RFK Jr.’s response to a major measles outbreak that caused the first deaths in the US in nearly a decade was to downplay it as “not unusual”.
In 2000, the United States declared that measles had been effectively eradicated from the country, although it remained vulnerable to the importation of measles by international travellers.
Before the first measles vaccine was licensed in the US in 1963, several million people contracted measles every year, of which about half a million were reported. Among the reported cases, about one in ten were hospitalised, and of those, one in a hundred – between 400 and 500 people per year, mostly children – died.
Within five years, the number of annual cases had plummeted, and continued to decline as the measles vaccination rate climbed to the 95% “herd immunity” target.
In recent years, however, vaccination rates have begun to decline, not only for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), but also for diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis (DTAP). Two combination vaccines keep these two groups of diseases at bay, but both these vaccines now cover fewer than 93% of kindergarten-aged children in the US.
As a consequence, the US has increasingly seen measles outbreaks in the last two decades, especially among unvaccinated children (although with a failure rate of 3%, some vaccinated children also get sick).
Texas outbreak
The latest outbreak is in Texas, where well over 100 children have been infected, and two have died. One of the dead is known to have been unvaccinated. The status of the other is not clear, but Centres for Disease Control data current to 20 February (when the total cases for 2025 stood at 93) showed that 95% of the cases occurred in unvaccinated patients, 4% in patients with only a single MMR dose, and none in patients who had received both recommended MMR doses. Twenty-five percent of cases required hospitalisation. Eighty-two percent of the cases were in patients aged 19 or younger.
In all of 2024, by comparison, 285 cases were reported, of which 40% required hospitalisation. 4% occurred in patients who were up to date with their MMR vaccine, 7% in patients who had received only one shot, and 89% in unvaccinated patients.
It is abundantly clear that vaccines are effective against measles.
“Not unusual”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the unqualified conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer who recently became the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the US, downplayed the outbreak as “not unusual”, despite the fact that these are the first measles deaths in the US in years, and despite the fact that the 133 cases reported in just the first two months of 2025 already exceed the full-year totals of 17 of the previous 25 years.
In his first speech to HHS employees, Kennedy said that he would appoint a panel to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule, despite having promised during his confirmation hearings that he wouldn’t change the schedule.
A letter by “Doctors for Robert F. Kennedy”, in support of his appointment, turned out to have been organised by an anti-vaccine activist who worked on Kennedy’s presidential campaign, and was signed by several doctors who have had their licences removed or faced other disciplinary action. A journalist, an accountant, a firefighter/paramedic, a “health coach”, 75 nurses, over 20 chiropractors, and more than 90 signatories did not give any credentials at all.
Some senior officials in health agencies are choosing to resign rather than work under RFK Jr. Meanwhile, Kennedy calls those same agencies “corrupt”, and has embarked on a massive reorganisation that includes getting rid of key vaccine advisers.
His antivax quackery website, Children’s Health Defense, has exploited the 97% effectiveness of measles vaccines to claim that the latest measles outbreaks are a result of “failed vaccines”, and not “failure to vaccinate”.
It claims that outbreaks in communities with 95% coverage demonstrate that vaccines don’t work, and ignores the fact that the outbreaks are inevitably among groups of predominantly unvaccinated children.
Counter-measures
Taking measures to curb infectious diseases is among the most basic functions of a government dedicated to the protection of life, liberty and property. Contagion is a threat to the public, and imposing scientifically sound counter-measures is a legitimate reason to exercise the power of government over individuals.
Measles can cause serious complications, and causes death in about 0.1% of cases, primarily in children under five. In malnourished children, the death rate can be as high as 10%.
A lot of older people, who remember a time before the measles vaccine was universal, will say things like, “When I was young, we all got measles, and we were fine”.
That’s a fallacious argument, however. It is true that prior to the availability of vaccines, about 90% of people caught measles, mostly during childhood, but it isn’t true that all of them were fine.
This is a case of survivor’s bias. Just because you are fine doesn’t mean everyone is. The children who died of measles aren’t around today to say that they got measles but are not fine.
It’s like saying, “I was in a car accident, and I’m fine.” That might be true in your specific case, and might even be true in 99 out of 100 cases. However, one cannot conclude anything about the danger of car accidents from such anecdotal survivor testimonies. More pertinently, one cannot dismiss the prudence and justifiability of life-saving road safety laws on the basis that you, personally, were never in an accident or were in one but survived without injury.
Death and disability
Measles is just one vaccine-preventable disease. In cases of measles and diseases like mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, political rhetoric, activism and executive actions that undermine public trust in vaccines and reduce vaccine coverage cause numerous actual deaths, as well as serious medical complications such as permanent disability, lost pregnancies and birth defects.
It makes no sense not to take every reasonable precaution to prevent these, and it is perfectly justifiable for governments to protect individuals to the extent that they reasonably can.
Putting RFK Jr. in charge of America’s health agencies will have dangerous consequences, including preventable child deaths and lifelong disabilities.
For thousands of years, diseases that caused death and disability were indeed “not unusual”. RFK Jr.’s dismissal of the latest measles outbreak is a throwback to pre-modern norms and standards.
Now that modern science has made such diseases preventable, they ought to be highly unusual. It is morally reprehensible that the misinformed refusal by unqualified parents to vaccinate their children leads to avoidable suffering and death among children.
[Photo: Child with measles/Wikimedia Commons]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend.