In Robert F. Kennedy Jr's first major challenge as US Health Secretary, the maverick anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist - elevated to power and influence by another maverick - has failed miserably (and predictably).
A major measles outbreak in West Texas has now infected at least 124 people in a largely unvaccinated Mennonite region, and 18 have been hospitalized. Now, the first child has died from it, the first such death in a decade.
Kennedy's response? "We're watching it ... we're going to continue to follow it". Watching people die does not seem like a very robust response.
Kennedy went further to try to downplay the situation, claiming that there have been four measles outbreaks this year in the US already (technically, an "outbreak" constitutes three or more related cases), compared to sixteen last year, "so it's not unusual to have measles outbreaks very year". And we're supposed to be reassured by that?
Measles was deemed eradicated in the USA in 2000, 40 years after the introduction of a safe and very effective measles vaccination. It lost its elimination status in 2019 with a large outbreak in New York state and others elsewhere, and there have been many more such outbreaks since. CDC notes that vaccination rates have gone down from 95.2% to 92.7% over the last four years, in which there has been a lot of vaccination misinformation.
And with Kennedy in charge, nothing is going to get better any time soon.
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