It Could Happen Here - Anti-Vax America: Viral Texas

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

The viral measles outbreak that began in West Texas has taken the lives of two children and one adult, and has reached over eight hundred cases, with thousands potentially exposed to the disease. This episode serves as a deep dive into the outbreak, when it started, how it spread, and will set the stage for the remaining four episodes. Sources: https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2025/05/20/measles-updates-texas-cases-pass-700-as-illness-reported-in-30-states/ https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/the-measles-outbreak-in-west-texas-and-beyond https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2025/03/24/data-these-charts-show-how-measles-vaccination-rates-declined-in-texas-public-schools/  https://www.dallasnews.com/news/texas/2025/03/24/too-good-for-this-earth-parents-of-child-who-died-in-measles-outbreak-say-no-to-vaccine/ https://www.verywellhealth.com/measles-outbreak-texas-11682808  https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8828106/ https://www.latimes.com/newsletters/la-me-ln-essential-california-20190507-story.html  https://slate.com/technology/2025/04/measles-cases-epidemic-worst-case-vaccine.html  https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/rfk-jr-plandemic-funding-1235173801/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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The murderer is still out there. Each week I investigate a new case. If there's a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murderline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Cool Zone Media. I'm Stephen Monticelli. I'm a journalist in Dallas and an occasional Cool Zone Media contributor. You may have seen in the news lately that there's a major measles outbreak centered in Texas.

It started back in January of this year in the West Texas County of Gaines, and it has since spread to at least two other states. As of this recording, Texas has reported over 700 cases associated with the measles outbreak. New Mexico has reported over 60. Oklahoma has reported over 15. And there are other states that have also reported

measles cases that may or may not be linked to this outbreak. It's the first major measles outbreak in a decade, and it's already taken three lives. Two unvaccinated children, the first of such deaths in more than 20 years, and one adult. All were unvaccinated. At the root of the outbreak are low vaccination rates, which took a sharp downturn after the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic as dubious vaccine skepticism and opposition to vaccines,

both mandatory and in general, became a partisan political issue. It is no coincidence that the low vaccination rate in Gaines County, where the outbreak first began, corresponds with deep red Republican politics. Measles is a sort of canary in the coal mine. It's one of the most highly communicable diseases and consequently is among the first to appear in communities with low vaccination rates.

An outbreak in California about a decade ago was eventually stemmed when the state legislature banned vaccine exemptions for school-aged children. This action spurred response and gave a shot in the arm to a nascent coalition of vaccine skeptics and outright anti-vaccination groups that had previously struggled to get political traction. By 2020, such groups had gained meaningful amounts of influence in red states like Texas and Oklahoma. Then came COVID-19, and suddenly a disparate set of groups—big pharma skeptics, wellness influencers, health freedom libertarians, and conservative religious groups, to name a few— coalesced in a formidable political force under the banner of the Republican Party, whose politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic served as a sort of ideological cement to unite

them. The logical conclusion of this development is represented in the avatar of R.F.K. Jr., a long-time vaccine misinformation peddler who now sits atop the highest federal government health bureaucracy, a perch from which he continues to spread debunked anti-vaccination tropes. Like a proverbial fox in the hen house, RFK Jr. has repeatedly downplayed the importance of vaccines in the battle against measles and has refused to distance himself from long debunked anti-vaccination arguments such as that vaccines cause autism. His influence and the influence of the vaccine skeptic movement,

of which he is a central figure, can be seen in responses from local West Texans who have opted for junk palliatives like vitamin A or measles exposure parties over vaccination. The viral spread of anti-vax ideology threatens to pitch us back a hundred years in time when thousands of children and adults either died or were disabled every year from diseases like measles, polio, and smallpox. Research into the side effects of vaccines has repeatedly shown that the risks associated with vaccination are far lower than the risks of an infection, particularly for vulnerable populations like young children, the elderly, and people with suppressed immune systems.

Some people genuinely cannot get vaccines, such as certain newborn babies, and thus are at higher risk should an outbreak of a deadly disease occur. When 95% of a population is vaccinated in an area, diseases can be entirely removed from circulation. And that's indeed what happened to smallpox and for a time measles. But the downward trend in vaccination rates supercharged by the marriage of right-wing politics with anti-vaccination beliefs of all stripes means that our collective immunity is at risk. This week, I will be your host on It Could Happen Here as I take you through a five episode mini-series called Anti-Vax America. Through interviews with public health officials, vaccine scientists, medical professionals, and historians, I will explore the ongoing measles outbreak and how it serves as a microcosm for where we are,

how we got here, and where we could go if anti-vax beliefs continue to become mainstream in the United States. In the first episode, I will cover the origin of the measles outbreak in Texas, its deadly consequences, the varying responses from public health officials at different levels of government, and the consequence of misinformation being spread at the national and local level. In the second episode, I will unearth the deep roots of anti-vaccination belief in the United States, how it's changed over time, and why it's basically become synonymous with right-wing politics in our current day. In the third episode, I will explore the overlap between anti-vax beliefs and the belief in supernatural healing

and miracles that is common among a particular movement of conservative Christianity that has tied itself closely to President Donald Trump. In the fourth episode, I will untangle the twisted history of eugenics and how its influenced public health and vaccination attitudes, as well as the historical echo of eugenics that can be found in RFK Jr Junior's Make America Healthy Again agenda. And in the last episode, I'll consider what could happen in the United States, what could happen here if vaccination rates continue to plummet and vaccine skeptics like

RFK Junior continue to dictate public health policy. But before we get there, a quick ad break. I'm Jake Hanrahan, journalist and documentary filmmaker. Away Days is my new project, reporting on countercultures on the fringes of society all across the world. Live from the underground, you'll discover no rules fighting, Japanese street racing, Brazilian favela life and much more. All real, completely uncensored. This is Unique Access with straightforward on the ground reporting.

We're taking you deep into the dirt without the usual airs and graces of legacy media. A way that showcases what the mainstream cannot access. Real underground reporting with real people, no excuses. For the past decade I've been going to places I shouldn't be meeting people I shouldn't know. Now you can come along too. Listen to the Away Days podcast, reporting from the underbelly on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds

of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. I have never found her, and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator

to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into,

call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

Across the country, cops called this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Inc. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Inc. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple

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And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Stephens.

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was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh my God, it's go time. You actually sent it?

Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you go to find your podcast. Gaines County, the epicenter of the West Texas outbreak, is a largely rural place, home to oil field workers, farmers, ranchers, and several Mennonite communities. Politically, it's very conservative. It sits on the Texas-New Mexico border, about 360 miles west of Dallas, where I live.

The largest city in the region, Lubbock, is two counties over. Lubbock is home to 260,000 plus people and has the largest hospitals in the area. It was at one of those hospitals that the first child died of measles in over two decades. As the number of cases in the region began to increase, Lubbock became a central hub for both treatment and the dissemination of public health information. Weeks before R.F.K. Jr. or Texas Governor Abbott spoke on the issue, local public health officials and medical institutions were on the front lines in Lubbock. So, my name is Katherine Wells and I am the director for Lubbock Public Health. Lubbock Public Health is the city and county health department in both the city and county of Lubbock, Texas. I've been in this role for about 10 years now.

We're about 75 miles from Gaines County, which is where the epicenter of this measles outbreak is. Let's maybe go back all the way to the day that it began. The first case came out in January. So can you take us a little back to that day and what was going on in your world? What were you doing and how did you hear about this first case and what your reaction was? Yeah, well, I actually need to take a couple of days before the announcement.

I first found out about the possibility of measles that Friday, the 28th. I have all my dates messed up. But it's that Friday before the first case was announced. One of my staff came and told me that we had two children that had been admitted to our local hospital. So we have the Children's Hospital for this whole region. People come over 200 miles to come to the Children's hospital in Lubbock. And she mentioned that there was two children. The physician thought it might be measles that they were going to send for testing.

So in public health, measles is so rare that even sending somebody for testing is required to be reported to public health. That physician thought it was measles. We kind of waited over the weekend. And then that Monday and Tuesday, I started hearing some rumors that there were multiple measles cases down on the ground in Gaines County, which was interesting. People were calling and saying, you know, I heard this rumor. Have you heard this? And I'm like, nope. And then all of a sudden, those two cases, or those two cases both tested positive. And then when we went and started talking to the families and learning more, we realized that those rumors about measles

circulating in Gaines County was true. And there were reports of multiple individuals that had been sick and measles had probably been there for at least a little bit of time. And then when we got the confirmed cases, that really just put everything into really moving very quickly, trying to really figure out what was going on for measles. So at that time, it was flu season. And so, was your office preparing or working on anything else at that time when you had first heard about this first testing and started hearing about these rumors? Yeah.

I mean, we had increases in flu. We had increases in COVID. We actually had some birds that had died that had tested positive with the new avian flu. That's a busy time of the year for public health with lots of different reports coming in, lots of multiple reports of pertussis. And it's not unusual that we have a physician wanting to test for measles ruling out. I mean, it happens a couple of times a year, but in my entire career, every time that happened, it'd always been negative. So I was kind of thinking that it was one of those cases, especially that Friday afternoon, like, oh, this is just a

doctor, you know, just wanting to rule something out. You know, it's probably flu or something else going on with those children. And so when you had gotten that confirmation, it was verified that those cases had indeed been measles. I mean, what was going through your mind at that time? I mean, that was like, you know, people have always talked about we're kind of on the edge of seeing more measles outbreaks in the United States. And it was really kind of an oh no, a crap moment of, wow, this is in our backyard.

Is our department ready to take this on? And then also reaching out to Gaines County, which has a much smaller health department, and being like, what can we help you with? Do you guys know what you need next? They don't have a communications person. It was like my staff writing the press release for Gaines County to send out to make the notifications about the first measles cases. It was just really, what can we do to help

them immediately and figure out what the next steps would be with that? Since January, cases have been on the rise. And so we're in a different place now than just two cases. Can you just tell us a little bit about where things are now in Lubbock and how medical authorities have responded to the outbreak? So initially, you know, all of the cases were in Gaines County. The only exposures we were seeing outside of Gaines County was when somebody was seeking medical care and was sitting in, say, a waiting room at a physician's office and then they were exposing other individuals. But after a couple of weeks, we started seeing

spread outside of Gaines County. So we were seeing more and more cases in those surrounding counties. And then we started getting cases in Lubbock that's 75 miles away. Over the last three weeks, we've really seen the cases in Lubbock increase. We originally just had a handful. Now we're up to 41 or 42, and that number will be updated again tomorrow. So just seeing more and more spread of measles and the concern is that public health can't necessarily trace those back to a specific case. So people that have gone out to the store or gone to a public place have now contracted

measles. So tell me a little bit more about what efforts have taken place and what sort of initiatives have been put into place as measles have spread. What does that look like from Lubbock Public Health or any of your partners? Yeah. So, ours is really, the first one was getting testing set up. Originally, when this started, all of our testing samples had to go to Austin, which is about a five and a half hour drive. So,

working with the state health department to get testing capability up here in Lubbock, so we could quickly identify people. The next one is really about education, providing information to the physician's offices, the hospitals about measles, because we hadn't seen it in 21 years here. So just think about how many physicians have been trained over the last 21 years that never saw a measles case in their residency. So getting them to feel comfortable about what the signs and symptoms are and really making sure that we were notifying, or that they were notifying public health and getting people tested and then doing that contact

tracing. And then the other big one's vaccinations. There's two ways to prevent measles. One is the vaccination that's going to protect you, and then the other one is avoiding being exposed to measles. So really getting more and more people vaccinated with pop-up clinics and then running a measles vaccination clinic here at our health department. Can you tell me a little bit about what the response in particular to the vaccination clinics being set up has been? Have a lot of people shown up for that? Has it drawn a lot of new people that are trying to get their children vaccinated?

It's a mix. I feel that our vaccination clinic here at our health department's been pretty successful in that we're getting people every day coming in to get vaccinated. And we're seeing people that were hesitant prior that had chosen not to vaccinate their children, kind of with the idea, well, I've never seen measles or mumps or rubella, so why give my child a vaccine if that doesn't exist?

Now that measles are circulating in the community, they're changing that thought process and are coming forward to get vaccinated. Some of the rural clinics have been a lot harder to get people to come in. I mean, they've stood rural clinics have been a lot harder to get people to come in. I mean, they've stood up clinics and only a handful of people have come in to that clinic that day. So real mixed response. But I think as public health, it's important for us to be offering the MMR vaccine with as few barriers as possible.

So you were in this position during the COVID pandemic and when that began and all throughout it. So can you tell me a little bit what it was like working in your role as a public health official at that time? And then also maybe whether things are any different today? Has anything changed? I mean, I think our community did fairly well throughout COVID given, you know, everything that went on.

I've always believed in just being honest and talking about what I do know, what I don't know, what the science is showing. And I think that helped our community get vaccinated and take some of the precautions during COVID. And I'm kind of taking that same thought process and that same leadership style as we're dealing with measles out here. With measles, it's a challenge.

I think people are paying attention to it because it's really impacting children, whereas we didn't see that same impact with COVID. It's frustrating because we know what the solution is. When COVID showed up, nobody in public health and the medical community knew exactly what COVID is. With measles, we know what we're dealing with. And we also have a known solution, which is a vaccine.

So it is frustrating that people are choosing not to vaccinate still. The other challenges is during COVID, all of our other work for public health got put on hold here with measles. Our health department's still expected to do all of our other jobs and respond to a measles outbreak, which is really stressful on staff. I can completely understand that. And in terms of some stressful things, completely understand that. In terms of some stressful things, I understand that just from doing some background research and reading up, that your office or maybe even you yourself were subject to

some threats or some pretty extreme reactions during COVID. Is that the case and is that still happening? Thankfully, it's not happening. During COVID, we did have some very strong opinions and some threats, mostly around when the children's vaccine was released and why we were promoting that. We've not seen that with measles, which is very good. I don't want any of my staff to be threatened. You always get these random posters on people that post on social media, but they're not even individuals from our community.

Got it. Okay. Well, I'm glad to hear that genuinely, that is a positive change, I suppose. That is something that's a good difference. And also good support from our pediatricians and the medical community has been very good and outspoken about the importance of getting vaccinated, which has helped us. So where do you see things going from here? Do you think we'll continue to see more cases? I know that they're on the rise, but do you think that will continue or do you have other concerns about potentially other outbreaks

of diseases that had been kind of pushed out of circulation coming back? Yeah. All of the above. I think in Gaines County in particular, we don't have a good understanding of where we are in the epidemic, like how many vulnerable individuals in that community are still remaining. So we don't know how long that initial epicenter outbreak's going to last. We're also seeing, you know, as measles gets into a community, it is so infectious that it is going to find all of those little pockets of people that are unvaccinated? And that's what we're seeing here in Lubbock County is measles taking hold and finding little pockets and public health trying to go put out little fires, trying to make sure

that we figured out who's been exposed and who's at risk. You described how this is an incredibly infectious disease and it is finding all the pockets of people that are vulnerable or not vaccinated. And so I'm wondering if there are any examples or specifics that you could share about how the outbreak is impacting communities or particular communities. Has it resulted in disruptions in school for children? Has it caused any other notable breakdowns or pauses in day-to-day regular activity? In Lubbock, those breakdowns have been more minor. That a child, say that's unvaccinated, has been exposed,

and that's requiring that child to sit out from school. So there is that element that they're missing those important days of education. Our bigger impacts here have been around daycares. We had a large outbreak, or large in the sense that we've had now eight children, or eight individuals associated with one daycare, all test positive with measles.

So that's meant that children have had to be sent home from daycare, which then impacts parents' ability to work and also impacts daycare along with the number of students there, children having to go home that have been exposed, working a lot to get additional doses of vaccine into a daycare. So it both impacts the public health system, our healthcare system, because kids need health, but then it also impacts parents because if your child's not in daycare, a parent can't go to work. parents, because if your child's not in daycare, a parent can't go to work. Those have been the bigger disruptions. And then disruptions in our healthcare system that we're now having to do a lot of screen, like you call to make an appointment for the doctor, and it's kind of like COVID.

Have you been exposed to measles? Are you vaccinated? They're asking all those screening questions before people enter our healthcare facilities. In terms of sort of interactions with the state and their response to this, can you tell me a little bit more about how the state of Texas has responded and partnered with local authorities? Yeah, so we have a good working relationship with the state of Texas. Texas has to do everything differently. So we kind of have this decentralized

system where the state and locals both kind of have their own authority, very independent at the county level. But the state has offered support to us. They've helped me bring in temp nurses to be able to assist with vaccine clinics. They're paying for some additional staff to answer phones. So we're getting that kind of support. And then I meet with the state regularly about what's going on in Lubbock, how Lubbock fits in the context of the rest of this outbreak and how we're going to work together to move forward. We always thought of measles as an airplane ride away. So we would see somebody travel to a foreign country, come back to the United States, and maybe

pass measles to a couple of people in their household. This outbreak is not that. We're seeing transmission within a community, and it's making measles more of a car ride away. And that's concerning because we have individuals that are susceptible to measles either through too young to be vaccinated, not vaccinated, or some other immune compromised state. So it's just concerning that we're going to see more outbreaks spreading out into the United States, especially as we're moving into spring and summer where people are traveling

and driving through communities that we could just see kind of explode everywhere, which is my biggest fear. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, given that vaccinations and to some degree public health in general has kind of become a politicized issue, I can only imagine that it can make it quite difficult for you to convey these messages to people and for them to understand them.

Yeah, and I've talked to many health department directors across the country. And one of the values of local public health is that, you know, all of us, local health department directors and those staff, we're coming from these individuals' communities and our goals to keep our community safe. And it really doesn't matter what's happening at the federal level. It's about your community, your connections, watching out for these diseases, and then convincing your community to do the right thing. And luckily, we have, you know, 2,500 health departments across the US, and that is their goals. And hopefully, people will continue to trust their local directors.

That is a great point. And I'm wondering if, is there anything else that you can speak to on how the distrust that is there can potentially be bridged or, you know, specific things that y'all have done to try to sort of rebuild that trust or establish that trust. I mean, with us locally, it's making sure that we're talking to our local news and our local reporters and answering the phone call when a concerned parent calls and going through the information we know and utilizing our local physicians to tell them the story. Because I think if you can still see it at the local level, people can really understand that this is a risk and really make that right choice to get the vaccine or if they've been exposed to stay-home. We'll hear more from Catherine in just a moment.

But first, as we are obligated to do, here's some ads. I'm Jake Hanrahan, journalist and documentary filmmaker. Away Days is my new project reporting on countercultures on the fringes of society all across the world. Live from the underground you'll discover no rules fighting, Japanese street racing, Brazilian favela life and much more. All real, completely uncensored.

This is unique access with straight forward on the ground reporting, we're taking you deep into the dirt without the usual airs and graces of legacy media. Awadey showcases what the mainstream cannot access. Real underground reporting with real people, no excuses. For the past decade I've been going to places I shouldn't be, meeting people I shouldn't know. Now you can come along too. I'm Catherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case.

They've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Helen Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Helen Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened

when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Inc. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June

4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. quietly listen and all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Stephens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happen. And then everybody else wanna get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day of ninth grade,

and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh dad, all they were doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slum flower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money.

I'm like, oh, my God, it's go time. You actually sent it? Mm. Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you go to find your podcast. So I do understand there's quite a bit of skepticism towards vaccination, and that's certainly going to be a subject that we're exploring in this podcast.

And at least by the numbers, it shows that in places like West Texas, and particularly more rural areas, even more than a place like Lubbock, that there's pretty low vaccination rates. Several counties are below the, I guess, what is it, 95% threshold that really helps bring measles out of circulation. And so, you know, I'm kind of curious, you've been there for over a decade. Do you have a sense of sort of what the key drivers of vaccine hesitancy are and why so many West Texans choose not to get their children vaccinated? You did, you already mentioned, you

know, the fact that it's, it hasn't been seen for so long. So it was sort of out of sight, out of mind maybe, but are there other drivers that come to mind for you? Yeah. I mean, I don't think West Texas is unique from many other communities in the United States. People are very much influenced by social media and some of our media outlets. There's a lot of scare tactics or misinformation around vaccines and anything from autism that's been debunked so many times about vaccines causing autism, other misinformation about what's in vaccines and the risks of vaccines.

Every medical intervention, every medication has some type of risk, but vaccines have been long studied. And especially when you're looking at the MMR vaccine, we've been using this for 50 years. And that's why we don't have measles cases or hadn't had measles cases. But people have really bought into a lot of that information out there. And it's really hard to combat that. I've gone and read the stories, and I can see how people feel miss and pick up on this. But I just don't know from a public health standpoint how we combat it. Right. Right.

It's a very difficult problem, a challenge that has a long history and has a lot of different factors. And things are so complex. It's not a one for one. It's been a challenge. But I think out here, I always felt like we hadn't been impacted as much from some of these anti-vaccine movements. I think post-COVID, people have a mistrust in government or wanting to listen to mandates or recommendations or whatever we call them. We're just seeing that more and more in that hesitancy,

to come through and trust both government, trust the medical system are all concerns. And that all contributes to these lower vaccination rates. In a media environment rife with misinformation about vaccines and public health, Catherine's perspective is refreshing and a bit heartening. Local public health officials like her have done great work to raise the alarm around viral outbreaks, but they're up against a problem that is much bigger than what they

can address on their own. And that's the widespread belief in bogus theories, be they scientific or religious, that undercut the proven science around vaccines. Much of this misinformation comes from places far from West Texas, like the anti-vaccination group Children's Health Defense, which R.F.K. Jr. previously led. It is widely recognized as a major source of online vaccine misinformation, including the debunked allegation that vaccines cause autism. After the death of a six-year-old child of measles in March, Children's Health Defense released a video interview with the parents who said they still would not take the vaccine

and wouldn't recommend it to other parents. Here's a clip from that interview in which the Mennonite parents speak in their lowland German dialect. So when you see the fear mongering in the press, which is what we want to stop, we want to get the truth out. What do you say to the parents that are rushing out panicking to get their MMR for the six months or maybe with the 16th that child is gonna die of measles But there's a problem to your daughter She says they would still say don't do the shots there's doctors that can help with measles

They're not as bad as they're making it out to be And also the measles they're not as bad as they're making it out to be. Also the measles are good for the body, for the people, because the measles are giving the, what is it? What can? Incentive. Infection. Infection. Yeah. Inflammation. Infection. Yeah, they get infection out and...

He's... Do you mean this immune system? Yeah. They're trying to say that the measles actually help spill the immune system in the long run if they get the measles now. No, actually not. In the long run they... In the long run they can't... Like, they can't... Yeah, they can't get cancer as easily. It fights off a lot of stuff, the immunity that they get from the measles. Some of what public officials like Catherine have been trying to combat is coming from other medical professionals much closer to home, such as Dr. Ben Edwards, who appeared

in a children's health defense video and has promoted anti-vaccination misinformation on his own podcast, including the recommendation to take vitamin A to treat measles, an approach that has resulted in several cases of vitamin A toxicity among children diagnosed with measles in West Texas. During their interview with Children's Health Defense, the Mennonite parents of the first child to die of measles actually said they were working with Dr. Ben Edwards for their treatment.

One video that went viral online showed Edwards visibly infected with measles at the time, treating patients with measles and inhabiting spaces where individuals who were not infected with measles were present. And this elicited widespread condemnation from the medical community quite unsurprisingly. Nevertheless, it demonstrates the sort of attitude of certain medical professionals in the area who have used their platforms and their credentials to sow doubt about the importance of the vaccine. Making matters worse, R.F.K.

Jr. praised Dr. Edwards as a quote, extraordinary healer just one week after Edwards was seen in that video treating patients while himself infected with measles. While anti-vaccination beliefs have certainly gone viral in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, they are by no means new. Practitioners like Edwards and advocacy groups like Children's Health Defense have been peddling their snake oil for decades. But the roots of anti-vaccination belief run even deeper than that. In the next episode of Anti-Vax America, I'll do a deep dive into the history of anti-vaccination beliefs to understand the origins of them, how they've changed over time, and why they've become embraced in mainstream right-wing politics, which is a change from the sort of bipartisan

and even sometimes progressive nature of some anti-vaccination skepticism. But until then, thanks for listening. I'm Stephen Monachali for Cool Zone Media, and this is Anti-Vax America. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, CoolZoneMedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. I'm Jake Hanrahan, journalist and documentary filmmaker. Away Days is my new project, reporting in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. life and much more. All real, completely uncensored. Listen to the Awaited podcast reporting from the underbelly on the iHeart Radio app, Apple

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