Public Health News | Measles outbreak, RFK Etc

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RFK Jr. isn’t staying in his lane. Trump is thrilled.​

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has expanded his authority well beyond the bounds of a traditional health secretary.


“…“Midterm success, in a large way, depends on MAHA success,” said one Trump adviser who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “This is about President Trump, and this is about the House and the Senate.”

Kennedy, who has his own base of superfans and polled as high as 15 percent before dropping out of the 2024 race and allying with Trump, has already sought major changes to programs run by the Agriculture Department. He’s headlined new initiatives typically driven by the Environmental Protection Agency, and has described his job as encompassing “anything I need to do to make America healthy again.”

The extraordinary leeway has empowered Kennedy to reshape a Cabinet role traditionally reserved for low-key managers and health policy wonks, further elevating his political profile and turning the former Democrat into a linchpin for Trump’s domestic ambitions.…”
 
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Scientists Find Measles Likely To Become Endemic in the US Over Next 20 Years

A new study forecasts more than 850,000 measles cases over the next 25 years if US vaccination rates stay the same. Millions of infections are possible if rates drop.
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With vaccination rates among US kindergarteners steadily declining in recent years and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vowing to reexamine the childhood vaccination schedule, measles and other previously eliminated infectious diseases could become more common. A new analysis published today by epidemiologists at Stanford University attempts to quantify those impacts.

Using a computer model, the authors found that with current state-level vaccination rates, measles could reestablish itself and become consistently present in the United States in the next two decades. Their model predicted this outcome in 83 percent of simulations. If current vaccination rates stay the same, the model estimated that the US could see more than 850,000 cases, 170,000 hospitalizations, and 2,500 deaths over the next 25 years. The results appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“I don’t see this as speculative. It is a modeling exercise, but it’s based on good numbers,” says Jeffrey Griffiths, professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, who was not involved in the study. “The big point is that measles is very likely to become endemic quickly if we continue in this way.”
 
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