The Fundamental Problem with R.F.K., Jr.,’s Nomination to H.H.S.

In 2018, two children in Samoa died after receiving measles vaccines, because the nurses who administered them had mistakenly mixed the vaccine powder with a muscle relaxant. Local vaccine skeptics seized on the tragedy, and the government temporarily suspended its immunization program. Children’s Health Defense, an organization chaired by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., posted about the events on Facebook, where the group was one of the largest purchasers of anti-vaccine advertisements. The Samoan government reinstated the program, following an investigation. But immunization rates remained perilously low, with less than a third of infants getting vaccinated, and, a few months later, the country experienced a devastating measles outbreak.

If “less than a third of infants getting vaccinated” refers to the vaccine coverage rate of 31% in 2018 reported by WHO and UNICEF then it is inaccurate to imply that this same coverage rate applies to proportion of infants getting vaccinated after the suspension in April 2019 and before the outbreak was declared in October 2019. The UNICEF article is addressed here.

It is unclear in this and many other articles whether the author is assuming vaccine uptake was hostorically low and whether newly born infants falling into the range of schedule MCV1 during the suspension of the program were supposed to “catch up” during this time.