An unvaccinated child in west Texas died of measles on Wednesday, marking the first time that someone has died from the viral illness in the U.S. in a decade.
So far, 18 people have been hospitalized for the disease around Lubbock, Texas, where a measles outbreak has so far infected at least 124 people, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Most of those infected are children.
The number of hospitalizations is rising, however—Dr. Lara Johnson, a pediatrician and the chief medical officer at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, told NBC News Wednesday that the state’s data was already out of date, and that her team had already cared for “around 20” kids with measles so far.
But over in Washington, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seemed relatively unconcerned by the spread of the disease.
“It’s not unusual,” Kennedy said of the contagion when pressed by reporters. “We have measles outbreaks every year.”
“We are following the measles epidemic every day,” Kennedy said, before suggesting that there was another unreported death. “Mainly we’re told that the Mennonite community—there are two people that have died, but we are watching it and there are about 20 people hospitalized, mainly for quarantine.”
“Incidentally, there have been four measles outbreaks this year. Last year there were 16,” he added.
The last person to succumb to the disease died in 2015 during a less severe outbreak in Clallam County, Washington State, in which a couple dozen people were infected. Measles was identified as the cause of death for the unidentified woman during an autopsy, which found that she had “several other health conditions and was on medications that contributed to a suppressed immune system,” the health department said at the time.
Kennedy’s nonchalant approach to managing the spread of the disease is particularly alarming, as the virulent conspiracy theorist has made millions of dollars off of his dangerous anti-vaxx rhetoric, tying autism rates to the jab. His cash flow has stemmed from anti-vaxx-related speaking fees, dividends from his vaccine lawsuits, and leading Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy’s anti-vaxx nonprofit.
Children’s Health Defense—under Kennedy’s stewardship—has had its own questionable history with measles. Preceding a deadly measles outbreak on Samoa in 2019, the nonprofit spread rampant misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines throughout the nation, sending the island’s vaccination rate plummeting from the 60-70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones. That year, the country reported 5,707 cases of measles as well as 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of five.
Last week, Trump himself seemed to buy into the already thoroughly debunked vaccines-cause-autism conspiracy, suggesting the Pennsylvania Dutch’s simplistic and unvaccinated lifestyle could be used as a potential model to avoid the disorder.
As a reminder: since their invention, vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The medical shots are so effective at preventing illness that they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to polio and smallpox—a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.
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