It’s 2025 and there is a measles outbreak in America, and people are still refusing to give their kids the MMR vaccine. As we’ve been covering, adults can get MMR boosters, and it’s recommended if you’re in your 50s or 60s. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services has spent his first month on the job talking out of both sides of his mouth. Robert Kennedy Jr. is in charge of HHS, which means he’s going to oversee a lot of childhood deaths from preventable diseases. Last week, Kennedy spoke to Fox and actually said vague words of support for the MMR vaccine, but still left it up to parents to choose whether to vaccinate their kids. According to the NY Times, people missed some of the other sh-t Kennedy said in the same interview, because the full video didn’t come out until this past weekend. Kennedy also spread vaccine disinformation, claiming that kids might be “injured” by the MMR vaccine.
In a sweeping interview, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, outlined a strategy for containing the measles outbreak in West Texas that strayed far from mainstream science, relying heavily on fringe theories about prevention and treatments. He issued a muffled call for vaccinations in the affected community, but said the choice was a personal one. He suggested that measles vaccine injuries were more common than known, contrary to extensive research.
He asserted that natural immunity to measles, gained through infection, somehow also protected against cancer and heart disease, a claim not supported by research. He cheered on questionable treatments like cod liver oil, and said that local doctors had achieved “almost miraculous and instantaneous” recoveries with steroids or antibiotics.
The worsening measles outbreak, which has largely spread through a Mennonite community in Gaines County, has infected nearly 200 people and killed a child, the first such death in the United States in 10 years. Another suspected measles death has been reported in New Mexico, where cases have recently increased in a county that borders Gaines County.
The interview, which lasted 35 minutes, was posted online by Fox News last week, just before the President Trump’s address to Congress. Segments had been posted earlier, but the full version received little attention. Mr. Kennedy acknowledged that vaccines “do prevent infection” and said that the federal government was helping ensure that people have access to “good medicines, including those who want them, to vaccines. In highly unvaccinated communities like Mennonites, it’s something that we recommend,” he said.
Mr. Kennedy described vaccination as a personal choice that must be respected, then went on to raise frightening concerns about the safety of the vaccines. He said he’d been told that a dozen Mennonite children had been injured by vaccines in Gaines County. People in the community wanted federal health workers arriving in Texas “to also look at our vaccine-injured kids and look them in the eye,” Mr. Kennedy said.
“He said he’d been told that a dozen Mennonite children had been injured by vaccines in Gaines County.” Welp, this f–king sucks. A poorly-educated, unvaccinated community is now being told by the HHS secretary that sure, they can choose to vaccinate their kids from deadly illness, but those vaccines could “injure” their kids. It’s like Kennedy is trying to kill all of those people. Oh, and later in the interview, Kennedy also blamed POOR DIET for the measles outbreak.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.
