Note: This is what expertise looks like in the Trump administration.* Certainly the photo captures the current vibe from the White House: A bunch of unqualified clowns in positions of power and influence happy at their good fortunes while real world problems pile up across the country.
Via the AP: A Texas child who was not vaccinated has died of measles, a first for the US in a decade.
The school-aged child had been hospitalized and died Tuesday night amid the widespread outbreak, Texas’ largest in nearly 30 years. Since it began last month, a rash of 124 cases has erupted across nine counties.
This is a tragedy because it was avoidable.
But our new Secretary of HHS is on top of it.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official and a vaccine critic, said Wednesday that the U.S. Department of the Health and Human Services is watching cases and dismissed the Texas outbreak as “not unusual.”
He appeared to misstate a number of facts, including a claim that most who had been hospitalized were there only for “quarantine.” Dr. Lara Johnson at Covenant contested that characterization.
“We don’t hospitalize patients for quarantine purposes,” said Johnson, the chief medical officer.
Kennedy also seemed to misspeak in saying two people had died of measles. A spokesman — Andrew Nixon, for the Department of Health and Human Services — later clarified that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified only one death.
Kennedy’s uninformed dismissiveness does not bode well for public health over the next four years.
Some information on the community being hit can be found via the Texas Tribune: Who are the Mennonites in a Texas community where measles is spreading? The following is noteworthy.
“Historically and theologically, there has not been any religious teaching against immunization in Mennonite circles,” Nolt said via email. “There’s no religious prohibition, no body of religious writing on it at all. That said, more culturally conservative Mennonite (and Amish) groups have tended to be under-immunized or partially-immunized.”
Partly, he said, that’s because they don’t engage as regularly with health care systems as more assimilated groups do. Many traditional Anabaptist groups did accept vaccinations that were promoted in the mid-20th century, such as for tetanus and smallpox, but they have been more skeptical in recent years of newly introduced vaccines, Nolt said.
Also,
All states allow exemptions for medical reasons, while most allow exemptions for religious or personal reasons, or both. Only five states — California, Connecticut, Maine, New York and West Virginia — have allowed no non-medical exemptions, according to the conference, but West Virginia is taking steps this year to allow religious or philosophical exemptions.
Texas law allows exemptions for “reasons of conscience, including a religious belief.”
U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates dipped in 2023, and the proportion of children with exemptions rose to an all-time high, according to federal data posted in 2024.
There are always going to be unvaccinated persons, but this outbreak demonstrates the real risk of the curent trend, fueled by people like Kennedy. We need people at HHS who press for higher rates, not people like RFK, Jr. who will not do so.
*I will note that Dr. Phil has no official role in the Trump administration, although he has, for some reason, gone on ICE raids. See, for example, via NBC News: ‘Dr. Phil’ embedded with immigration authorities during ICE action in Chicago. He is from West Texas, so maybe he can get RFK, Jr. to pay attentiotn to the problem.
