It used to be the case that one did not cough in a neighbor’s soup, and there were certain vaccine standards for children entering public schools. As part of that, measles, a highly contagious disease that can lead to severe illness, hospitalization and even death, was eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, due to a safe and effective vaccine. But now, measles has come roaring back and thousands of cases have been officially detected. The unvaccinated, a distinct minority, account for practically all the cases.
Yesterday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who last year chose not to address the initial measles outbreak in an area of Texas with low vaccination levels, testified to Congress, “I’ve never been anti-vaccine.” However, Kennedy not only dismantled the HHS advisory committee on immunization practices and put on the committee vaccine skeptics, he has claimed the measles vaccine leads to “deaths every year” and that mooted that it “causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes.”
Otherwise, Kennedy said that the U.S. losing its measles elimination status “has nothing to do with me.” The sophist argued that other countries are also losing their elimination status. “It has to do [with the fact] that we have a global epidemic.” However, Kennedy is ignoring that, in 2000, when the U.S. eliminated measles, other countries with less access to the vaccine, still suffered measles outbreaks—that is, Kennedy’s “global epidemic.”
