Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has vastly downplayed the ongoing measles outbreak in western Texas — even as many children are being hospitalized, with at least one child dying so far.
As of Thursday, 124 people have been diagnosed with measles in the region, with another nine people diagnosed in eastern New Mexico. Most who have tested positive for the highly contagious virus are children, and none who have been hospitalized were vaccinated.
Kennedy, a noted anti-vaxxer, said HHS is “watching” the measles outbreak, but downplayed its severity, attempting to normalize the crisis.
“We have measles outbreaks every year,” Kennedy told the press earlier this week during a meeting of President Donald Trump’s cabinet. The HHS secretary noted that there were four outbreaks already this year, and 16 outbreaks last year.
However, there were only four outbreaks for the entire calendar year of 2023, and just two decades ago, measles were considered eliminated in the U.S. because of how low the total case numbers were year after year. The death this past week is the first from the virus in the U.S. since 2015, and the first child-related death from measles since 2003. The child who died was school-aged and unvaccinated for measles.
Kennedy also claimed that 20 children hospitalized in Lubbock, Texas, were mostly there for quarantine reasons. In a separate press conference announcing the child’s passing, Lara Johnson, chief medical officer at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, said that Kennedy’s statement was untrue.
“We don’t hospitalize patients for quarantine purposes,” Johnson said, elaborating that several of the children who were hospitalized required intensive care because they were struggling to breathe.
In Gaines County, Texas, the epicenter of the current outbreak, the vaccine exemption rate was almost 18 percent in the 2023 to 2024 school year, according to health department data. But Kennedy — who has no professional background or education in health care whatsoever — has consistently disregarded the facts of the crisis on the ground, despite overwhelming evidence that the area’s low vaccination rates played a role in the virus’s spread.
Kennedy’s claim that measles outbreaks are common ignores the fact that rates of the virus were significantly lower only 20 years ago. From 2000 to 2009, there was an average of just 71.4 documented measles cases in the U.S. per year. But since anti-vaxxers have gained prominence, that average has skyrocketed — from 2015 to 2024, there was an average of 256.9 cases per year.
Kennedy is notorious for pushing false, health-related talking points, including the debunked lie that vaccines are responsible for rising rates of autism.
During Kennedy’s confirmation hearings, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) challenged him to definitely state whether he agreed with evidence showing that vaccines do not cause autism.
“If you show me those studies, I will absolutely [agree],” Kennedy said.
Sanders chided Kennedy for that answer.
“That is a very troubling response because the studies are there. Your job is to have looked at those studies as an applicant for this job,” Sanders said.
Kennedy is also tied to a catastrophic measles outbreak on the island nation of Samoa. Shortly after he traveled to the island in 2019 and peddled disinformation about the safety of vaccines, more than 80 people, mostly children, died from the virus. Kennedy denies any responsibility for their deaths.
On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unexpectedly and without explanation canceled an annual meeting of its advisers to discuss the next season’s influenza vaccines, fueling concerns that Kennedy will not take vaccine promotion seriously as head of HHS.
In response to questions about the move, a spokesperson for the FDA said the agency “will make public its recommendations to manufacturers in time for updated vaccines to be available for the 2025-2026 influenza season.” But members of the advisory board are still sounding the alarm.
“We’re all left trying to understand what is going on. Why was this meeting canceled? It’s an important meeting. What’s the plan for flu vaccines this year?” said Paul Offit, a member of the FDA advisory committee and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, speaking to CBS News about the matter.
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