- Jul 2, 2003
- 152,043
- 19,735
- Country
- United States
- Gender
- Female
- Faith
- Baptist
- Marital Status
- Married
- Politics
- US-Democrat
How RFK Jr. Falsely Denied His Connection to a Deadly Measles Outbreak in Samoa
He also championed a Samoan anti-vaxxer tied to the 2019 lethal eruption that killed scores of children.
www.motherjones.com
Appearing in Shot in the Arm, a 2023 documentary about vaccine opposition, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was asked about the deadly measles outbreak that occurred in Samoa in 2019 and claimed the lives of 83 people, mostly children. Kennedy, a leading anti-vaxxer who had visited the Pacific island nation a few months before the outbreak, replied, “I’m aware there was a measles outbreak…I had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa. I never told anybody not to vaccinate. I didn’t go there with any reason to do with that.”
Kennedy was being disingenuous, sidestepping his connection to that tragedy. Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit anti-vax outfit he led until becoming a presidential candidate, had helped spread misinformation that contributed to the decline in measles vaccination that preceded the lethal eruption. And during his trip to Samoa, Kennedy had publicly supported leading vaccination opponents there, lending credibility to anti-vaxxers who were succeeding in increasing vaccine hesitation among Samoans. Moreover, in early 2021, Kennedy, in a little-noticed blog post, hailed one of those vaccination foes as a “hero.”....
In the years prior to 2019, measles had not been a problem in Samoa. But in 2018, two infants died after receiving the measles vaccine. The country quickly placed its vaccine program on hold, as vaccine opponents, including Children’s Health Defense, exploited theses deaths to raise questions about the safety of vaccines. The vaccination rate plummeted from in the 60-to-70 percent range to 31 percent. But the problem, it turned out, was not with the vaccine. Two nurses had mistakenly mixed the vaccine with a muscle relaxant. Once this was revealed, CHD did not update social media posts suggesting the vaccine was the culprit. (Those posts are no longer available.)
During the stretch in which the vaccination coverage was dropping in Samoa, Kennedy visited the nation in June 2019 and gave a boost to anti-vaxxers there who had used the death of those two infants to help cause the drop in vaccination rates. He had a meeting with Taylor Winterstein, a prominent Samoan Australian vaccination foe. In an Instagram post featuring a photo of her with Kennedy, Winterstein wrote, “I am deeply honoured to have been in the presence of a man I believe is, can and will change the course of history. This was a divinely timed, once in a lifetime opportunity and I will forever cherish the conversations and moments we shared together in Samoa.” She added hashtags used by anti-vaxxers. Public health experts complained Kennedy’s visit to Samoa helped amplifly anti-vax voices.
These days many have forgotten that measles can kill. If an unvaccinated pregnant woman is exposed to measles in the first trimester, the fetus can be affected and can cause blindness, deafness, facial asymmetry and more. Measles can cause a fulminating pneumonia and encephalitis with permanent neurological symptoms. The folks in Samoa learned the hard way.
