Michael F. Cannon
Michael F. Cannon
A growing measles outbreak in Gaines County, Texas—24 cases so far in a county that voted 91 percent for Donald Trump—illustrates a grim irony.
Senate Republicans plan to vote today on anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to be the secretary of health and human services. If they seat him, it will be Republican families that suffer.
In the 1960s, measles struck 3–4 million US residents annually, leading to nearly 500,000 diagnoses, 48,000 hospitalizations, and 400–500 deaths. By 2000, measles cases had fallen to fewer than 100 per year, striking only when travelers—mostly, unvaccinated US citizens—brought it home from abroad.
Face of a boy after three days with measles rash. Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The reason is vaccination. The measles vaccine provides 97 percent protection (immunity) against infection. After its introduction in 1963, US cases dropped by roughly 90 percent within 10 years.
It is hard for the human mind to grasp how beneficial vaccines are. The Lancet estimates that since 1974, vaccines against 14 pathogens have saved 154 million lives. Measles vaccines accounted for more than 60 percent of those gains. That estimate does not include the smallpox vaccine, which eradicated a disease responsible for more deaths in the 20th century than all wars combined.
For decades, Kennedy has publicized small or nonexistent risks of vaccines to the point of frightening people away from the astronomical benefits.
Most infamously, in 1998, The Lancet published an article that falsely suggested a link between measles vaccines and autism. Kennedy stoked those fears—even as contrary evidence accumulated, even after The Lancet retracted that article in 2010, and even in 2011 after Salon retracted Kennedy’s 2005 article on the topic.
Kennedy promises that as secretary, he would approach vaccines without preconceived ideas. He promises that if someone showed him data indicating vaccines are safe, » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/red-america-would-suffer-under-rfk-jr