Two days after initially downplaying the outbreak as “not unusual,” the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, on Friday said he recognizes the serious impact of the ongoing measles epidemic in Texas – in which a child died recently – and said the government is providing resources, including protective vaccines.
“Ending the measles outbreak is a top priority for me and my extraordinary team,” Kennedy – an avowed anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who for years has sown doubts about the safety and efficacy of vaccines – said in a post on X.
Kennedy said his federal Department of Health and Human Services would send Texas 2,000 doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine – typically meant to be given to children in a series of two shots at 12 to 15 months old as well as between the ages of four and six years old – through its immunization program.
Unfortunately, I suspect we’re in the incubation phase of a likely superspreader event (the contagious kid who spent time in crowded college areas, two weeks before (a) symptoms appear and (b) one of those colleges goes on spring break).
I’m betting that, of the hundreds of people exposed and the couple dozen people who probably caught it, at least some of them will go on spring break, and infect other spring breakers who will then bring it home to their colleges. It’ll have a couple months to spread there, then some of them will bring it home for the summer.
It sure would’ve been nice if we’d had politicians who were actually both sane and foresightful … :(
Wait until one of those Texan cow wranglers manages to crossbreed the measles he got from his “f-ck vaccines” support group with the avian flu he got from kissing his cows.