{"id":16650,"date":"2025-03-06T17:42:49","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T17:42:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=16650"},"modified":"2025-03-06T17:42:50","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T17:42:50","slug":"he-needs-to-do-much-more-rfk-jr-s-measles-response-under-scrutiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=16650","title":{"rendered":"\u2018He needs to do much more\u2019: RFK Jr.\u2019s measles response under scrutiny"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“\u201cHe could be misinterpreted that vitamin A will save your suffocating suffering child,\u201d Brett Giroir, a first-term Trump health official now advising Kennedy on infectious disease policy, wrote in a post on X<\/a>. \u201cIt will not.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Texas, some local officials have grown concerned that Kennedy\u2019s messaging risks diluting their own communication efforts. They warn that his equivocations could undermine their only hope of ending the outbreak: persuading people to get the measles vaccine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to diminish the primary message,\u201d Phil Huang, director of health and human services in Dallas County, Texas, said in an interview. \u201cIt\u2019s the vaccines that are the most important.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Katherine Wells, director of public health for the city of Lubbock, Texas, echoed that sentiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to make sure that we\u2019re all talking about the importance of vaccination, and although there\u2019s some focus on treatment, preventing the disease in the first place is really what public health works on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since President Donald Trump nominated him to run HHS late last year, Kennedy has labored to convince skeptics that he is not anti-vaccine, despite his past as an activist who repeatedly raised doubts about the safety and effectiveness of various immunizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As recently as 2021, Kennedy suggested without evidence that measles outbreaks may have been fabricated to \u201cinflict unnecessary and risky vaccines on millions of children.\u201d But now confronted with a high-risk, real-world opportunity to demonstrate whether his views have changed, the HHS secretary has instead appeared to seek a middle ground \u2014 calling the measles vaccine protective for individuals and broader communities, yet stopping well short of the full-throated endorsement public health experts say is necessary from the nation\u2019s top health official.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat he should be saying is that these kinds of outbreaks are fully preventable and unacceptable, and that as secretary he will do everything in his power to ensure the public that it never happens again,\u201d said Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University\u2019s O\u2019Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. \u201cIt\u2019s the first major public health crisis that he\u2019s had to face, and he hasn\u2019t reassured doubters about his ability to get on top of it.\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Most importantly, health experts said, Kennedy could simply hit the bar already set by health officials in Texas: Declaring unequivocally that vaccination is the central way to contain the outbreak.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/03\/05\/rfk-measles-scrutiny-00214952<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“\u201cHe could be misinterpreted that vitamin A will save your suffocating suffering child,\u201d Brett Giroir, a first-term Trump health official now advising Kennedy on infectious disease policy, wrote in a post on X. \u201cIt will not.\u201d
\nIn Texas, some local officials have grown concerned that Kennedy\u2019s messaging risks diluting their own communication efforts. They warn that his equivocations could undermine their only hope of ending the outbreak: persuading people to get the measles vaccine.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to diminish the primary message,\u201d Phil Huang, director of health and human services in Dallas County, Texas, said in an interview. \u201cIt\u2019s the vaccines that are the most important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katherine Wells, director of public health for the city of Lubbock, Texas, echoed that sentiment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to make sure that we\u2019re all talking about the importance of vaccination, and although there\u2019s some focus on treatment, preventing the disease in the first place is really what public health works on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since President Donald Trump nominated him to run HHS late last year, Kennedy has labored to convince skeptics that he is not anti-vaccine, despite his past as an activist who repeatedly raised doubts about the safety and effectiveness of various immunizations.<\/p>\n

As recently as 2021, Kennedy suggested without evidence that measles outbreaks may have been fabricated to \u201cinflict unnecessary and risky vaccines on millions of children.\u201d But now confronted with a high-risk, real-world opportunity to demonstrate whether his views have changed, the HHS secretary has instead appeared to seek a middle ground \u2014 calling the measles vaccine protective for individuals and broader communities, yet stopping well short of the full-throated endorsement public health experts say is necessary from the nation\u2019s top health official.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat he should be saying is that these kinds of outbreaks are fully preventable and unacceptable, and that as secretary he will do everything in his power to ensure the public that it never happens again,\u201d said Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University\u2019s O\u2019Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. \u201cIt\u2019s the first major public health crisis that he\u2019s had to face, and he hasn\u2019t reassured doubters about his ability to get on top of it.\u201d”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“Most importantly, health experts said, Kennedy could simply hit the bar already set by health officials in Texas: Declaring unequivocally that vaccination is the central way to contain the outbreak.”<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/03\/05\/rfk-measles-scrutiny-00214952<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1503,81,525,50,811,526,925,410,496],"class_list":["post-16650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-evidence","tag-health","tag-measles","tag-medical","tag-science","tag-vaccination","tag-vaccine","tag-vaccines","tag-virus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16651,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16650\/revisions\/16651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}