I Wish You Were a Better Man
Three Things Thursday
Three Things Thursday highlights three things I am paying attention to as an epidemiologist each week. It has been another hard week. As I reported on Tuesday, 10,000 public health workers were fired, resulting in the elimination (or significant reduction) of federal programs aimed at HIV prevention, environmental hazard response, gun violence prevention, health communication, worker safety, reproductive health, prevention of birth defects, disability health, tuberculosis prevention, lead poisoning prevention, water safety, and tobacco control, among others. At the state and local level, as I reported last week, the Trump Administration has cut $11.4 billion in grants to state and local health departments. As a result, this week, public health officials in Texas had to cancel vaccination clinics and fire public health practitioners working on the front lines of the measles epidemic because of the funding cuts.
As we head into the second quarter of 2025, more measles cases have been reported in the first three months of this year than in all of 2024. Within the past few days, there have been measles cases at Newark Airport and Detroit Airport, among other popular spots (including several ERs/urgent care centers).
Today’s Three Things focuses on the deadly effects of misinformation and how Secretary Kennedy continues the spread of misinformation. We will focus on —
Secretary Kennedy’s promotion of vitamin A as a measles cure without mentioning the serious health consequences of vitamin A toxicity/poisoning.
Secretary Kennedy’s continued downplaying of the current measles outbreak and his refusal to encourage all parents to vaccinate their children.
The imposter or rogue CDC website that was created by the Children’s Health Defense (RFK Jr’s anti-vaccine nonprofit) promoted myths about the connections between vaccines and autism.
I want to be very clear. Misinformation is dangerous & can be deadly.
Secretary Kennedy has been an anti-vaccine activist for a LONG time. And he has a well-documented history of promoting misinformation. During his confirmation hearing, he promised he would not take away vaccines; however, he did just that by cutting state and local health department budgets last week. Public health nurses and community health workers were fired last week, and vaccine clinics (over 50 in Texas alone) were canceled.
Vaccine accessibility is dwindling, especially for those without insurance.
Secretary Kennedy should NOT be in charge of the health of America.
Taylor Swift’s song Better Man is my current ode to Secretary Kennedy —
“I wish you were a better man
I wonder what we would've become if you were a better man.”
We all need to be fighting back against the misinformation Secretary Kennedy is spreading. And we need to call out when he is not speaking up for programs, policies, and interventions (like vaccines) that will save lives.
Hoping this post helps to educate and empower you
to be healthy and create healthy communities.
Promoting Vitamin A Is Poisoning Kids
Secretary Kennedy has been on Fox News (and written an op-ed) peddling vitamin A as a cure for measles. Parents are taking his word as gospel and dosing their children with vitamin A.
Let me be clear — vitamin A does NOT cure measles.
Vitamin A has utility when treating a measles patient who is also malnourished, but for a regular American kid who is NOT malnourished, vitamin A is NOT going to slow the progression of measles or decrease the severe effects.
And because vitamin A is a supplement and is NOT regulated by the FDA, Secretary Kennedy does not need to tell you about the serious risks of vitamin A toxicity, which can lead to liver damage and failure.
Currently, at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, Texas, a group of children who recently had measles are hospitalized with vitamin A toxicity. According to the report of vitamin A toxicity on ProMed —
“At Covenant Children's Hospital in Lubbock, near the outbreak's epicenter, several patients have been found to have abnormal liver function on routine lab tests, a probable sign that they've taken too much of the vitamin, according to Dr. Lara Johnson, pediatric hospitalist and chief medical officer for Covenant Health-Lubbock Service Area. The hospitalized children with the toxicity were all unvaccinated.
… overuse of vitamin A can have serious health consequences, and there is no evidence that it can prevent measles. The only way to prevent infection with the measles virus is through the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, which is 97% effective against measles after 2 doses.”
There have also been reports of measles patients with abnormal liver function caused by vitamin A toxicity in New Mexico.
At the risk of being repetitive, I will repeat what was posted on ProMed —
The only way to prevent infection with the measles virus is through the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, which is 97% effective against measles after 2 doses.
Downplaying the Measles Epidemic
More than 500 measles cases have been diagnosed in the US this year (there were only 284 cases total in 2024). Of the 500+ cases this year, 14 percent have been hospitalized. Two people have died, including the first pediatric death from measles in the US since 2003.
Secretary Kennedy has incorrectly described the current measles outbreak as common place and even said that the death of a child from measles in the US is “not unusual.” Additionally, Secretary Kennedy made the following FALSE claims on Fox News, “measles vaccine kills people every year,” that “measles vaccine causes blindness and deafness,” that “measles vaccine causes the same symptoms as measles,” and that natural measles “prevents cancer.”
I’ve said this previously, but it needs to be repeated —
The MMR does NOT cause blindness or death, but measles (the disease) does.
The MMR vaccine does NOT cause death, illness, encephalitis, or blindness.
According to the Infectious Disease Society of America, there are —
“no deaths related to the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine in healthy individuals.”
There is NO valid or reliable data to support the claim that measles prevents cancer. In fact, the opposite is true. Measles is harmful to the immune system. According to several papers published a decade ago —
“The measles virus can kill off many of the body’s memory immune cells, causing the immune system to “forget” past infections and erasing much of a person’s preexisting immunity. This so-called immunological amnesia makes measles survivors susceptible to infections they previously would have been protected against. The effects can last for as many as five years after a bout of measles as individuals slowly reacquire the immunity they lost.
The findings help explain why the introduction of the measles vaccine has reduced overall childhood mortality from infectious diseases by as much as 50% or more — far more than by preventing measles deaths alone.”
If Secretary Kennedy understood the science and wanted to keep our children and our communities safe and healthy, he would advocate for everyone to get the MMR vaccine. He would be sponsoring vaccine clinics and incentivizing vaccinations because vaccines save lives.
Rogue CDC Site
As mentioned in my Death By 1000 Cuts presentation (which I encourage you to watch), I highlight a rough CDC website that was live for several days. The site looked like the real CDC — same color palate, font, and logo. But it was an imposter site — traced back to RFK Jr’s anti-vaccine non-profit organization (which he is not officially part of now that he is Secretary). Questions about whether Secretary Kennedy knew about the site and supported it remain unanswered. The number of conflicts of interest is too many to count…
The rogue/imposter site looked like the real CDC. However, it promoted misinformation — testimonials from parents were given the same weight of evidence as epidemiologic studies, and non-peer reviewed papers were treated as biblical.
The site has since been taken down, but this is how sophisticated and sneaky those who spread misinformation have become. Unless you looked at the URL attached to this rogue site (it was realcdc.org) — you could easily mistake it for the real CDC.
Fighting against misinformation is a full-time job.
I will be here with you weekly throughout the next four years.
To create healthy communities for all, I am committing to —
Using data/science to create public health (aka preventative health) programs, policies, and interventions to save lives and decrease suffering.
Fighting misinformation.
Inspiring others to understand the science to make healthy decisions and create healthy communities.
Please do not forget to —
Click the “Like” button on the posts you enjoy. It’s a small thing, but it helps.
Share this post, either on social media or with your friends and families. It has NEVER been more important to get these three messages about misinformation to others in our communities.
And stay in touch — what questions do you have? information do you need? concerns are keeping you awake? Let me know, and we can discuss them together.
Epi(demiology) Matters is written by Dr. Becky Dawson, PhD MPH — an epidemiologist, teacher, mom, wife, and dedicated yogi. She is a tenured professor at Allegheny College, Research Director at a community hospital, and an exclusive contributor (all things health & medicine) at Erie News Now (NBC/CBS). Her goal is to create healthy communities for all. She writes Epi Matters — first & foremost because epidemiology does matter (to all of us), and she hopes that each post will help to educate and empower readers to be healthy and create healthy communities.
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