Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons.
Much of my writing has centered around the idea that having real-world responsibility matters. It’s easy to say what one would do in a difficult situation, but reality often forces one’s hand, and RFK Jr., a man who has never had any real-world responsibility for anything, is now in charge of the health of 73 million American children. He promised that he would make them healthy, and it’s not good optics when they get sick and die of measles, as is happening in Texas. Now that it’s his job to stop children from dying, RFK Jr. can’t blame vaccines or claim the outbreak is fabricated, as he did with in far-away Samoa. As Ayn Rand said, “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.
So after facing backlash for minimizing the outbreak during a cabinet meeting, leading to the resignation of his top spokesman, RFK Jr. was forced to backtrack and acknowledge reality about vaccines for the first time in his life. He recently published an an opinion piece in Fox News, Measles Outbreak is Call to Action for All of Us MMR: Vaccine is Crucial to Avoiding Potentially Deadly Disease. I am sure it was painful for him to say the following:
As the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I am deeply concerned about the recent measles outbreak. This situation has escalated rapidly, with the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) reporting 146 confirmed cases since late January 2025, primarily in the South Plains region. Tragically, this outbreak has claimed the life of a school-aged child, the first measles-related fatality in the United States in over a decade.
Measles is a highly contagious respiratory illness with certain health risks, especially to unvaccinated individuals. The virus spreads through direct contact with infectious droplets when an infected person breathes, coughs, or sneezes. Early symptoms include high fever, cough, runny nose, and red, watery eyes, followed by a characteristic body rash. Most cases are mild, but rare complications can be severe, including pneumonia, blindness, and encephalitis. Prior to the introduction of the vaccine in the 1960s, virtually every child in the United States contracted measles. For example, in the United States, from 1953 to 1962, on average there were 530,217 confirmed cases and 440 deaths, a case fatality rate of 1 in 1,205 cases.
The current Texas outbreak has predominantly affected children, with 116 of the 146 cases occurring in individuals under 18 years of age. The DSHS reports that 79 of the confirmed cases involved individuals who had not received the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, while 62 cases had unknown vaccine status. At least five had received an MMR vaccine.
Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but that’s pretty good. Hell has apparently frozen over.
Yet, RFK Jr. couldn’t completely escape his anti-vaccine roots. 79 cases were in unvaccinated people, but just 5 were in vaccinated people. This shows the MMR is as good as promised, taking into account the base rate. Two doses are about 97% effective at preventing measles, though most people won’t figure that statistic out the way RFK presented the data. It’s also possible the 5 people had received just one MMR dose. Older people, who received a single dose decades ago might be more vulnerable to measles than they think. They’ve been protected by herd immunity thus far.
RFK Jr. also repeated the “vaccines didn’t save us” trope, debunked here by Dr. David Gorksi 15 years ago, by saying:
By 1960 — before the vaccine’s introduction — improvements in sanitation and nutrition had eliminated 98% of measles deaths. Good nutrition remains a best defense against most chronic and infectious illnesses. Vitamins A, C, and D, and foods rich in vitamins B12, C, and E should be part of a balanced diet.
He also recommended vitamin A, discussed Monday by Dr. Gorski, and winked to anti-vaxxers with language such as “The decision to vaccinate is a personal one,” which contradicted his earlier, factual statement about community immunity. He never suggested that parents vaccinate their children and said:
We must engage with communities to understand their concerns, provide culturally competent education, and make vaccines readily accessible for all those who want them.
RFK Jr. also wrote:
HHS’ efforts include offering technical assistance, laboratory support, vaccines, and therapeutic medications as needed ensuring that accurate information about vaccine safety and efficacy is disseminated.
Is RFK Jr. really providing significant on-the-ground assistance, or is he shipping vitamin A? Is he really ensuring that accurate information about vaccine safety and efficacy is disseminated? It doesn’t seem that way. According to an article by Melody Schrieber titled RFK Jr.’s Policies Could Spread Measles Far Beyond Texas:
In the first few months of the year, measles spread like wildfire among a largely unvaccinated population, the number of cases quickly outpacing the total for the entire previous year. Then, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sent a strike team, spending long days assisting local efforts to vaccinate, help patients isolate, and trace their contacts. The community in question wasn’t opposed to vaccines; they simply hadn’t had steady access to health care, and they gladly rolled up their sleeves. The outbreak was controlled and the worst was avoided.
That was last year, in Chicago. Now, a similar situation is unfolding in West Texas. The population is different—now, it’s spreading largely among rural Mennonite communities; then, it was clustered around an urban immigrant shelter—but the same underlying issues of access persist.
And this year, the CDC isn’t sending a team.
The CDC isn’t sending a team because RFK Jr. hasn’t ordered it.
RFK Jr. switching sides on vaccines now is like an arsonist urging people to put out the fire he started.
So what to make of all this? That RFK Jr. felt obligated to share accurate information shows that public pressure still has some sway and at least for now, there’s broad agreement that it’s bad when children suffer and die from measles. I never imagined that I’d agree with large passages of an essay by RFK Jr., and though I doubt he typed those words himself, it’s good that he signed his name to them. I encourage him to keep his new attitude and will praise him if he does so.
RFK Jr. also said he had talked to the parents of the deceased child. I sincerely applaud him for that too. I am sure that was a horrible conversation that he’ll never forget, especially if he influenced these parents not to vaccinate their child. However, it was the right move, and it should set a precedent. RFK Jr. should call the grieving parents anytime a child dies of a vaccine-preventable disease, including COVID and the flu, which has taken a severe toll on children this winter. These parents are suffering just much as the parents who lost their child to measles, and RFK Jr. should want to call as few parents as possible. Of course, many parents might not want to talk to him and that’s understandable given his potential role in their child’s death.
However, a couple of solid paragraphs in a single article doesn’t suddenly erase RFK Jr.’s 20 years of anti-vaccine disinformation. That’s how we got here in the first place. As one person said:
RFK Jr. switching sides on vaccines now is like an arsonist urging people to put out the fire he started.
Another person added:
I just read Kennedy’s op-ed, and is like a guy yelling “fire” while holding a lit match. He talks a big game about stopping measles, but then downplays vaccines, pushes vitamins like a snake oil salesman, and barely acknowledges his own role in fueling vaccine hesitancy. First off, measles didn’t disappear because people ate more vegetables. The vaccine wiped it out. The second we stopped vaccinating enough kids? Boom, outbreak. But instead of saying “Get the damn shot,” he dances around it, calling it a “personal decision.” Personal decision? Tell that to the kid who just died…
Kennedy wants credit for taking measles seriously, but this isn’t leadership, it’s damage control. You want to fix the problem? Stop feeding the nonsense fear that created it.
That’s exactly right. RFK Jr.’s harm is baked in already. Countless children are currently unvaccinated because of his efforts, and they’ll be the ones getting measles in the future. RFK Jr. encouraged loathing and distrust of anyone who provided accurate information on viruses and vaccines, and that will now boomerang back on him, now that it’s his job to contain a deadly outbreak. It will take more than one article to reverse worrisome trends on vaccines. The anti-vaccine movement is powerful and attitudes are fixed. According to the article Amid West Texas Measles Outbreak, Vaccine Resistance Hardens:
When the local hospital warned of a brewing measles outbreak, Kaleigh Brantner urged fellow residents of this rural West Texas community to beware of vaccinating their children.
Two weeks later, her unvaccinated 7-year-old son came home from school with a fever. The telltale rash across his body followed. But his mild symptoms and swift recovery only hardened Brantner’s anti-vaccination convictions, even after an unvaccinated child died of measles at a hospital 80 miles away.
“We’re not going to harm our children or [risk] the potential to harm our children,” she said, “so that we can save yours.”
She and many others learned that antisocial attitude from RFK Jr. and his ilk. The anti-vaxx genie is out of the bottle, and every time a child is infected with measles, we need to ask, “What role did RFK Jr. play in that?”
Predictably his base is turning on him, as described in the article RFK’s Flip-Flop on the Measles Shot Is Ripping the Anti-Vax World Apart. RFK Jr taught people that everything is a conspiracy, and how he’s part of the conspiracy. RFK Jr. is in a tough spot. He spent his life railing against the “medical establishment.” He got what he wished for, and he is now the medical establishment. He knows it’s not good for him or Trump when kids in rural West Texas start dying of measles. Yet, because vaccines are needed to stop measles, he can only avoid horrible headlines if be betrays everything and everyone he has dedicated his life to thus far. The more RFK Jr. succeeds is in stopping measles, the more nasty accusations he’ll face from his former allies. Presently, all he has done is fail to stop measles, while earning the complete distrust of pro and anti-vaxxers alike. That’s hard to do.
I am sure that RFK Jr. didn’t have a sudden and genuine change of heart about vaccines. I am sure he was forced to write that article by someone. It goes against everything he has said for 20 years. I suspect it will primarily serve as a tool to give him and his supporters plausible deniability as measles spreads. After all, he wrote the words, “Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity.” What more could anyone want?
Here’s the answer.
A few solid paragraphs in one article will not convince skeptical parents to vaccinate their children. To change the mind of at least some anti-vaxxers, RFK Jr. has to repeat this pro-vaccine message in a sincere, consistent manner. He and his staff need to get on camera and encourage the MMR at every opportunity. He needs to go to Texas and urge parents to vaccinate their children. He needs to use every tool at his disposal, such as CDC “strike teams,” to limit outbreaks. He should have done all of this already.
Moreover, if RFK Jr. wants parents to have “accurate information about vaccine safety and efficacy” he needs to disavow his entire life’s work on the topic. He needs to explicitly warn parents against his writing and everything his website has ever published. He needs to unequivocally say that the MMR does not cause autism. He needs to denounce Andrew Wakefield and Del Bigtree and tell parents to listen to experts like Drs. Peter Hotez and Paul Offit. He needs to do this not just for the MMR, but for every vaccine on the CDC schedule. They all protect against dangerous pathogens.
If RFK Jr. does this on a repeated basis and actually uses his power to contain outbreaks, I will welcome him to the resistance. If he can admit he was wrong about vaccines, I will gladly admit I was wrong about his ability to change his mind.
Until then, I’m afraid reality will continue to find tragic ways of making itself known. No matter what he does moving forward, RFK Jr. and everyone who enabled him will be responsible for that.