Texas Measles Outbreak Spurs Wall Street Journal Plea to HHS Secretary RFK Jr. Over Vaccine Misinformation

News
Addie Andrus
February 18, 2025
0
456
7 minutes read

(Ben Curtis/AP)

A measles outbreak in Texas has intensified, prompting the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board to make an urgent appeal to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s new secretary of Health and Human Services and a well-known anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist. As of Monday, 48 confirmed cases have been reported across Texas, with numbers doubling in just a few days.

The outbreak’s epicenter is Gaines County, which accounts for 42 cases. All reported cases involve individuals who were either unvaccinated or whose vaccination status remains unknown. Thirteen individuals have been hospitalized due to complications. Meanwhile, the outbreak is not confined to Texas alone—New Mexico has confirmed three unrelated cases in a county bordering Texas, while federal health officials have identified 14 additional cases across several states, including Alaska, Georgia, New York, and Rhode Island.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board stressed that the current crisis stems from a disease that had been nearly eradicated by the turn of the century, thanks to widespread immunization efforts. “The tragedy is that this doesn’t have to keep happening,” the board wrote, emphasizing that vaccines have saved millions of lives globally since their introduction more than 60 years ago.

The board also underscored the severe dangers of the disease, noting that “the peril isn’t small.” Statistics show that approximately one in five unvaccinated individuals in the U.S. who contract measles require hospitalization. Additionally, about one to three out of every 1,000 children who contract the virus do not survive.

Robert F Kennedy Jr — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a campaign rally for Donald Trump (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“Yet for some people, the reality of measles feels like a sepia-toned history lesson, whereas the antivax hooey featured on podcasts these days sounds current,” the editorial stated. “RFK Jr., an environmental lawyer by trade, has long been part of the problem, and at his Senate confirmation hearings, he presented himself as just asking questions, man. That undersells his role in spreading doubt and confusion.”

The editorial board emphasized the urgency of restoring public trust in vaccines—an especially difficult task given Kennedy’s long-standing opposition to immunization efforts. “This is courting heartache that parents used to face routinely but that modern medicine has made unthinkable for most. We are skeptical of RFK Jr.’s nomination.

The Senate confirmed him. Now the best-case scenario would be for Mr. Kennedy to internalize that he is no longer an activist outsider who needs to take provocative potshots to get attention,” the board wrote. “He’s the nation’s health secretary, and there are children in the hospital with measles who shouldn’t have to be there,” the editorial concluded.