{"id":39273,"date":"2025-03-04T03:23:02","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T09:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=39273"},"modified":"2025-03-04T03:23:06","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T09:23:06","slug":"kennedy-sends-mixed-vaccine-messages-amid-texas-measles-outbreak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=39273","title":{"rendered":"Kennedy sends mixed vaccine messages amid Texas measles outbreak"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the first test of the Trump administration\u2019s outbreak response, Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2002<\/u><\/a>has been sending mixed messages about a rapidly spreading measles outbreak in Texas.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A longtime vaccine skeptic, Kennedy initially downplayed the outbreak during a Cabinet meeting with President Trump last week, saying it was \u201cnot unusual\u201d and falsely claimed that many people hospitalized were there \u201cmainly for quarantine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two days later, Kennedy in a social media post outlined how<\/u><\/a> his agency is responding, including by providing the Texas Department of Health with MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEnding the measles outbreak is a top priority,\u201d Kennedy wrote, but he did not directly call for people to get the shot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an op-ed published Sunday on Fox News\u2019s website, Kennedy inched slightly closer to that declaration but still stopped short. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVaccines 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,\u201d Kennedy wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He emphasized that the decision to get vaccinated was a \u201cpersonal one,\u201d urging parents to talk with their doctors \u201cto understand their options to get the MMR vaccine.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But public health experts aren\u2019t ready to celebrate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a foreword to a 2021 book written by the anti-vaccine group Children\u2019s Health Defense, Kennedy wrote that measles outbreaks \u201chave been fabricated to create fear\u201d to \u201cinflict unnecessary and risky vaccines on millions of children.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wendy Parmet, the director of the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University School of Law, described Kennedy\u2019s op-ed as \u201cmealy-mouthed advice.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not necessarily wrong, but it\u2019s not forthright,\u201d Parmet said. \u201cIt\u2019s a half-attempted step. It\u2019s certainly more than we\u2019ve heard from him before, and \u2026 some of what is in that editorial, I think, is helpful, but it\u2019s certainly not anything close to what we have seen in the past, or could expect to see from a secretary of HHS, given the situation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, a nationwide outbreak of measles in 2019 led top health officials of Trump\u2019s first administration to warn about the greatest number of cases<\/u><\/a> reported in the country since measles was effectively eliminated in 2000. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those cases were primarily driven by outbreaks in New York City and New York state in unvaccinated communities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis current outbreak is deeply troubling and I call upon all healthcare providers to assure patients about the efficacy and safety of the measles vaccine,\u201d Robert Redfield,<\/u><\/a> then-director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said in a statement at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a separate statement from that period, then-HHS Secretary Alex Azar highlighted the importance of vaccines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVaccines are a safe, highly effective public health solution that can prevent this disease,\u201d Azar\u2019s statement read. \u201cThe measles vaccines are among the most extensively studied medical products we have, and their safety has been firmly established over many years in some of the largest vaccine studies ever undertaken.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During that outbreak, anti-vaccine movement leaders held rallies in the impacted communities, questioning the safety of the measles shot and likening public health measures banning unvaccinated children from schools to the Nazi persecution of Jews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Del Bigtree, a top Kennedy ally and head of the anti-vaccine group the Informed Consent Action Network, even wore a yellow Star of David at rallies to identify with parents who declined to vaccinate their children. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The response under Kennedy\u2019s HHS so far has been much more muted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been incremental movement from the sort of downplaying to [Kennedy\u2019s op-ed], but it still feels to some degree half-hearted in terms of really using the megaphone, the platform of our nation\u2019s public health agencies to speak very clearly about what individuals should do to protect themselves and their families,\u201d said Jason Schwartz, an associate professor and vaccine researcher at the Yale School of Public Health. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut I think the response in the past few days, especially this op-ed, should be more of a cause for alarm for vaccination programs then a sigh of relief,\u201d Schwartz added. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kennedy\u2019s response to a question at the Cabinet meeting, initially directed at Trump, was his first public acknowledgement of the outbreak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By that point, more than 100 people had been infected. The child\u2019s death had been publicly confirmed earlier in the day by state officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Glen Nowak, co-director of the Center for Health & Risk Communication at the University of Georgia, said choosing to publish his \u201ccall to action\u201d in Fox News was Kennedy\u2019s way of potentially reaching conservatives who are skeptics of public health messengers.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nowak, who spent 14 years as a top spokesperson for the CDC, said Kennedy is trying to thread a needle. For instance, the statement on the public benefits of measles vaccination came after a paragraph emphasizing treatment, such as vitamin A, for people who are sick.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vitamin A has been used for years in children in developing countries with severe measles, but doctors have said the evidence of its effectiveness is mixed. It isn\u2019t used widely in the U.S., likely because children aren\u2019t Vitamin A deficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kennedy also pointed out that 98 percent of measles deaths were eliminated before the introduction of the MMR vaccine due to \u201cimprovements in sanitation and nutrition\u201d and emphasized that \u201cgood nutrition remains a best defense against most chronic and infectious illnesses.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe references to healthy diet and vitamins are probably the way to kind of maintain credibility among [his allies],\u201d Nowak said. \u201cIt\u2019s much easier to be a critic of measles vaccine when you\u2019re not responsible for what happens. But as secretary of Health and Human Services, if people see him as impeding measles vaccination and putting children in harm\u2019s way unnecessarily, that\u2019s a problem.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kennedy\u2019s recent comments also come as health agencies stoke broader concern about how the Trump administration will approach vaccine oversight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after Kennedy was sworn in, a public meeting of CDC\u2019s vaccine advisory panel was postponed<\/u><\/a>, with no information about it being rescheduled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration canceled a meeting<\/u><\/a> of outside advisers to choose the flu vaccine strain.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given those actions and Kennedy\u2019s history, Nowak said the next steps are crucial. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIs this just a one-off message? Or is this going to be a consistent message going forward?\u201c Nowak said. \u201cBecause we know that if there\u2019s a lot more people who are unprotected, we\u2019re going to have a lot more outbreaks, a lot more cases of vaccine-preventable diseases.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thehill<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the first test of the Trump administration\u2019s outbreak response, Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2002has 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 \u201cnot unusual\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":39274,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5784],"tags":[25925,28714,32150,2494],"class_list":["post-39273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-measles-epidemic","tag-robert-f-kennedy","tag-trump-administration","tag-vaccines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39275,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39273\/revisions\/39275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}