from the CYA-jr. dept
In the year 2,000 (cue the Conan O’Brien music), America had so successfully defeated measles as a disease that we were awarded elimination status for the disease. Then Trump was elected to a second term, for reasons I still can’t fully explain, after which RFK Jr. somehow was confirmed as the Secretary of HHS. Almost simultaneously, a massive measles outbreak began in Texas, spreading to most of the other states in the union, with particularly bad outbreaks in Arizona, Utah, and North Carolina. The reason for the outbreak is clear in the CDC statistics: falling vaccination rates for the MMR vaccine allowed the disease to gain a foothold and spread. Meanwhile, Kennedy offered up confused and confusing messaging to the public as to what do about it, oscillating between muted calls for vaccinations, musing that everyone should just get measles for natural immunity, and declaring out loud that measles victims were at fault for not being healthy enough.
Because of his inept leadership on the matter, measles in 2026 is going to be even worse than 2025. We’re on pace to blow past last year’s numbers and, again, it’s because not enough people are getting vaccinated.
Kennedy is, of course, the living avatar of the anti-vaxxer movement. He didn’t create it, but he has worked very hard to propel it into popularity and, now, into government policy. He has everything to do with the current outbreak. But he recently faced Congress and said with a straight face that it has nothing to do with him. Instead, it was those dirty immigrants that are to blame.
But despite Kennedy being the most vocal source of vaccine misinformation, the secretary tried to blame the outbreaks entirely on immigrants who come to the U.S. from countries where measles is not eliminated — framing the issue as a global epidemic rather than a national public health crisis.
“It has nothing to do with me,” he told lawmakers. “If you’re worried about polio and tuberculosis, you should look at the immigration policies in this country. ’Cause the place where it’s occurring are the place[s] where the immigrants are going, because they’re not vaccinated.”
So, a couple of things to say here, both equally important. The scapegoating of immigrants over disease outbreaks is an American tradition going back centuries. It’s stupid, it’s wrong, and it’s plainly racist. I have no doubt that diseases can be spread through foreign visitors, as they can be by domestic travelers as well. But the desire to blame immigrants for whatever the outbreak du jour happens to be is so reliable and predictable that it’s silly. And if you don’t believe that this happens as a result of bigotry, well, you’re just plain wrong.
The other item on which to take note is the complete failure of leadership exhibited by Kennedy. In his remarks, Kennedy went into full CYA mode. He said he’s not anti-vaxx, but he absolutely is. He said the measles outbreak isn’t his responsibility, but he’s the fucking Secretary of Health and Human Services, and it absolutely is. He said dropping vaccination rates are due solely to how the American government responded to COVID-19, but that isn’t remotely the full story, given that vaccination rates experienced declines long before 2020, after which they fell sharply.
And the question that remains for Kennedy is a simple one: what are you doing about all of this? What do you even plan to do about all of this? The job doesn’t end by saying it’s immigrants at fault and then we move on. The disease still has to be combated and, right now, nobody is fighting the fight at the federal level. Instead, we’re talking about curtailing vaccine schedule guidance even further, or eliminating childhood vaccines altogether. Even if Kennedy sincerely wants to help in all of this, his messaging is so muddled and misguided that it isn’t getting through to the public.
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) expressed concern to Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaxxer, over the rising number of infectious disease cases such as measles and polio.
“Every patient, every child with measles should be treated with compassion. But I had seven cases just in the last couple of weeks in my county. The contagious spots have been grocery stores and colleges, you can’t stop it,” Dingell said of measles, the highly contagious disease that U.S. officials announced they eliminated in 2000.
“I’ve met with the family of one of them, and I said, ‘Why didn’t you get immunized?’” she continued. “And they said, ‘We’re listening to our government. Our government tells us not to.’”
Even if you wanted to argue that those people are wrong, they’re not making up lies when they say this. The message they’re getting from HHS is to not vaccinate. This is why public health policy needs to be very clear and in a language the average person can understand. These are life and death situations we’re talking about.
Kennedy’s comments read like an abdication of his responsibility. I can’t think of another way to describe his hand-washing of our current measles fiasco. And that’s one of many reasons he has to go.
Filed Under: anti-vaxxers, blame game, health & human services, measles, rfk jr.
