RFK Jr tells US families to vaccinate children against measles amid outbreak

submitted by

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/02/rfk-jr-measles-vaccination

54
258

Log in to comment

Hot Top New Old

The health secretary’s call for parents to vaccinate their children for measles contrasts starkly with the many years in which Kennedy has been a leading proponent of misinformation questioning the efficacy and safety of vaccinations. Even since he became the country’s top health official, he has depicted a measles vaccination as a personal choice and claimed inaccurately that the power of the inoculation is waning.

Children are dead because of what he chose to say.

He went on to blame the outbreaks on religious communities who eschew vaccines and on global health conditions.

I mean… a broken clock is right twice a day, I suppose. But he should not be in the position he has been appointed to. More people are dying.

 reply
58

Half his audience are those religious nuts so he is effectively throwing his audience under the bus. The only people who will be his audience are the crunchy Karen types who have convinced themselves that they are different from the other girls.

 reply
17

Don’t worry… It’ll only take another 20 years to get back the herd immunity we already lost. And that’s assuming the idiots who listened to him in the first place don’t decide this is a liberal psyop and they know he REALLY means NOT to get the vaccination.

 reply
8

Yeah they aren’t likely to listen to anyone tell them something that doesn’t fit their cult narrative. Some will mental gymnastics their way to getting vaccinated, but kore will mental gymnastics their way to ignoring his statement, if they even hear it in the first place.

 reply
1

Grandfather Nurgle will not be pleased.

 reply
41

Same exact thing happened to Morty when he got complacent with spreading the plague. Now Typhus is the favorite

 reply
4

I can’t tell if this is a Rick and Morty reference or something else.

 reply
9

You wouldn’t be the first

 reply
9
edited

[…] Kennedy told Bash “you probably don’t understand this because you’re not a scientist”.

The journalist riposted: “But you’re not, either.”

Lmao! Well done!

 reply
35

I have received +3 Mental Damage from reading that first bit.

 reply
2

What about the AUTISM??1?

 reply
34

Suddenly worth it or smth

 reply
7

It was since discovered this is caused by women abusing Tylenol.

 reply
4
edited

Oh yeah it’s TOTALLY caused by Tylenol you guys we figured it out

(it is not caused by Tylenol)

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/the-evidence-on-tylenol-and-autism

 reply
4

WOW TYLENOL CAN EDIT THE DNA IN YOUR GAMETOCYTES TO MAKE AUTISTIC KIDS WOW

 reply
1

I need more! My database looks like shit!

 reply
2

To be honest im kind of surprised he backtracked, i was fully certain he would let people die and perpetuate an outbreak just to stick to his schtick

 reply
19

Before bending the knee to Trump, RFK Jr. said he believed the FDA was suppressing data on a host of issues. It’s likely he’s now been aware for quite some time that isn’t the case. Maybe the full weight of how wrong he is finally has an effect on him.

That, or he’s looking to distance himself from Trump like so many others. Blood in the water.

 reply
8

I’m assuming someone finally told him he could later face consequences for this. Not that he will, but perhaps he just got a little paranoid of what could happen if the world got saner at some point.

 reply
6
edited

You mean continue to let people die and perpetuate the already record outbreak?

 reply
5

He still denied the rest of the thing about vaccine though.

 reply
2

To everyone saying broken clock and a glimmer of hope, you just need to read the article that it isn’t. He was just cornered and had no room to wiggle out of it.

Any hope that Kennedy’s measles statement might indicate a change of heart were dashed in the rest of the CNN interview in which he turned combative. Batting off questions from Bash, the health secretary responded with personal attacks.

He accused the CNN host of “saying nonsense”, “repeating like a parrot” and “making assertions you can’t support”. In one especially demeaning remark he said Bash had become “flustered”.

“I’m not flustered at all,” she asserted in a calm voice. “I am frustrated because you are the HHS secretary and you are talking about things that lead to vaccine hesitancy in this country.”

In a further comment dripping with condescension, Kennedy told Bash “you probably don’t understand this because you’re not a scientist”.

The journalist riposted: “But you’re not, either.”

Kennedy used the CNN exchange to spread further misinformation about other aspects of public health. He claimed that both respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) that is a major cause of infant mortality and Lyme disease were caused by manipulation of germs in laboratories.

 reply
12

Are you floofing kidding me

 reply
5

Even if we could magically vaccinate every single American today, the virus has a foothold and will spread by usually transmission. People will still go to work, school, shopping, social events etc. There will be more deaths. RFK llike to moron he is, will probably use that to say that vaccines arent effective.

Vaccinating now is still helpful, so if you’re not covered, get covered! Tell everyone you know.

 reply
5

which is it, vaccinate or not to vacicnate. anti-vaxxers are unlikely to vacciante.

 reply
5
edited

Yes. Because they don’t trust the vaccinations and won’t accept the risk of side effects to their body. Because if those side effects hit them, there is no help to get anywhere.

There isn’t even a way to prove that a random symptom that occurs in your body may be from a vaccine. There is absolutely no way to know where it came from.

 reply
-2

As a parent myself it’s quite the dilemma :

  • Will I risk to inflict minor side effets such as fever for a few days AND imaginary side effects like autism to my children ?
  • Or should I put my kids in danger of dying or suffer brain dammage because I obviously know better than decades of research and use of the vaccine with my two degrees in french and english litterature.

Fuck life is hard

 reply
5

But… what about the autism?

 reply
4

Oh how the turns have tabled.

 reply
4

Tell those kids he killed in American Samoa to get vaccinated

 reply
2

Hahaha can’t wait to see the MAHA morons whine about this. 😂

 reply
2
edited

Last outbreak we had in Virginia tracked back to an unvaxed Afghani family. We need to push on entry we vax everyone.

Virginia has confirmed a measles outbreak in Buckingham County (expanded to include Cumberland County) in 2026, with multiple cases linked to individuals who recently arrived from Afghanistan

The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) has identified that some of these cases occurred among Afghan evacuees transported to the U.S.

https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/clinicians/update-on-measles-in-virginia/

 reply
-22

5 years ago, quickly contained? Noteworthy, sure, but unrelated to this article.

The question you should be asking is, “why are measles able to spread through US populations” regardless of origin? From the article:

Jha said that the dramatic rise in measles cases on Kennedy’s watch was not coincidental. “The administration has not done enough to promote vaccines. It has not done enough to highlight the harms that come from measles.”

Honestly, I’m surprised RFK Jr. changed his position at all. Some parents of children who die of measles double down on their decision not to vaccinate.

 reply
9

“why are measles able to spread through US populations”

People have egg allergies and can’t get vaccines unfortunately. Then you have the nutters that won’t take vaxxes and then here we are.

For me I had a really bad reaction to the last set of vaccines I got. I now know what Tetanus feels like in a minor way. Believe me you don’t want it, it hurts a lot.

 reply
-3

People have egg allergies and can’t get vaccines unfortunately.

Who told you that?

https://www.bsaci.org/resources/allergy-management/food-allergy/vaccines-and-food-allergy/mmr-vaccine-and-egg-allergy/

The amount of ovalbumin-like protein within the vaccine is extremely low (approx. 37 pg per dose) and is highly processed. While initially it was recommended that only children with a mild egg allergy could be safety vaccinated in primary care with the MMR vaccine. Multiple studies subsequently have shown that the MMR vaccine has an excellent safety record in children with an egg allergy.

Maybe there is a very, very small percentage of the population who cannot get vaccinated because of egg allergies. But that would be covered by herd immunity.

Then you have the nutters that won’t take vaxxes and then here we are.

Correct! And why are they so prevalent? Partly because the head of health and human services spent years advocating against vaccines, is himself a nutter:

The health secretary’s call for parents to vaccinate their children for measles contrasts starkly with the many years in which Kennedy has been a leading proponent of misinformation questioning the efficacy and safety of vaccinations. Even since he became the country’s top health official, he has depicted a measles vaccination as a personal choice and claimed inaccurately that the power of the inoculation is waning.

But now he doesn’t want the casualties attributed to him, so he pretends to be reasonable.

For me I had a really bad reaction to the last set of vaccines I got. I now know what Tetanus feels like in a minor way. Believe me you don’t want it, it hurts a lot.

That is unfortunate. Thank you for getting vaccinated. Some people do not have the option, it would literally kill them, as would getting certain viruses. I hope it was some kind of fluke. Do you know what the specific reaction was that caused your pain?

 reply
6

People have egg allergies and can’t get vaccines unfortunately. Then you have the nutters that won’t take vaxxes and then here we are.

The people with allergies are a tiny fraction of the population, and they’re one of the reasons why everyone else should get vaccinated. The other reason is that none of the vaccines are 100 percent effective. The tiny percentage of the population who can’t get vaccinated, and the people for whom the vaccine didn’t fully protect, are much safer if the other folks are vaccinated because the virus can’t get a foothold, so exposure the up being negligible. Say someone comes in from another country that has an active infection. If all the people who that person encounters are protected, then the virus stops with that person.

The problem is that the number of people buying into the anti vaccine garbage is now nontrivial, so that herd immunity is out the window, and these previously well controlled viruses are now able to spread.

 reply
1

Provide sources when you spew that shit. It can’t be fox or equal since they’ve already said they’re an entertainment company, look it up.

 reply
11

Well, when they succeed in slashing the funding for all the outbreak tracking programs, they can ignore the non-existent data and go back to saying whatever they like to hear themselves say…

 reply
4

Virginia has confirmed a measles outbreak in Buckingham County (expanded to include Cumberland County) in 2026, with multiple cases linked to individuals who recently arrived from Afghanistan

The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) has identified that some of these cases occurred among Afghan evacuees transported to the U.S.

https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/clinicians/update-on-measles-in-virginia/

 reply
-1

that some of these cases occurred among Afghan evacuees transported to the U.S.

does not equal

Last outbreak we had in Virginia tracked back to an unvaxed Afghani family. We need to push on entry we vax everyone.

 reply
11

While your logic is fine, the comparisons are inaccurate. The source says “Multiple cases of measles have been confirmed among individuals who have arrived in the United States from Afghanistan.” Which sounds like they had measles before they got here. Though, the source isn’t explicit one way or the other.

 reply
2

Wow, really? They were unvaxed coming from Afghanistan how hard is that to understand and a measles carrier? We used to quarantine ships (even Astronauts) to keep people safe and now days its a bloody free for all.

The level of not understanding the source of the issue is mind blowing. If they were quarantined and vaxed after there would be no measles outbreak…

 reply
-6

We need to push on entry we vax everyone.

If >95% of the people are vaxed it’s not problem someone comes in unvaxed. Probably there is also a number on the opposite end, where coming in unvaxed is very dangerous for that person.

 reply
3

Then you should get yours, republican

 reply
2

I do have my measles vaccine thank you. I’m up to date on all my vaccines.

 reply
-5

Congrats, you’re a racist with a sense of self preservation.

slow clap

 reply
-1
edited

How am I racist? I pointed out a fact

Virginia has confirmed a measles outbreak in Buckingham County (expanded to include Cumberland County) in 2026, with multiple cases linked to individuals who recently arrived from Afghanistan

The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) has identified that some of these cases occurred among Afghan evacuees transported to the U.S.

https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/clinicians/update-on-measles-in-virginia/

 reply
2

Well if you’re a Republican… You didn’t deny it…

 reply
4
edited

So should I deny being Gay or not being white? What kind of intolerant nonsense are you about?

So accepting and tolerant… lol NOT!

 reply
-4
Continue thread
Insert image