Health News

Mandy Oaklander | August 25, 2026

The first measles deaths of the year have occurred in the U.S. Two unvaccinated people in Pennsylvania died of measles, my colleague Dominique Mosbergen reports. These are the first measles-associated deaths in Pennsylvania in 35 years.

Measles cases have been rising at an alarming rate in recent years, and health experts are especially troubled by the recent anti-vaccine rhetoric coming from the White House. Recently, President Donald Trump said of the MMR vaccine—which protects against measles, mumps, and rubella—that “together, there could be a possibility they’re quite lethal,” despite the shot's "strong safety and efficacy record," Dominique writes.

Most people who get measles survive. But some complications from the disease can last a lifetime.

TODAY’S TOPICS

A jump in autism diagnoses
Are hand dryers sanitary?
The passing of a country-music legend

BIG NUMBER

800%

That’s approximately how much the registered prevalence of autism increased in Sweden from 2001 to 2020, a new study finds.

Meanwhile, the share of people diagnosed with autism who also had an intellectual disability fell from 55.8% to 6.7%—a shift researchers say likely reflects a broadening of autism’s diagnostic criteria. —Veronique Greenwood, Staff Writer

SOURCE: PSYCHIATRY RESEARCH

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PLEASE ADVISE

Here’s a great question we received from a reader:

Are public-restroom hand dryers blowing germs onto my clean hands? Are paper towels a safer, more sanitary choice?

Oleksii Grygorenko—Getty Images

Nothing makes me question the phrase “clean hands” quite like blasting them with mystery bathroom air. Still, for most healthy people, public-restroom hand dryers belong near the bottom of the list of things to worry about, says Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at UTHealth Houston and co-editor of the Control of Communicable Diseases Manual.

Research on hand dryers has produced conflicting results. Some studies have found higher bacterial counts on people’s hands after they washed and used a warm-air dryer than before they washed them; the same study found that counts decreased after washing and drying with paper towels. Others have found no significant difference among drying methods. Studies have also used very different experimental setups, some of which don’t reflect an ordinary restroom.

Even when a study finds germs, that doesn’t mean those germs are likely to make us sick. “We live bathed in bacteria and viruses,” Troisi says. “Most of them don’t cause any disease.” If public-restroom hand dryers were routinely making people ill, she points out, epidemiologists would expect to see evidence of that happening.

The more practical concern may be walking away with damp hands after losing patience with a slow dryer. “One of the big issues is that your hands may not get dry,” Troisi says. “I know I’m impatient if I use one, and I just walk away.” Bacteria, she adds, “can grow better in that moist environment on your hands.”

Paper towels generally make it easier to dry your hands completely. You can also use one to open the restroom door—which is particularly useful if the last person wasn’t as diligent about washing as you were.

Troisi’s advice: Wash thoroughly with soap and water, and then dry your hands completely. If only a dryer is available, use it long enough to finish the job. Paper towels may be preferable in hospitals and clinics, where more vulnerable people are present.

For the average healthy restroom user, however, this isn’t worth losing sleep over. “This is not what is keeping me—or, I would dare say, any epidemiologist—up at night,” Troisi says. –Angela Haupt, Editor, Health & Wellness

Got a social dilemma of your own? Send it our way to healthmatters@time.com, and we might tackle it in a future edition.

WHAT WE’RE READING

Country music superstar Dolly Parton has died at age 80, reports Chantelle Lee for TIME.
How do you identify the remains of a person who died in the 9/11 attacks, 25 years later? Aaron Katersky at Good Morning America reports on the breakthrough use of genetic genealogy that has finally identified a victim.
Alpha-gal syndrome—the red-meat allergy triggered by tick bites—may complicate certain blood transfusions, a large new study suggests.

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