With the death of a second son of measles and cases in the United States in the increase of 600, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, finally declared the obvious: vaccination is the best propagation of the DESC.
It is a message that should come from the main public health official of the country. Kennedy’s response is too late and too confusing to contain the outbreak. It does not seem that the real risk of the United States loses its measles elimination status, declared in 2000 after a wide propagation vaccination stopped the propagation of the virus.
The direct letter, although recognizing the Eggment of the value of the MMR vaccine, made in an X post last weekend, seemed significant, at least for a few hours. Kennedy, however, confused the message with a second publication praising “two extraordinary healers … who have treated and cured about 300 Mennonite children with Budesonide and clarithromycin in aerosol.”
However, these “healers” have a problematic history that includes a disciplinary action of the Texas Medical Board for one of the doctors. Its “remedies”, steroids and an antibiotic, are not measles priests, there are no priests established for the disease. (A virus causes measles, but clarithromycin is directed to bacteria and Budesonide is not an incoming measles therapy).
Kennedy’s statements show a recognizable pattern: a warm statement that supports medical facts interspersed between unproven treatments and junk science. This waffling makes it impossible for the public to make well -informed decisions about their health.
‘Erroneous information and lies’
The measles outbreak was already under western Texas when Kennedy was confirmed. However, just after the first child died and an adult succumbed to what suspicious officials was measles, he could not decisively lawyer for vaccination. Instead, he spent his first week in the office promoting cod liver oil with vitamin A as cure.
Allle, the World Health Organization recommends that people with measles receive two doses of vitamin A for lessons of the risk of complications, this advice is addressed to children in low -income countries with high rates of vitamin A deficiencies A. “There is no solid evidence of evidence of its use in a country of high income,” says Sean O’Leary, a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases of the University of Colorado.
Vitamin A is not a measles cure, nor can it foresee. And taking too much from the supplement can be dangerous, as evidenced by hospitalized children with liver damage in Texas in the middle of the outbreak.
Kennedy, who has spent years by pressing the completely discredited link between the MMR vaccine and autism, seems to be looking for more ways to weave the public’s confidence in this routine childhood shot. Last month he falsely said that the vaccine causes deaths and is now pushing health agencies to Rexamine their safety data.
The result of that reexamination seems to be an early request. In his resignation last month of the Food and Medicines Administration, Peter Marks, who supervised vaccine approvals in the agency, said he realized that the impulse was not a search for truth, but a demand for “subordinate confusion of his misinformation and lies.”
In addition, Kennedy supervised the mass cuts of last week in the HHS, which included giving staff and resources in the centers for disease control and prevention, which tracks and guides the federal response to the outbreaks.
The public needs clear and precise information of health leaders, not the information of my and the half truths about established science.
An extension outbreak
William Moss, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health School, explains that a sustained outbreak that lasts more than 12 months in the United States would lose its measles elimination status. That clock began in January, and it is too early to predict the result.
However, what is certain is that the outbreak has not shown signs of deceleration. Since an initial group emerged in western Texas, more than 480 people have infected in the legs 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 putting outbreaks in Ohio and Kansas.
The country has many communities that are very similar to west of Texas, with large extensions of vulnerable children and adults. The question, says Moss, is whether the virus manages to land in one of those places and continues to feed the outbreak in the coming months.
In a prophetic episode of the medical drama The Pitt, a child is taken to the non -response of the emergency room and with an eruption in the legs that baffle the residents who treat it. The doctor who attended the doctor in the emergency room in the emergency room observes how the case shows his age: the child has measles, something that younger doctors have never seen.
The scene captures how far we have come with measles, and everything we have to lose if public health leadership does not sacrifice a clear and authorized message that encourages people to vaccinate.
We have already lost three people with measles needles. There should not be more matches of pairing.
Lisa Jarvis is an opinion columnist Bloomberg. © 2025 Bloomberg. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.
