Jarvis: RFK Jr.’s measles message is too little, too late

With the death of a second child from measles and cases in the United States surging past 600, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, finally stated the obvious: Vaccination is the best way to prevent the spread of the disease.

It’s a message that should have come sooner from the country’s top public health official. Kennedy’s response is both too late and too confusing to effectively contain the outbreak. He doesn’t seem to take seriously the real risk of the United States losing its measles elimination status, declared in 2000 after widespread vaccination stopped the spread of the virus.

The direct, albeit brief acknowledgment of the value of the MMR vaccine — made in an X post last weekend — seemed significant, for a few hours at least. Kennedy, however, muddled the message with a second post praising “two extraordinary healers … who have treated and healed some 300 measles-stricken Mennonite children using aerosolized budesonide and clarithromycin.”

Those “healers,” however, have a troubled track record that includes disciplinary action by the Texas Medical Board for one of the doctors. Their “remedies,” a steroid and an antibiotic, aren’t cures for measles — there are no established cures for the disease. (A virus causes measles, but clarithromycin targets bacteria and budesonide is not a recommended therapy for measles.)

Kennedy’s statements show a recognizable pattern: a lukewarm statement supporting medical facts sandwiched between unproven treatments and junk science. This waffling makes it impossible for the public to make well-informed decisions about their health.

‘Misinformation and lies’

The measles outbreak was already underway in West Texas when Kennedy was confirmed. Yet even after the first child died and an adult succumbed to what officials suspect was measles, he failed to decisively advocate for vaccination. Instead, he spent his first weeks in office touting cod liver oil with vitamin A as a cure.

Although the World Health Organization recommends people with measles receive two doses of vitamin A to lessen the risk of complications, that advice is directed at children in low-resource countries with high rates of vitamin A deficiencies. “There’s no solid evidence for its use in high-income countries,” says Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at the University of Colorado.

Vitamin A is not a cure for measles, nor can it prevent it. And taking too much of the supplement can be dangerous, as evidenced by the children hospitalized with liver damage in Texas amid the outbreak.

Kennedy, who has spent years pushing the thoroughly discredited link between the MMR vaccine and autism, seems to be looking for more ways to weaken the public’s confidence in this routine childhood shot. He falsely claimed last month that the vaccine causes deaths and is now pushing health agencies to reexamine its safety data.

The outcome of that reexamination seems preordained. In his resignation last month from the Food and Drug Administration, Peter Marks, who oversaw vaccine approvals at the agency, said he came to realize the push wasn’t a search for truth but a demand for “subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”

In addition, Kennedy oversaw last week’s massive cuts at HHS, which included gutting staffing and resources at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which tracks and guides the federal response to outbreaks.

The public needs clear, accurate information from health leaders, not misinformation and half-truths about settled science.

A spreading outbreak

William Moss, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, explains that a sustained outbreak lasting more than 12 months would cause the United States to lose its measles elimination status. That clock started in January, and it’s too soon to predict the outcome.

What is certain, however, is that the outbreak has shown no signs of slowing down. Since an initial cluster emerged in West Texas, more than 480 people have been infected in the state, and neighboring counties in New Mexico have reported another 54 cases. Infections have been reported in 21 states this year, including smaller ongoing outbreaks in Ohio and Kansas.

The country has plenty of communities that look a lot like West Texas, with large swaths of vulnerable unvaccinated or under-vaccinated children and adults. The question, Moss says, is whether the virus manages to land in one of those spots and continues to fuel the outbreak in coming months.

In a prescient episode of the medical drama The Pitt, a boy is brought into the emergency room nonresponsive and with a rash on his legs that puzzles the residents treating him. The senior attending doctor in the ER remarks how the case shows his age: the boy has measles, something the younger physicians have never seen.

The scene captures how far we’ve come with measles — and all that we have to lose if public health leadership fails to offer a clear, authoritative message encouraging people to get vaccinated.

We’ve already needlessly lost three people to measles. There don’t have to be more heartbreaking deaths.

Lisa Jarvis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. ©2025 Bloomberg. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.