Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of Health and Human Services, testifies during his Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Jan. 29, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.
Thirty-five years ago, I diagnosed measles in a one-year-old while rotating in pediatrics at the old Ramsey County hospital in St. Paul. It was the cusp of an outbreak that ultimately sickened over 400 patients in St. Paul and caused three deaths.
Measles had been thought to be eradicated years before in Minnesota with an effective nationwide vaccination program and knowledge that a 95% vaccination rate successfully prevented infections even in those people who had fallen through the cracks. While it was surprising to see it resurface, there were known financial, cultural, language and educational barriers to universal vaccination. These were addressed in part in the year 2000.
We in the U.S. felt we had eliminated measles, even if we’ve had occasional small outbreaks since then.
Fast forward to today and Texas is now the epicenter of a new preventable measles outbreak; already with one heart-wrenching pediatric death. Cases continue to escalate and migrate into neighboring and distant states.
Unfortunately, there are three additional horrible “alt-viruses” at play that threaten to unleash a resurgent wave of measles and other preventable illnesses around the country and in Minnesota.
These “alt-viruses” are misinformation, misguided self-interest, and willfully incompetent management of our national response to illness — with an aim to undermine public trust and secure polarized votes.
Misinformation has been a tricky virus plaguing humanity since gossip and uninformed opinion were invented. The ability to amplify bad information has reached a zenith, however, with the advent of the internet. The vaccine for this virus is critical thinking skills that include looking at study data instead of getting anecdotal evidence from an “internet friend,” and checking for trusted sources who preferably rely on prospective randomized double-blind scientific studies to support their conclusions rather than a gut feeling.
Your helpful but hapless neighbor who once rewired a wall switch five years ago is not who you go to when your gas furnace is leaking natural gas in January, even if they are “pretty sure” they know what to do. So too, medical misinformation must be methodically countered by professionals entrusted, licensed and experienced in safeguarding the health of real people.
Misguided self-interest is a virus that spreads fear and ultimately causes a problem understanding the math of risk, resulting in vaccine hesitancy. When there is a one in a million risk of an adverse reaction to a vaccine, but a one in a thousand risk of dying from a measles infection that historically infected every kid in our country, then it is most rational to get the vaccine. However, when one is infected by this misguided self-interest virus, the math calculations can be easily confused, and the fear of the risk from the vaccine can appear bigger than the risk of the infection.
This is especially true if you’ve already been infected by the misinformation virus as above, and hear about false links to autism from mercury in the vaccine. That assertion was thoroughly debunked by good studies, and fails to disclose the fact that thimerosal — a safe rapidly excreted ethyl mercury preservative used in multidose vaccine vials since the 1930s — is not the same molecule as the potentially harmful methylmercury which is found in greater amounts in a can of tuna or a lake trout caught in Northern Minnesota than in any vaccine. And fails to disclose that thimerosal hasn’t been used in the MMR vaccine and hasn’t been used in most all vaccines since 2001 because the industry has gone to single dose vials.
The harm is that the disproportionate fear keeps you from protecting yourself and your children from real danger: preventable illnesses like measles, which can cause several severe neurologic injuries.
This misguided self-interest virus has the added danger of causing the same behavior in others, which further opposes one’s true self interest by decreasing herd immunity. If you and several of your neighbors avoid the vaccine because of misunderstanding risk, then the risks for all increase exponentially. The current MMR vaccination rate of kindergarten children in Minnesota is now at 87.1% and below that 95% threshold that protects you and everyone.
Overcoming the misguided alt-virus by getting on the right side of risk and self-interest is what I’ll call following the “Golden Example Rule” in health care, by which I mean your actions can improve your own health and the health of your family and community.
The last virus: willful incompetence, the most pernicious and cynical.
The role of our health institutions has always been to safeguard public health.
But willful incompetence in the administration of these institutions ensures that public health departments will henceforth strive to pit citizens against each other and science, in an effort to ensure chaos and votes for a party that wants to refuse to fund efforts to protect the public’s health.
By building on the previous two viruses, this virus creates distrust in public health services through its own incompetence at protecting public health. Much like the antidote to misinformation being reliable information, the antidote to hijacking our U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for divisive gain is leadership that has experience and success keeping the public healthy.
Hiring a lawyer like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with no experience taking care of the medical needs of people or managing a department with such a mandate, but who is skilled at spreading the viruses of misinformation and misguided self-interest, is willful incompetence that dooms the HHS — and the country — to failure.
It’s like getting that neighbor with precious little experience or competence to fix your gas furnace leak: He says it could save you money until your house blows up.
President Trump’s second withdrawal from the World Health Organization (membership mandated by Congress in 1948), cancelling the FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee meeting to review and advise on the 2025 Flu vaccine, and the appointment of RFK Jr, are all purposeful, cynical incompetent measures that are dangerous for all our health.
By sowing misinformation and fear of vaccines it is a certainty that we will continue with greater vaccine hesitancy and outbreaks of preventable disease. By hampering the exchange of medical information with experts in the WHO and FDA, we have less current information for health care providers and manufacturers of vaccines and medications, ensuring we are less prepared for the next inevitable pandemic. And having a HHS secretary without a clue how to manage real health care needs will lead to needless suffering and deaths of the most vulnerable in our population.
We must stop this horrible triad of alt-viruses to effectively combat real infectious diseases and protect the wellbeing of all our citizens.
This commentary was republished with permission from Itascan Independent Review.