Now we know how many kids must die from measles before RFK Jr. tries to save them | Opinion
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Measles in Texas
Tarrant County has confirmed its first measles cases. Follow our reporting on the Texas outbreak.
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Every commercial vaccine available to Americans is rigorously tested, significantly improves the health outcomes of the person who takes it and lessens the strain and spread of an illness on that person’s community. The measles vaccine was so effective, it stamped out the virus decades ago. If vaccination had been embraced across Texas, two grade school children would almost certainly be with us today.
You can hear this information from us, whether reading a journalist like myself who uses facts to present arguments — today’s argument: get vaccinated! — or from our reporter, Ciara McCarthy, who focuses exclusively on discovering and explaining everything you need to know about health in our city, county and statewide. You can hear this information from most doctors, most of whom will strongly advise you to get vaccinated.
But Robert F. Kennedy Jr, your secretary of health and human services? He’ll tell you to get vaccinated, finally, during a visit to West Texas. But this precious, and lifesaving info comes at a price you can’t afford: Two dead kids.
Kennedy made his pro-vaccine remarks while attending 8-year-old Daisy Hildenbrand’s funeral. (She was unvaccinated, but unless you get medical advice from our Health and Human Services secretary, you already knew that.) RFK’s advice came with the throat clearing you should continue to expect. He praised the “extraordinary healers” in Daisy’s community, saying they helped hundreds of suffering children — except for the two who died — with a steroid that’s unproven as a measles treatment and known to weaken immune systems.
When Kennedy isn’t dropping bear carcasses on random bike paths or showing off his struggle-reps on the incline bench, he is known for air-dropping into vulnerable communities when their children are sick. Ask Dr. Alec Ekeroma, the Samoan health minister who said Kennedy helped persuade the small island nature to suspend vaccinations, directly leading to 83 measles deaths. Kennedy claimed that he didn’t know what was killing all those people; Ekeroma called him a liar.
While Kennedy’s lies are freely given, his leadership puts a price on truth that most can’t afford. Last week, Tarrant County Public Health furloughed 63 employees due to federal defunding of critical grants. Some of the cuts came to the epidemiology department, which the National Institutes of Health defines, for now, as “the branch of medical science that investigates all the factors that determine the presence or absence of diseases and disorders.”
Put another way, the federal government forced the public-health department to cut people in your community who study how to limit the spread of disease among your neighbors and at schools, businesses, churches and malls, like when someone exposed people at the Grapevine Mills Mall to measles in March. No tax rate exceeds the cost of a child’s funeral.
The public health experts who remain believe the current outbreak, which has reached 481 cases in Texas alone — more than any other state — could last a year. Expect more funerals, more visits from the HHS secretary, and for those who choose not to vaccinate, more perfunctory recommendations of the cure after the sickness takes its course.
For the vaccinated, there’s not much to celebrate. But you should be aware of one small, unintended side effect Doctors Won’t Tell You About. When it’s your time to go, you can know with complete confidence that RFK won’t be there to commiserate.
This story was originally published April 9, 2025 at 5:35 AM with the headline "Now we know how many kids must die from measles before RFK Jr. tries to save them | Opinion."
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