Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Downplays Measles Vaccine as Cases Surge

THURSDAY, March 13, 2025 (HealthDay News) — A growing measles outbreak has led to 222 reported cases across Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma in 2025, with health officials urging more people to get vaccinated.

During an interview with Fox News, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. encouraged vaccination but also made misleading statements about vaccine-induced immunity, CNN reported.

“When you and I were kids, everybody got measles, and measles gave you … lifetime protection against measles infection. The vaccine doesn’t do that. The vaccine is effective for some people for life, but for many people, it wanes,” Kennedy said in the interview.

Dr. Paul Offit — director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who recently spoke with HealthDay about COVID — said that if vaccine-induced immunity waned significantly, measles would not have been declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000.

While antibody levels may decline over time, the immune system retains memory cells that provide long-term protection against the virus, Offit explained.

Dr. Michael Mina, chief scientific officer of the telehealth company eMed and an infectious disease expert, emphasized that the outbreak is primarily driven by unvaccinated individuals, CNN said.

“Even those who may have waning immunity will not transmit large amounts of virus,” Mina said.

Measles cases are often linked to international travel.

Since measles was declared eliminated, the U.S. has averaged about 179 cases per year. This is the fifth year since then that cases have surpassed 100 and the third year to exceed 200, with past major outbreaks occurring in 2014 (linked to Disneyland) and 2019 (a nearly year-long outbreak in New York).

Some, including Kennedy, have promoted natural immunity — gained from infection — over vaccination. But experts warn that natural infection can come with serious risks.

Two doses of the MMR vaccine are 97% effective at preventing measles, providing strong and lasting immunity without the dangers of infection.

“The goal of a vaccine is to induce the immunity that is a consequence of natural infection without paying the price of natural infection,” Offit said.

Measles can lead to severe complications, especially in children. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

• 1 in 5 unvaccinated people with measles require hospitalization.

• 1 in 20 children with measles develop pneumonia.

• 1 in 1,000 children with measles develop encephalitis (brain swelling).

• 1 to 3 in 1,000 children with measles die from complications.

One of the two deaths linked to the current outbreak involved an unvaccinated school-age child.

In his Fox News interview, Kennedy also falsely claimed that the MMR vaccine causes illnesses similar to measles, saying it “causes deaths every year. … It causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes: encephalitis and blindness, et cetera.”

Experts refute this, however.