RFK Jr. blames the victims

 

Oops!

Poor RFK Jr. He’s had to tiptoe back his attacks on childhood vaccines in the face of a measles outbreak in Texas. What’s a poor anti-vaxxer to do. Well, since vaccine denialists can never be wrong, they can only be wronged, Kennedy blames the victims:

“In later comments, Kennedy suggested that severe symptoms mainly affected people who were unhealthy before contracting measles.

 

“It’s very, very difficult for measles to kill a healthy person,” he said, adding later that “we see a correlation between people who get hurt by measles and people who don’t have good nutrition or who don’t have a good exercise regimen.”

 

“West Texas is “kind of a food desert,” he added. Malnutrition “may have been an issue” for the child who died of measles in Gaines County.”

 

RFK Jr. is lying.

 

“Texas health officials said the child had “no known underlying conditions.”

 

“Dr. Wendell Parkey, a physician in Gaines County with many Mennonite patients, said the idea that the community was malnourished was mistaken.

 

“Mennonites often avoid processed foods, raise their own livestock and make their own bread, he noted. From a very young age, many members of the community also help with farming and other physically demanding jobs.

 

“They’re the healthiest people out here,” he said. “Nutritionally, I would put them up against anybody.”

 

“There is data to show that severely malnourished children in poor countries often suffer worse outcomes from measles, said Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the infectious disease committee at the American Academy of Pediatrics.

 

“But there is no credible evidence that poor eating habits and exercise routines make a child more prone to measles complications, he added.

 

“There is also ample evidence that measles routinely killed healthy children before the MMR vaccine became available, said Patsy Stinchfield, immediate past president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.”

Kennedy goes on to repeat bogus claims that measles infection can protect against cancer and cardiac disease and that we don’t know the risks of vaccination. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

We’ve seen what happens when political fantasy tries to supplant the iron laws of reality. It gave us Stalin’s Holodomor in Ukraine. It gave us Mao’s Great Leap Forward in China. Millions were sacrificed for politics. We’re one pandemic away from that with RFK Jr putting his vaccine denialism ahead of modern medicine.

 

RFK Jr. calls to mind an old saying: “There’s something about the sound of a clock striking thirteen that calls into doubt everything that came before.” Anyone who believes Kennedy is a fool.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/03/10/nation/kennedy-measles-poor-diet-health-fringe-theories/