Vaccines are Better Than Broccoli
This commentary is a repost from “Sex on Wednesdays” by Martha Kempner on Substack. Find her other articles on The Queen Zone here.
Kid Dies, RFK Jr. Touts Cod Liver Oil
Last week, when an unvaccinated child in Texas died of the measles, our new Secretary of Health downplayed the death and got his facts wrong. RFK Jr. said measles outbreaks were “not unusual” and that the hospitalizations were “mainly for quarantine.” He’s wrong on both counts.
Before Kennedy and his Children’s Health Defense buddies began spreading misinformation about the MMR and other vaccines, the U.S. went years without any significant measles outbreaks. In fact, we declared the disease officially eradicated in 2000. That progress is slowly being undone as more and more parents buy into the lies people like Kennedy are spreading and skip vaccines. Still, this is the first measles-related death since 2015.
Public health experts in Texas and New Mexico, where this current outbreak is most concentrated, were quick to tell Kennedy that he was also wrong about hospitalizations. Though the number of people admitted to the hospital with measles is low (20 as of last Friday), they are not there as part of isolation measures. Dr. Lara Johnson, the chief medical officer of Covenant Health Lubbock Service Area, told CNN: “Quarantine is not something that would happen in a healthcare facility. We admit patients who need acute supportive treatment in our hospital.” (Read: “That’s not how it works!”) Johnson went on to say hospitalized patients needed supplemental oxygen and other respiratory support.
Oddly—for someone who was trying to minimize the situation—RFK Jr. said there had been two deaths when only one has been reported.
Over the weekend, RFK Jr. published a think piece (I use that term loosely) on Fox News that some say represented an about-face on vaccines. Headlines include “RFK Jr. urges measles vaccinations after years of casting doubt on the vaccine” and “Vaccine critic RFK Jr. backs measles vaccine amid deadly Texas outbreak.” I read his piece and that’s not what I heard him saying at all.
Okay, fine he did write, “Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons.” This was used as a pull-quote which is great since the Fox News audience needs to hear it. But the point is undermined before it’s made because Kennedy starts the paragraph with, “All parents should consult with their healthcare providers to understand their options to get the MMR vaccine. The decision to vaccinate is a personal one.”
That’s not “get vaccinated,” that’s “think about getting vaccinated.” It’s also not, “do it for your community.”
Later in the article, Kennedy seems to undermine the vaccine’s role in prevention. First he notes that “By 1960—before the vaccine’s introduction—improvements in sanitation and nutrition had eliminated 98% of measles deaths.” While that may be true, death isn’t the only concern with the measles. About 1 in 20 kids who get measles will develop pneumonia and 1 in 1,000 will develop brain swelling that can lead to deafness or intellectual disabilities. We may have brought the death rate down by 1960, but we still had 200 cases per every 100,000 people in this country. Compare that to 0.030 cases per 100,000 in 2000, the year we declared the measles all gone.
This is where the broccoli comes in….
But don’t worry about that. Worry about what you’re eating. Kennedy’s op-ed goes on to remind everybody that the best thing they can do is eat a balanced diet. Okay, Junior, that may be true when we’re talking overall health, but amidst a measles outbreak vaccines are more important than broccoli. (Someday, we might also have to ask him about his plan to make this cure-all nutritious diet available to all, but it looks like Congress is going to cut already woefully inadequate SNAP benefits before we have a chance to debate Bobby on that one.)
Kennedy used his op-ed as a call to action, but headlines saying it was a call to action to vaccinate were wrong. He said, “The measles outbreak in Texas is a call to action for all of us to reaffirm our commitment to public health.” In the past, the phrase public health might have been synonymous with vaccines, but last week HHS cancelled the annual flu vaccine meeting. This gathering of advisors—who use, you know, science, to determine which strains of flu are most likely and should be included in next season’s vaccine—has taken place each year since the 1960s. The email abruptly cancelling the meeting did not include any indication that it would be rescheduled.
Wild to Mild
In other anti-vax news, the CDC cancelled a long-running vaccine promotion campaign called “Wild to Mild.” The campaign was started in the fall of 2023 following high rates of flu-associated deaths in unvaccinated children. The goal was to correct the misunderstanding that the flu vaccine is a failure because “my kid got the flu anyhow.” The campaign included a series of graphic images of wild animals next to their cute/domesticated counterparts to show that the purpose of the vaccine is to take infection from “wild” to “mild.”
Public health is expert advisory panels on flu vaccines and cute pictures of lions and house cats. But RFK Jr. is committed to neither of them.
He is, however, a big fan of Vitamin A and cod liver oil. In a pre-recorded interview that aired on, you guessed it, Fox News on Monday, her said that HHS was shipping vitamin A to Texas because doctors has seen “very, very good results” with that among other treatments. He also suggested giving kids cod liver oil. (A special kind of torture that should stay stuck in the past.)
There is some evidence that vitamin A can help with the measles, especially in locations where malnutrition is common, but the American Association of Pediatrics warned parents not to give it to their children in the hopes of preventing or curing measles. In high doses, vitamin A can cause vomiting, blurry vision, liver failure, and coma. (Take a minute to think about the fact that the AAP had to warn people not to follow the Secretary of Health’s advice.)
What RFK Jr. did not mention in his on-air interview was vaccines.
My dad was given cod liver oil every day as a child because he was bow-legged. He still remembers how gross it was. You know what else he remembers? Classmates dying of polio. He also remembers getting that first vaccine and what a miracle everyone thought it was. These infectious diseases that killed some children and crippled others should not be problems today. Science and public health fixed them, and now politics and stupidity are bringing them back.
