As a major measles outbreak spreads out of West Texas into other states, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to spread a confusing message about vaccine safety. In an interview with Fox News that aired on Tuesday, Kennedy touted the vaccine — but also suggested that the best way to get lifetime immunity from the measles is to simply become infected with measles, and that the measles vaccine is dangerous to those who take it.
“It used to be — when you and I were kids — that everybody got measles. And the measles gave you lifetime protection against measles infection. The vaccine doesn’t do that,” Kennedy told Sean Hannity from inside the Steak & Shake fast-food restaurant where the interview was conducted. “The vaccine is effective for some people for life; for many people it wanes.”
The CDC estimates that one to three of every 1,000 childhood measles infections would result in death due to respiratory or neurological complications from the highly virulent disease. Measles was declared eradicated in the United States in 2000 after the implementation of a successful, two-dose national vaccination campaign that lasted decades. Until recently, measles cases detected in the United States nearly always originated from foreign travel.
The measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine is incredibly effective, and incredibly safe. Two doses in early childhood are 97 percent effective against measles, according to the CDC, and complications are extremely rare. However, if you ask our nation’s health secretary — a known vaccine skeptic — taking the MMR vaccine could be just as risky as catching a deadly infection.
“There are adverse events from the vaccine. It does cause deaths every year. It causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes — encephalitis, blindness, et cetera,” Kennedy told Hannity. “So people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves.
“One of the problems is that [the vaccine] does not appear to provide maternal immunity,” Kennedy said. “It used to be that very young kids … they were protected by breast milk, and by maternal immunity. Women who get vaccinated do not provide that level of maternal immunity to the natural measles infection, so you’re now seeing measles hit very very young kids and hitting older people.” At one point Kennedy suggested that deaths attributed to measles in the past had been primarily caused by malnutrition and comorbidities.
Kennedy failed to mention that the majority of recent American measles outbreaks have been linked to communities where vaccination levels are dropping due to vaccine skepticism, or are below the rate needed to preserve social immunity. While breastfeeding women can temporarily pass along antibodies to their children through breast milk, the immunity benefits have been found to wane before the child reaches their first birthday, and vaccination is still recommended for long-term protection.
The health secretary noted a commitment to “encourage” people to get vaccinated, but did so as an offhand comment amid another bout of fear mongering about the dangers of vaccines — which are significantly less than those of a measles infection.
Kennedy’s handling of the measles outbreak in Texas has been blasted by lawmakers and public health officials. Last week, he took a hiking trip to the Coachella Valley as HHS officials scrambled to bring the outbreak under control, and later pushed vitamin A as a way to combat the disease, despite health experts noting that vitamin A only helps when someone already has a vitamin A deficiency.
Last month, during a meeting of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, Kennedy asserted that measles outbreaks were “not unusual,” and he downplayed the severity of the caseload. The Texas Department of Health the very same day confirmed the first measles death in the United States in over a decade.
