An unvaccinated child is dead amid a rapidly growing measles outbreak in West Texas, marking the first death from the disease in the US in a decade. Confirmed cases in the area are now at 124 with 18 people—all unvaccinated—hospitalized.
If so much of this feels horrifying and unnecessary, that's because it is. But as crisis unfolds, our new Health and Human Services secretary is proving to be the kind of leader our reporting has revealed him to be, time and time again. Here was Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday downplaying the outbreak at Donald Trump's first cabinet meeting of his second administration: We are following the measles epidemic every day,” Kennedy said, NBC News reports. “Incidentally, there have been four measles outbreaks this year. In this country last year there were 16. So, it’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year.”
Kennedy's remarks, which, of course, did not include any urging of folks to get vaccinated, come as no surprise; this man is a vociferous anti-vaxxer with scant interest in real science. But the scene was still shocking to witness. I was also instantly reminded of Kennedy's disingenuous attempt to deny his connection to the 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa that killed 83 people, mostly children. It was during this tragedy that Kennedy implied that the measles vaccine might be responsible for the thousands of cases and deaths. As David Corn reported:
During this outbreak, Kennedy’s group wrote to Prime Minister Tuilaepa, and he encouraged Samoa officials to examine the measles vaccine to “determine, scientifically, if the outbreak was caused by inadequate vaccine coverage or alternatively, by a defective vaccine.”
You can revisit the episode here. Because it's worth asking: Is this our imminent future?
—Inae Oh