A worsening measles outbreak in West Texas has spread to two other states, providing Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. his first real test of responding to a major public health incident.
The measles outbreak, which has killed two people to date and sickened nearly 260 across three states, represents the first time Kennedy has had to reckon with his past as a longtime critic of vaccines and his new leadership of the federal health establishment.
Public health experts and advocates don’t think he is passing.
The response has been “as expected for a Secretary Kennedy HHS. But that’s not saying much,” said Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist who has been tracking the outbreak in her Your Local Epidemiologist newsletter.
Kennedy has made two appearances on Fox News in recent weeks, where he downplayed the seriousness of measles and touted fringe theories about prevention and treatment, like the benefits of vitamin A and cod liver oil over the measles vaccine, which is the only proven way to prevent infection.
“We’ve had two measles deaths in 20 years in this country — we have 100,000 autism diagnoses every year,” Kennedy said. “We need to keep our eye on the ball. Chronic disease is our enemy.”
He suggested that natural immunity gained from a measles infection will provide better and longer-lasting protection than the vaccine. He said local doctors had achieved “almost miraculous and instantaneous” recoveries with steroids or antibiotics.
When he has talked about the shot, he’s framed it as a personal choice while also suggesting the vaccine can cause just as much harm as the disease itself.
Measles outbreaks in the past have been all-hands-on-deck affairs across the federal government, Jetelina said, pointing to a 2014 measles outbreak that began at Disneyland as well as the 2019 outbreak in New York.
“This outbreak has largely been quiet. We’ve had the distant Fox News interviews. We’ve had one [CDC alert] and that’s about it, and that is not normal compared to past responses, and there’s certainly been very little transparency on what’s being done,” Jetelina said.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) team of infectious disease “detectives” arrived on the ground to aid in the response earlier this month, a move that first required Texas officials to request federal assistance, because the agency can’t send a team without an official state ask.
But experts said an early communications blackout across the government ordered by the Trump administration may have prevented local health officials from sharing data and information with HHS, potentially delaying the response.
Public health experts said one of the essential parts of controlling a measles outbreak is to partner with trusted messengers on the ground to spread the word that vaccines are safe.
“The messaging should be very clear and straightforward in that the way we stop a measles outbreak is through vaccination. And the way we prevent measles outbreaks is through vaccination. And so that should be the clear, unambiguous message coming out from HHS,” said William Moss, a pediatrician and infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
But in a sweeping 34-minute interview that was posted on Fox Nation last week, Kennedy pledged that the CDC team would talk to “front-line doctors and see what is working on the ground” and learn about therapeutics “ignored” by the agency, including vitamin A and an antibiotic called clarithromycin.
Phil Huang, director of health and human services in Dallas County, Texas, said he was concerned Kennedy’s words would dilute the message and make it more difficult to persuade people to get vaccinated.
Kennedy spoke about the distrust many in the Mennonite community have toward vaccines.
Vaccines will be “recommended,” Kennedy said, but as a personal choice that must be recognized.
He indicated the Mennonites have raised serious and legitimate concerns about the dangers of vaccines, and that he’d been told a dozen Mennonite children had been injured by vaccines in the county.
Kennedy said the public doesn’t know the true risks of vaccines.
“We don’t know what the risk profile is for these products. Americans have the right to know to be able to make an informed choice. You need to know the cost and the benefits. And we’ve never quantified the cost. And that’s why there’s so much mistrust and we need to restore government trust,” Kennedy said.
In a separate interview with Sean Hannity, Kennedy again touted the benefits of vitamin A as an almost miracle cure, something even a Kennedy adviser has cautioned against.
“Please do not rely on #VitaminA to save your child in the US – helps in Africa where there is deficiency-not here. I have both treated and buried children with measles,” Brett Giroir, a first-term Trump health official now advising Kennedy on infectious disease policy, wrote in a post on the social platform X.
Vitamin A has been used for years in children in developing countries with severe measles, but doctors have said the evidence of its effectiveness is mixed. It isn’t used widely in the U.S., likely because children aren’t vitamin A-deficient.
Georges Benjamin, the longtime executive director of the American Public Health Association, said Kennedy’s HHS is already behind the outbreak and risks falling even further, which could result in a national outbreak.
“He’s practicing medicine without a license, and he needs to be very careful,” Benjamin said. “Normally, what happens when you have someone who’s not a health professional? Their talking points are written by experts, and they stick to the script. And, you know, he’s saying things that are just wrong.”
