In the first test of the Trump administration’s outbreak response, Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been sending mixed messages about a rapidly spreading measles outbreak in Texas.
A longtime vaccine skeptic, Kennedy initially downplayed the outbreak during a Cabinet meeting with President Trump last week, saying it was “not unusual” and falsely claimed that many people hospitalized were there “mainly for quarantine.”
A child in Texas died from measles on the same day as those remarks, the first recorded measles death in the U.S. since 2015.
Two days later, Kennedy in a social media post outlined how his agency is responding, including by providing the Texas Department of Health with MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccines.
“Ending the measles outbreak is a top priority,” Kennedy wrote, but he did not directly call for people to get the shot.
In an op-ed published Sunday on Fox News’s website, Kennedy inched slightly closer to that declaration but still stopped short.
He emphasized that the decision to get vaccinated was a “personal one,” urging parents to talk with their doctors “to understand their options to get the MMR vaccine.”
But public health experts aren’t ready to celebrate.
Kennedy has a long history of disparaging the MMR vaccine. He has falsely and repeatedly linked it to rising autism rates and questioned its safety.
In a foreword to a 2021 book written by the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy wrote that measles outbreaks “have been fabricated to create fear” to “inflict unnecessary and risky vaccines on millions of children.”
Wendy Parmet, the director of the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University School of Law, described Kennedy’s op-ed as “mealy-mouthed advice.”
Parmet stated, “It’s not necessarily wrong, but it’s not forthright.” The step is a half-attempt. It’s definitely more than we’ve heard from him previously, and while I believe some of the content in that editorial is beneficial, it’s definitely not what we’ve seen in the past or what we could anticipate from an HHS secretary in the current circumstances.
For example, during Trump’s first presidency, senior health experts issued a warning about the highest number of measles infections since the disease was declared eradicated in 2000 due to a statewide outbreak in 2019.
Outbreaks in unvaccinated areas in New York City and New York State were the main cause of those cases.
“This current outbreak is deeply troubling and I call upon all healthcare providers to assure patients about the efficacy and safety of the measles vaccine,” Robert Redfield, then-director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said in a statement at the time.
In a separate statement from that period, then-HHS Secretary Alex Azar highlighted the importance of vaccines.
According to Azar’s statement, “vaccines are a safe, highly effective public health solution that can prevent this disease.” “The safety of the measles vaccines has been proven over many years in some of the largest vaccine studies ever undertaken, making them one of the most thoroughly researched medical products we have.”
Leaders of the anti-vaccine movement staged protests in the affected areas during that outbreak, casting doubt on the efficacy of the measles vaccination and drawing comparisons between the Nazi persecution of Jews and public health policies that prohibited unvaccinated children from attending school.
To show support for parents who refused to vaccinate their children, Del Bigtree, a prominent Kennedy associate and the leader of the anti-vaccine organization the Informed Consent Action Network, even wore a yellow Star of David to rallies.
Thus far, the reaction under Kennedy’s HHS has been considerably more subdued.
According to Jason Schwartz, an associate professor and vaccine researcher at the Yale School of Public Health, “there has been a gradual shift from the sort of downplaying to [Kennedy’s op-ed], but it still feels somewhat hesitant in terms of truly using the megaphone, the platform of our nation’s public health agencies to speak very clearly about what individuals should do to protect themselves and their families.”
Kennedy is attempting to thread a needle, according to Nowak, a former top CDC spokeswoman who served for 14 years. For example, a paragraph highlighting the importance of vitamin A treatment for those who are ill was followed by a remark about the public advantages of measles vaccination.
Children with severe measles in underdeveloped nations have been treated with vitamin A for years, however medical professionals have stated that the evidence supporting its efficacy is conflicting. In the United States, it isn’t used very often, probably because kids don’t need vitamin A.
Kennedy also underlined that “good nutrition remains a best defense against most chronic and infectious illnesses” and noted that “improvements in sanitation and nutrition” had reduced 98 percent of measles deaths prior to the advent of the MMR vaccine.
Nowak stated, “I think the references to vitamins and a healthy diet are the way to kind of maintain credibility among [his allies].” Being critical of the measles vaccine is lot simpler when you are not accountable for the outcome. However, if he is perceived as preventing measles vaccine and placing children in unnecessary danger, it is a problem for him as secretary of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy’s recent remarks also coincide with health organizations raising more general concerns about the Trump administration’s approach to vaccination regulation.
A public meeting of the CDC’s vaccine advisory council was postponed shortly after Kennedy took office, but no new date was announced.
A meeting of external advisors to choose the flu vaccination strain was called off by the Food and Drug Administration last week.
Nowak stated that the following measures are essential in light of such acts and Kennedy’s past.
Is this a one-time message only? Or will this be a recurring theme in the future? “Nowak said.” “Because we are aware that there will be many more outbreaks and cases of diseases that can be prevented by vaccination if there are many more people who are not protected.”
For all the latest news from Oman and GCC, follow us on Instagram, like us on Facebook & subscribe to our YouTube Channel, which is updated daily.
