Longtime vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr has urged people to get the measles jab after a deadly outbreak in Texas – having initially downplayed the rapid spread of the infectious disease.
Writing in a Fox News op-ed Sunday, the freshly-confirmed Department of Health and Human Service secretary championed the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, touting its efficacy against the deadly virus.
“Measles outbreak is call to action for all of us,” reads the title, with the standfirst stating: “MMR vaccine is crucial to avoiding potentially deadly disease.” In the article’s opening line, RFK Jr stated he is “deeply concerned about the recent measles outbreak.”
He reflected on the days before the first measles vaccine was licensed for public use in the U.S. in 1963.
“Prior to the introduction of the (MMR) vaccine in the 1960s, virtually every child in the United States contracted measles,” RFK Jr citing that from 1953 to 1962, there were an average of 530,217 confirmed cases and 440 deaths – a one in 1,205 cases fatality rate.
The Kennedy scion said that it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that accurate information is relayed about vaccine safety and efficacy, and pledged to “make vaccines readily accessible for all those who want them.”
He added: “Vaccines 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.
RFK Jr did, however, emphasize that the decision to vaccinate is “a personal one.”
According to the latest figures from the Texas Department of Health and Human Services released Friday, 146 measles cases have been identified since late January – a majority of whom appear to be unvaccinated.
An unvaccinated school-age child in Lubbock marked the first death from the highly contagious virus last week and twenty other people have been hospitalized.
After the death Wednesday, the nation’s top health official appeared to downplay the situation in Texas and described the outbreak as “not unusual.”
“There have been four measles outbreaks this year in this country. Last year there were 16. So it's not unusual," he said during Donald Trump’s first cabinet meeting. “We have measles outbreaks every year.”
RFK Jr’s latest remarks appear to mark a U-turn from his previous peddling of vaccine skepticism and conspiracy theories, including his promotion of the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism.
Along with his comments about vaccines and autism, the HHS secretary has made other historic inflammatory remarks, including suggesting in January 2022 that Anne Frank was in a better situation when she hid from Nazis than Americans were under Covid-19 mandates.
He also baselessly claimed that Covid-19 was a “bioweapon” that targets “Caucasians and Black people” while sparing Ashkenazi Jewish and Chinese people.
Spreading Covid-19 misinformation resulted in Meta deactivating his Instagram account in 2021.
During his Senate confirmation hearings last month, he attempted to clean up his previous remarks and insisted he is not anti-vaccine, but “pro-safety.”
RFK Jr denied Oregon Senator Ron Wyden’s accusations that he “embraced conspiracy theories, quacks, charlatans, especially when it comes to the safety and efficacy of vaccines,” and noted his own children are vaccinated.
Vaccine hesitancy was already a concern before the Covid-19 pandemic and worsened during the vaccination campaigns, experts told the Washington Post.
According to a survey from the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center last June, nearly one in four respondents believed that the MMR vaccine caused autism.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said there is no evidence linking the measles vaccine and autism.
In August 2024, the findings from an Annenberg Science and Public Health survey suggested that more than a quarter of Americans believe that Covid-19 vaccines have caused thousands of deaths.
