The measles virus now spreading across Texas and other states doesn’t care about political posturing. But when two deaths occur — the first fatalities in a decade — and our health secretary responds with a jumble of pseudoscience and platitudes, we’ve reached a moral crossroads in public health.
In a March 2 Fox News op-ed, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. began with a promising nod to vaccine efficacy, stating they “protect children” and bolster herd immunity — language that briefly aligned with decades of scientific evidence. Yet within paragraphs, he undercut this stance by framing vaccination as a matter of “personal choice,” a phrase often used in anti-vaccine playbooks. Worse, Kennedy inflated the relevance of vitamin A supplementation, a clinical recommendation for patients in underresourced areas of the world, creating false equivalence between proven prevention and situational treatment.
His belated urgency rang hollow without concrete actions or a clear directive to vaccinate.
A day later, as cases in West Texas passed 150, Kennedy took to X, calling the outbreak a “top priority” after initially dismissing its severity. But his belated urgency rang hollow without concrete actions or a clear directive to vaccinate — a glaring omission given that 97% of cases occurred in unvaccinated individuals. By March 4, during a Fox News interview, any pretense of scientific rigor collapsed. Kennedy touted unproven remedies like budesonide (a steroid prescribed for asthma) and cod liver oil (which has both vitamins A and D), dangerously implying these could substitute for immunization. This descent from tepid endorsement of vaccines to promotion of pseudoscientific alternatives occurred over just three days, all while measles cases continued to rise. Each statement threatens to erode public trust, potentially transforming what should have been a clarion call for vaccination into a master class in dangerous ambiguity.
In 1963, when the first measles vaccine emerged, parents surely wept with relief. This wasn’t just another shot — it was liberation from a pathogen that had filled pediatric wards with children gasping for air, their lungs ravaged by pneumonia, their brains swollen with encephalitis. By 2000, the U.S. declared measles eliminated. Today, that triumph is crumbling not because the virus evolved, but because we seem to have forgotten its wrath.
Measles doesn’t slink quietly through back alleys; it explodes like wildfire in a dry forest. A single cough in a grocery store can infect dozens, the virus lingering airborne for two hours, seeking unvaccinated hosts. Before vaccines, it killed 2.6 million people annually, often infants. The MMR vaccine, introduced in 1971, became a shield: two doses offering 97% protection, saving 60 million lives globally since 2000. Yet here we are in 2025, watching the erosion of herd immunity. One in five measles patients will be hospitalized; one in 1,000 will develop brain-swelling encephalitis. Contrast that with the vaccine’s 1-in-1 million risk of severe reaction — a statistical whisper versus measles’ roar.
Behind these figures are human faces: a Texas nurse intubating a toddler whose parents believed “natural immunity” myths; a grandmother in Idaho, newly widowed after her immunosuppressed husband caught measles at a pharmacy. This isn’t hypothetical. It’s happening now, fueled by misinformation that festers in policy voids. When leaders like Kennedy tout vitamin A as a solution — a tactic meant for malnourished regions, not affluent suburbs — they divert attention from the real defense: vaccines.
Public health cannot thrive in an America where pro-vaccine voices mock hesitancy as ignorance, while skeptics dismiss science as dogma. Measles reminds us: Viruses exploit division.
To Secretary Kennedy: I implore you to lead with the clarity you showed when, however briefly, you acknowledged vaccine safety.
To my colleagues in the medical field, I implore us to find ways to fight misinformation without alienating the misinformed.
And to all Americans: Remember that 1960s measles wards, filled with children gasping for air, disappeared not because of vitamins, but because of vaccines. Our shared survival depends on rejecting false equivalencies and embracing what works. The next child’s life hangs in the balance.
