One of President Trump's top public health voices is urging Americans to get their measles shot amid an outbreak jeopardizing the country's disease elimination status, Alex Fitzpatrick reports.

• 📺 Dr. Mehmet Oz, TV celebrity turned Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services director, said on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday: "Not all illnesses are equally dangerous, and not all people are equally susceptible to those illnesses."
• "But measles is one you should get your vaccine." (Watch)

💉 Oz's comments contrast with the general vaccine skepticism of his boss, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

• RFK recently oversaw controversial changes to the childhood vaccine schedule — though it still calls for all kids to get a measles shot.

📈 By the numbers: Hundreds of measles cases have been confirmed in South Carolina, with another hotspot along the Utah-Arizona border.

• Cases have also been reported this year in California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Virginia and Washington, AP reports.
• Headlines have warned of potential exposures at Washington, D.C.'s National March for Life, Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport, a Charlotte-area grocery store and more.

😷 Measles is highly contagious, and generally hits unvaccinated children the hardest.

• About 1 in 5 unvaccinated people who contract it are hospitalized. About 1 in every 20 children develop pneumonia as a result — "the most common cause of death from measles in young children," the CDC says.

👩‍🏫 Rising shares of U.S. kindergarteners have been issued exemptions for one or more vaccines in recent years, the CDC says, amid a wave of vaccine skepticism among parents.

• Support for school MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine requirements among Republicans has fallen to about 50%, a recent Pew survey found, down from nearly 80% in 2019.

🙏 Oz said on CNN: "Take the vaccine, please. We have a solution for our problem."

Increasingly desperate job hunters are paying recruiters to land their next gig, The Wall Street Journal reports.

• 🔄 That's a stunning reversal. Companies usually pay recruiters to headhunt talent, not the other way around — a sign of how tough the job market is right now.

🤖 AI is playing a role here, too, with some reverse-recruiting firms using the tech to connect job seekers and hiring managers — or even to pose as candidates.

• Reverse Recruiting Agency founder Alex Shinkarovsky tells The Journal: "Some folks just don't have time to [job search], some folks are scared, some folks are unemployed and on their last effort."

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1. 🚔 FBI Director Kash Patel posted new images "showing an armed individual appearing to have tampered with the camera at Nancy Guthrie's front door the morning of her disappearance." The agency has yet to identify any suspects or people of interest in the search for Savannah Guthrie's 84-year-old mother. Get the latest.
2. 🏛️ Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, under questioning by Democrats at a Senate hearing today, acknowledged visiting Jeffrey Epstein at his private island in 2012 after Epstein was a convicted sex offender. But Lutnick told lawmakers: "I did not have any relationship with him. I barely had anything to do with him." Go deeper.
3. 🏳️‍🌈 Government officials removed a pride flag from Manhattan's Stonewall National Monument — birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement — in response to Interior Department guidance. Go deeper.
4. 🥾 The company running Eddie Bauer stores in the U.S. and Canada has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and begun liquidation sales. Go deeper.
5. 🔥🐴 China expects a record 9.5 billion trips tied to Lunar New Year, a week from today (Feb 17). Tian Yunxia, a woman from Henan province working in Beijing, tells AP: "I want to go home to see my children, my grandchildren and my husband." Year of the Fire Horse, explained.

MILAN, Italy — Swedish skier Elis Lundholm today became the first openly transgender athlete to compete in the Winter Olympics, Axios' Ina Fried reports.

• Lundholm, who was assigned female at birth and identifies as male, is competing in the women's category.

🎿 Lundholm finished 29th out of 30 during his first qualification run.

• Only the top 10 automatically make the finals — meaning Lundholm will need a much better finish tomorrow to advance.

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