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Measles cases have surged to scary new heights under Trump and RFK Jr. [1]
['Daily Kos Staff']
Date: 2025-07-08
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, must be jumping for joy because his apparent goal of making measles great again is finally becoming a reality.
The dangerous disease, which was considered eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, is making a full and terrifying comeback. Over 1,277 cases have popped up this year alone, according to data from John Hopkins University Center for Outbreak Response Innovation. The disease has hit 38 states and the District of Columbia. So far, there have been 155 hospitalizations and three confirmed deaths caused by measles.
This year’s severe outbreak is due largely to lower childhood vaccination rates, which RFK Jr. played a hand in as a prominent anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist. So far this year, two healthy but unvaccinated children and one man have died so far, matching the total number of measles-related deaths that occurred between 2001 and 2024.
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Amid this worrying situation, Kennedy, in his new role, has steered pushing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention further away from vaccines. He has fired experts on a federal vaccine panel and canceled grants that fund research around critical vaccine research, all with President Donald Trump’s complicity.
Earlier this year, Kennedy posted on X about swimming in Rock Creek, a Washington-area waterway that is polluted with sewage runoff.
Meanwhile, Kennedy, who is known to swim in sewage runoff, has been telling pregnant women and children that they no longer need to get vaccinated against COVID-19. That move has put Kennedy knee-deep in legal trouble as well, with the serially shirtless grandpa being sued on Monday by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other physician groups.
"We will not stand by while a single federal official unilaterally and effectively strips Americans of their choice to vaccinate with actions that thoroughly disregard overwhelming scientific evidence and decades of established federal processes," Tina Tan, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said in a statement obtained by Axios.
Then again, anyone who knows Kennedy and his cohort knows this was the goal.
Before stepping into his latest role, the MAHA guru has falsely linked childhood vaccines to autism, a lie that has been thoroughly debunked.
And while Kennedy tried to distance himself from his statements during his Senate confirmation hearing earlier this year, we all know that actions matter more than words.
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