective, they’re fascinating. If they work. Which, especially in the case of the Lagonda, is wildly unlikely.

Now, I’m no luddite. I’m under no illusion that we should be banning modern digital tech in cars, because that would be idiotic, and no one wants that. But what I am suggesting is that all modern tech in cars, anything that is likely to rapidly advance over the years, needs to be easily and readily replaceable, because the whole experience of an otherwise great car can be ruined by outdated technology that just taints everything.

And that means we need industry-wide standards. We had them once – the DIN and double-DIN standards for head units was once very effective, and there was – and still is – a thriving aftermarket for new head units that can quite easily bring old cars into modernity with greater ease than new ones.

For example, you can upgrade a 2002 Toyota Corolla to have modern tech with the latest version of Apple CarPlay or Android Auto far cheaper and easier than you can, say, a 2022 Toyota Prius Prime. Here’s a double-din unit that’ll drop into a Corolla for about $200, giving the car the ability to interface with a standard and devices that weren’t even introduced to the world, in their earliest forms, for a solid five years after the car was sold.

If you wanted to upgrade your 2022 Prius, if you had one that, say, didn’t have CarPlay or Android Auto, you can either tack on a clunky extra screen to just give you that, or you could find a used OEM entire center stack for about $1,600 and replace the whole middle of your dash. There’s no upgraded versions for new tech, this is just the optional stock one from Toyota.

Here’s what I think should happen, in an ideal world: all the major carmakers would agree on a set of car tech standards, ones that define both physical dimensions and connector standards. If carmakers want to have HVAC controls on screens or other functionality, no matter how insipid, they need to agree on standards to control those.

If you spend a crapload of money on a car you really like, it’s ridiculous that it should be stuck with rapidly-aging display and infotainment hardware. At some point fairly quickly into your car’s life, your phone, which many people upgrade every few years, will significantly eclipse your car, technology-wise.

This is not always something that can be fixed with exciting OTA software updates; sometimes you need new display and computing hardware. Remember how Tesla had to upgrade the internal computers in many customers’ cars so they could run the latest versions of their FSD driver-assist software? This could have been made vastly easier if these cars adhered to some sort of car-tech standards that were designed for easy upgradability.

I realize there will be some sacrifices in design and packaging if everything must meet universal standards of some sort. Also, I don’t care. It’s not like any carmaker has made such fascinating center-stack display designs that the world will be impoverished for their loss. I would much rather be able to have a crapton of options to replace the clunky old system in my otherwise-fine car with something new.

Of course, carmakers will not like this idea at all; they’re generally loath to standards of any sort, and technically, it’s not a trivial task: there needs to be connector standards, we need to know what signals and inputs can be read, from cameras to temperature sensors to radar units. Then there’s outputs, like being able to control servo motors for vent direction (if so equipped) or fan speed or other hardware. There’s a lot!

Here’s the overall point, though: standards are good! A thriving aftermarket is good! We shouldn’t let what we had in the rapidly-declining DIN/Double-DIN standard days go away. It’s madness that we spend so much money on a car and find ourselves locked into the tech that was current when the car was new.

It’d be like buying a house with a built-in television and game console, and that’s just what you’re stuck with as long as you own the house. Would you want that? Stuck playing your Sega Master System on a 15″ Sony Trinitron in 2025? I mean, I have a basement full of old Ataris and similar archaic stuff, but that’s by choice.

We deserve better from our cars. I just wish I knew how to make this happen.

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The post Why Modern Cars Are Going To Age Horribly, And What We Can Do About It appeared first on The Autopian.

There’s a few categories of cars that seem to have just sort of disappeared. Anything with a rumble seat, for example, has been effectively gone for many decades, likely the result of people’s decreased willingness to be force-fed insects at 60 mph and an increased interest in preserving human lives. More recently, there’s a kind of vehicle that was once around up until about the 1990s that’s gone today: the truncated-truck fun car.

I suppose some of the earliest examples of these may have been the Ford Bronco, or, really, the second-gen Bronco from 1978, when they were built from shortened Ford F-100 pickup trucks. Though, now that I think about it, the Chevy Blazer, starting in 1969 to compete with the International Scout and the original Ford Bronco, was made from shortened K10 pickup trucks, so that may really be the first of this kind.

These were inherently a fun idea, and in most of these types of vehicles the division between cab and “bed” was eliminated, creating a very open, flexible sort of interior, and, even better, usually the bed area had a removable hard top or soft top to let it be enclosed or open! The one of these I was specifically thinking of today was the Isuzu Amigo:

The Amigo was a great example of one of these shortened pickups, and was based on a pickup I used to own, which was just sold under the very creative name Isuzu Pickup here in America. I guess you could get one at your local Building Full of People Who Would Sell You Isuzu Vehicles back in the 1990s. This was mine:

From the doors forward, this was pretty much the exact same as an Amigo, but where my truck had an all-business truck bed, the Amigo had seats and a soft top and a lot of potential for fun.

I mean, look at that thing! I even like the clunky way they made those rear shoulder belts work, with the pair of rounded-triangular tubes back there. And you have to respect the novel CHMSL solution, giving the third brake lamp its own little rollbar on the roof!

These were just useful, fun little machines. You could easily commute to work in them – these rode well and were pretty comfortable, at least based on my experience with the pickup variant – they were small and easy to park and maneuver, they could haul a decent amount of stuff with the rear seat removed, like a little truck, and you could carry three other friends in near-convertible-like open-ness, going off-road as desired thanks to the four-wheel drive.

These were Swiss Army Knife vehicles, and I don’t know if anything like this is available new today. The Jeep Gladiator is too big to really be like this, and it’s the only open-top truck-like thing on the market now. A cut-down two-door Ford Maverick could be adapted to something like this, but I don’t see Ford doing that any time soon, sadly.

The truncated truck needs to come back. These were a good example of how fun cars could be before everything had to get so stupidly “premium.” I miss when cars could just be a bit silly. For example, look at this late ’90s Amigo commercial:

It’s a parody of this classic Slinky commercial, in case you’re not as miserably aged as I am and don’t remember this:

Also: holy shit, Slinkies were clever! It’s just a spring, a helical spring, repurposed into a toy. A naval engineer saw some coiled wires fall off a shelf and sort of “walk” and that inspired these things. He experimented with the right kind of steel to make the springs from, and boom it was a hit. Later he left the company and became a missionary, but his (then divorced) wife kept it going, well into the plastic Slinky era.

I miss these sort of fun cars. I think our overall mental health as a nation would improve if there were cheap cut-down pickups with back seats and soft tops in fun colors, just out there in the world.

Oh! And also, because I think one commenter kept bitching about it, I’m trying a new variant of the Cold Start graphical bug. Do we prefer this one? Let me know!

The post I Don’t Think These Sorts Of Truncated Trucks Exist Anymore appeared first on The Autopian.

You know where I’m clearly not spending enough time? Orchards. I bet many of us can say the same. The reason I’m saying this is not because I have an unquenchable appetite for pears, especially Bosc pears, which I like to hold sideways and eat like it was a chicken leg, though that would be a pretty good guess. But, again, that’s not why I’m all into orchards now. The reason why is that I just found out about self-propelled orchard spraying vehicles, which look remarkably like sci-fi movie vehicles.

How have I never heard of these before? I mean, other than my near-total lack of any association with orchards or, let’s be honest, almost any organized agriculture at all beyond growing various molds and funguses in my non-running car interiors. But I feel like as someone interested in both vehicles, real-world space travel, and fictionalized interpretations of the intersections of both of those things, I should have been aware of these self-propelled orchard spraying vehicles.

I say this because these machines have such an incredible sci-fi look about them, with their low bodies, large wheels, heavily angled front ends, and rear-mounted sprayer equipment that could easily pass for, say, a fusion reactor in the right context. I mean, just look at this video of an Atom 2000:

It’s got four-wheel steering, a dramatic, low-slung forward cab, and the whole thing just feels like some plans for a future lunar or Mars rover. For example, look at this NASA concept vehicle for a possible future Mars rover:

I mean, the orchard sprayer really doesn’t look that much less futuristic or advanced than that rover, does it? And compare this Tifone Cobra Interceptor 2000 self-propelled orchard sprayer to this 2019 Toyota lunar rover concept done for JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency:

…and to drive the point home just a bit more, here’s the Cobra Interceptor in action in a video:

I’m just really taken by these things right now. Let’s see how this Andreoli Engineering Atom 2000 looks in the context of a lunar base:

Look at that; it fits right in! What do these things remind me of – oh, right! The M577 Armored Personel Carrier from the 1986 Ridley Scott movie Aliens:

Even the interiors look pleasingly sci-fi:

Look at that aircraft-style joystick there! I think that was used to control the sprayer system. It does feel pleasingly spaceshippy in there.

I suppose what’s especially weird here is the sort of convergent evolution we’re seeing at play here. Why should the peculiar and very specific requirements and demands of something made to spray rows of trees in an orchard have anything at all to do with the demands of ground travel on other celestial bodies, even if, so far, all of that is still mostly speculative if not entirely fictional?

I suppose these need to be low enough to get under the low-hanging branches of trees, yet still have enough volume to carry all the fluid, a combination that would sort of dictate the low, long body design, and the tight turns that such a vehicle would need to navigate would likely require the four-wheel steering. It seems tow-behind sprayers are more common, but these self-propelled ones just seem so much cooler.

Now, the real question that is very likely bouncing around in all of our heads is how possible would it be to find a used one of these and convert it into everyday street use? I’m sure it’s possible, but I suspect it wouldn’t be cheap, as these things go for hundreds of thousands of dollars new and can still sell for around 100 grand used. Maybe if you found one where the whole spraying mechanism had failed? Think what an amazing little camper one of these would make! They kind of feel like modern Brubaker Boxes. [Ed note: Fittingly, a Brubaker Box was one of the coolest sci-fi vehicles of the pre-Star Wars era. Configured as T-top and dubbed the Roamer, it deployed from the titular Ark of Ark II, a forgotten relic or early-70s live-action kid-vid. – Pete]

The world of motor vehicles is so vast and wonderful and it’s a good reminder that there’s always some strange gems lurking around where you least expect it, like in between apple trees, spraying poisons.

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The post We’ve All Been Sleeping On Orchard Sprayers As The Coolest, Most Sci-Fi Looking Agricultural Vehicles Out There appeared first on The Autopian.

Tesla has sold millions of cars to millions of people in the last few years. Now, with Elon Musk becoming more political than ever, a sizable number of those people want nothing to do with the brand or its CEO. With many owners looking to sell, Polestar saw an opportunity to win itself some new customers.

As covered by InsideEVs, the Swedish EV brand is offering big incentives on new Polestar 3 leases. On top of already-existing $15,000 incentives, those trading in a Tesla can score an extra $5,000 bonus. Stack those, and it adds up to $20,000 off a Polestar for dropping your Tesla.

Polestar isn’t being shy about this in the slightest. They’ve named it the “Tesla Conquest Offer,” and it has apparently proved remarkably popular.

According to Polestar’s US Head of Sales, Jordan Hofmann, the move was successful. “This week saw some of the highest order days for Polestar 3, and the response to our Tesla Conquest Offer has been incredible,” Hofmann posted on LinkedIn. “Manufactured in the USA, Polestar 3 is turning heads and drivers are making moves — it’s clear they like what we bring to the table.”

With the existing $15,000 incentive on the hood, a Polestar 3 lease starts at $599 a month with a $5,000 down payment. A further $5,000 Tesla Conquest credit will bring that down further, possibly well below the $500 a month level. Polestar’s standard lease term is 27 months including 10,000 miles a year.

Polestar initially offered the deal from February 21 to 28. However, this appears to have been extended to March 2. It’s unclear if Polestar will continue the deal further; The Autopian has contacted the automaker regarding this detail. To claim the credit, Polestar required a copy of US registration or insurance documents outlining one’s name, address, and the Tesla’s VIN to qualify for the credit. The Tesla can also be owned by someone else in your household. You don’t actually need to trade the Tesla in, as Tesla doesn’t allow other companies to buy out its leases. You’d have to handle that side of things directly with them instead.

On top of existing owners looking to sell, Tesla has also faced a 50% drop in new sales in Europe in January. It comes in the wake of CEO Elon Musk being more and more vocal about political topics and now working hand-in-hand with president Trump. As covered by Newsweek, Musk’s powerful personal brand has turned Tesla vehicles into a political symbol, which some owners don’t necessarily wish to be aligned with.

The furor towards the brand has reached fever pitch in recent weeks. As reported by Reuters, Saturday saw nine arrested at a major protest at a New York Tesla showroom. Earlier in February, a carpark full of Teslas had their wheels stolen in Houston. These incidents are just the tip of the iceberg. It makes earlier bullying towards early Cybertruck owners look tame in comparison.

Polestar isn’t the only company taking shots at Tesla, either. Kia Norway took to Instagram to post a photo of an EV3 wearing a sticker that reads “I bought this after Elon went crazy.” It riffs on a popular sticker making the rounds with Tesla owners right now, that reads “I bought this before Elon went crazy.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Kia Bil Norge AS (@kiabilnorge)

Supply and demand work in a straightforward manner in the automotive world. All the signs suggest that demand has cratered in some markets, which could see resale values tank for owners looking to dump their cars; selling depreciated cars directly could yield disappointing prices. Such conditions could make Polestar’s offer look more attractive to Tesla owners looking for the proverbial off-ramp.

Image credits: Polestar

Hat tip to Shiroi—thanks for the tip!

The post This Automaker Is Offering An Up-To-$20,000 Discount For Tesla Owners Done With Elon appeared first on The Autopian.

A Texas health authority is warning against "measles parties" as the outbreak in West Texas grew to at least 146 cases, with 20 hospitalized and one unvaccinated school-age child dead. The outbreak continues to mainly be in unvaccinated children.

In a press briefing hosted by the city of Lubbock, Texas, on Friday, Ron Cook, chief health officer at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, offered the stark warning for Texans in his opening statements.

"What I want you to hear is: It's not good to go have measles parties because what may happen is—we can't predict who's going to do poorly with measles, be hospitalized, potentially get pneumonia or encephalitis and or pass away from this," Cook said. "So that's a foolish idea to go have a measles party. The best thing to do is make sure that you're well-vaccinated."

Lubbock sits about 90 miles northwest of the outbreak's epicenter in Gaines County, which is one of the state's least vaccinated counties. It has recorded 98 of the outbreak's 146 cases. While Lubbock has only reported two of the 146 cases, patients from elsewhere have been treated in Lubbock. That includes the first two cases in the outbreak as well as the child who died of the infection earlier this week, who was not a resident of Lubbock.

It's unclear if any measles parties are occurring in Gaines or elsewhere; "It's mostly been... social media talk," Cook said in response to a follow-up question from Ars. He noted that measles parties and chickenpox parties were more common practices decades ago, before vaccines for both diseases were available. But he again warned about the dangers today. "Please don't do that. It's just foolishness; it's playing roulette," he said.

Cook, along with Lubbock's director of public health, Katherine Wells, said they see no end in sight for the outbreak, which now spans nine counties in Texas, many of which have low vaccination rates. "This outbreak is going to continue to grow," Wells said, declining to forecast how high the final case count could go after a reporter raised the possibility of several hundred.

So far, 116 of the 146 cases are under the age of 18, with 46 being between the ages of 0 and 4. Only five of the 146 were vaccinated with at least one dose of the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine.

Messaging

On a more positive note, Wells reported that the outbreak has seemed to sway some vaccine-hesitant parents to get their children vaccinated. Just yesterday in Lubbock, over 50 children came into the city's clinic for measles vaccines. Eleven of those children had vaccine exemptions, meaning their parents had previously gone through the state process to exempt their child from having to receive routine childhood vaccines to attend school. "Which is a really good sign; that means our message is getting out there," Wells said.

So far in the outbreak, which erupted in late January, messaging about the disease and the importance of vaccination has exclusively come from state and local authorities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only released a brief statement late Thursday, which was not sent through the agency's press distribution list. It did, however, note that "vaccination remains the best defense against measles infection."

During a cabinet meeting Wednesday, US Health Secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded to a question about the outbreak, offering a variety of inaccurate information. Kennedy downplayed the outbreak, falsely claiming that "it's not unusual." But, this is an unusual year for measles in the US. As epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina noted on Bluesky, the number of US measles cases this year has already surpassed the total case counts from eight of the previous 15 years. And it is only February.

Kennedy also said there had been two deaths—fortunately, only one child has died. He further claimed that measles patients were being hospitalized "mainly for quarantine," which is false and a misuse of the word quarantine. A quarantine refers to separating people who have been exposed to an illness to see if they become sick. For people who are known to be sick, the term is "isolation."

In the press briefing Friday, Cook refuted Kennedy's suggestion that infected people were being hospitalized largely for isolation purposes. He described measles patients being hospitalized with severe symptoms. "Most of them are either severely dehydrated from just the infection itself, and/or lots of low oxygen levels—hypoxia. And that's from the inflammation in the lungs," Cook said. In some patients, their oxygen is so low they need supplemental oxygen or intubation and ventilator support, which can lead to antibiotic use to ward off secondary bacterial infections, he explained.

While the end of the outbreak remains uncertain, so does the beginning. Rumors are reportedly circulating in Texas that the measles virus was brought into the area by an undocumented immigrant. Wells shot down that rumor, indicating that there is no evidence to support it and that most measles outbreaks in the US begin with an unvaccinated citizen traveling abroad and bringing the virus home with them.

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