Let us consider, for a painful moment, this fact: The absurdly unqualified head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sat in a Steak ‘n Shake and suggested, in the midst of a measles outbreak, that getting measles is better than getting a measles vaccine.
Run that scene around in your head a few times and then accept that this is real life in America in 2025.
Longtime anti-vaccine nutter Robert F. Kennedy Jr., by being named the head of health in America earlier this year, had already single-handedly destroyed the concepts of logic and common sense. But munching fast-food fries while telling Fox News nitwit Sean Hannity that the safe, effective, lifesaving measles vaccine causes “adverse events” and “deaths every year” is a blood-on-your-hands moment history will remember.
As measles outbreak spreads, Kennedy still bows to anti-vaxxers
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is acknowledged as President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress on March 4, 2025.
As of Tuesday, there were 223 confirmed measles cases in Texas, with 29 people hospitalized and one unvaccinated child dead. New Mexico has 33 confirmed cases, most of them along the border with Texas. One person there has died as well.
New cases surfaced this week in Oklahoma and Vermont, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tracked additional cases in 12 states.
Opinion: I’ve never treated a patient for measles. Now I’m afraid that may change.
The measles are spreading quickly, as the virus tends to do. That’s why we have incredibly effective vaccines.
Aiding this spread of the disease are people like Kennedy, who have gone to great lengths to fearmonger about vaccines that are endorsed by every reputable doctor and medical organization in existence.
Vaccines crucial to public health, not a ‘freedom of choice’ issue
Kennedy’s comments that aired this week on Hannity’s show will certainly not help. While he continues to claim he’s not “anti-vaccine” ‒ something that flies in the face of his past decades of malicious lying about vaccines ‒ he also phrases things in a way that allow anti-vaccine people the wiggle room they need to believe the lies they’ve been fed.
For example, President Donald Trump’s health chief said: “I’m a freedom-of-choice person. We should have transparency. We should have informed choice. But if people don’t want it, the government shouldn’t force them to do it. There are adverse events from the vaccine. It does cause deaths every year. It causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes.”
That’s a slippery bit of nonsense.
A protester at the Senate confirmation hearing for nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Jan. 29, 2025.
According to the Infectious Diseases Society of America: “There have been no deaths shown to be related to the MMR vaccine in healthy people. There have been rare cases of deaths from vaccine side effects among children who are immune compromised, which is why it is recommended that they don’t get the vaccine.”
Opinion: Measles belongs in history books. Instead, under RFK Jr., it’s killing kids.
And one of the keys to vaccine efficacy is making sure enough people are vaccinated, which is why vaccine requirements are a thing.
RFK Jr. makes it sound like life was perfect before MMR vaccine
Kennedy also seemed to long for the good old days of measles parties and, I guess, lots of kids dying from measles: “It used to be when you and I were kids, everybody got measles. And measles gave you protection, lifetime protection against measles infection. The vaccine doesn’t do that. The vaccine is effective for some people, for life, but many people it wanes.”
An infographic about the measles virus at a public health news conference in Austin, Texas, on Feb. 28, 2025.
That’s not what the CDC ‒ which Kennedy now oversees ‒ says about the vaccine: “MMR & MMRV vaccines usually protect people for life against measles.”
And the CDC has guidelines for any adults who might need an additional vaccination later in life.
Having an anti-vaccine nut in charge of health is not great
Kennedy did admit the vaccine stops the spread of measles and said anyone who wants it should get it, but that’s not a good enough message from a person in his position.
Any “vaccines are good” sentiment he delivered while doing his bizzaro-world free Steak ‘n Shake advertisement with Hannity was watered down with caveats and skepticism that will feed the minds of science skeptics.
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It is staggering that an unqualified weirdo like Kennedy is in the position he’s in, thanks to a president who sold out American health in exchange for voters brainwashed by Kennedy’s anti-vaccine babble.
But it was several steps beyond staggering to see Kennedy helping Hannity sell burgers and fries while finding ways to sow vaccine skepticism in a country where measles ‒ declared eradicated in the United States in 2000 ‒ is making a deadly comeback.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kennedy casts doubt on measles vaccine from… Steak n Shake | Opinion
