The Highwire with Del Bigtree - DEL ADDRESSES THE RFK JR MEASLES OP-ED

Episode Date: March 15, 2025

Del takes a candid look at Robert F Kennedy’s controversial Fox News op-ed about the measles outbreak, pointing out specific remarks he disagrees with, but also important facts about vaccines never before disclosed by a high ranking public health leader.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Lots of conversations, obviously, this week about Robert Kennedy Jr. He's now HHS Secretary. We're seeing this measles thing ramp up. We covered it in depth last week. I got into science that I don't think you've seen anywhere else. But Robert Kennedy Jr. made some statements he put out an op-ed, and a lot of people are panicking about it, especially those that consider themselves in this medical freedom movement or vaccine risk awareness movement. This is that article.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., measles outbreak is. call to action for all of us. The subheading MMR vaccine is crucial to avoiding potentially deadly disease. I want to make one thing clear before I even get started. I did not see that second line written anywhere in this article, right? That is the editors, I guess, at Fox or somebody put the headlines on that, but I didn't see that. Can we bring it back up? You can read the article yourself, but I did not see anywhere where Robert Kennedy Jr. said the MMR vaccine is crucial to avoiding potentially deadly disease. Anyway, but I will talk about what he did say. Some of it that I approve of. Some of it I don't necessarily. I'm going to talk about why. And for many of you watching,

you know that I was a part of Robert Kennedy Jr.'s director of communications. That job ended the moment he put his hand in the Bible and went in as HHS secretary. So I am no longer working for him. I'm not a spokesperson for him. And I have no desire to be an apologist for anything that I see going on. But I do have some sense of what's going on. Some of it insider baseball, if you will, and some of it just my own thoughts of strategy. But let's look at what we're all talking about right now. This is one of the major paragraphs that has got many of us upset.

Measles is a highly contagious respiratory illness with certain health risks, especially to unvaccinated individuals. The virus spreads through direct contact with infectious droplets when an infected person breathed, coughs or sneeze. Obviously, I take issue with that middle of that sentence where it ends up saying that it's especially dangerous or with certain health risks, especially to unvaccinated individuals. There's nothing that tells us that unvaccinated individuals are any more at risk when they come in contact with the measles virus as those that had the vaccine. As we showed you last week, there is vaccine failure going on. you are not showing symptoms, but you get deathly ill. Did anyone know you had the measles? Those are the types of things that no one is looking into. So there's no way to scientifically make that statement.

And let me be perfectly clear. I'm about to do interviews, I'm sure, with Politico and all sorts of news agencies that want to ask me what I think. Here's what I think. I think that death is unfortunate. It happens no matter what choice we make as parents. If you vaccinate, there's a risk to the vaccines. You can open up the insert itself and see right there all the adverse events that are right there, the MMR is known to have caused serious events, swelling of the brain, you name it. But there's also a risk to catching any illness there is. Measles, as we pointed out last week, was a Brady Bunch episode. If it was so incredibly deadly, why did it have a laugh track in the 1950s and 60s? I think you have to look at that. But let's

be clear, some people, as we've seen in Texas, can die from the measles. Now, I think it's really egregious for the media to jump on one death, the first death in 20 years, and act as though you, I mean, actually try to scare everybody. Can you imagine if you did that every time a child died from eating an egg from an allergy and tried to scare everybody from eating eggs? Children die from eating eggs every single year. Children die from eating peanuts every year. The media doesn't go out and try to make us all terrified of eating a peanut. That's what's happening right now in the media. They are directly opposed to what we knew about this virus back when it, when we had no vaccine. I'm going to get deeper in that. Let's look at the next

paragraph. Prior to introduction of the vaccine in the 1960s, virtually every child of the United States contracted measles. It's a really important point that Robert Kennedy Jr. is making here. He's quietly and very carefully telling you, if this was so deadly, how are we here? As Peter McCullough said at the beginning of the show up until 1957, it was believed that everyone born before 1957 caught the measles. We are alive today because measles did not kill any of our ancestors up until 1957. Some died, but mostly this was a benign childhood illness. It goes on in this paragraph to a part that I want to question. For example, in the United States, from 1953 to 1962, on average, there were 530,217 confirmed cases and 440 deaths, 440 deaths,

a case fatality rate of 1 in 1,205 cases. Now, I want to take issue with this here. I do know. We looked up, where is Robert Kennedy Jr. getting this information? Is it being handed to him? We looked it up because last week we told you that measles has a death rate of 1 in 10,000. Did we get it wrong? Let me show you what's happening here.

If you go to what Robert Kennedy Jr. or the CDC or whoever's helping write this, this is a study done in November 14, 2007. Historical comparisons of morbidity and mortality for vaccine preventable diseases in the United States. Now, clearly by that title, you can see that this is an article designed to try and show how amazing the vaccine program has been. So it may want to skew the numbers. How did it do that? Well, this is what it did. It goes on to say that the number of reported cases for 1953 to 1962, that the average reported deaths was about 440. So what they're saying is the reported cases, which was 530,217, they took an average of 440 deaths and said that's 1 out of 1,200 and something.

But here's the problem. They're only looking at the reported cases. So let's be clear. Back when this was a Brady Bunch episode, most people didn't take it very seriously. Everyone knew that they got it, their sisters got it, their brothers got it, their mom, their dad, their grandpa got it. This is just something we all do. And we take vitamin A and we all do just fine. So how many people got the measles but didn't tell their doctor?

Because why would you? This was like a common cold. Do you call your doctor every time you get a common cold? No, you do not. Well, that was recognized. by the original study that we were looking at. So let's take a look at that because this comes from 1962, and Alexander D. Langmuir was the head of the CDC for about 20 years when he wrote this.

This is what he writes, living in the time, not in 2007, living in the time himself. This is how he described it. This self-limiting infection of short duration, moderate severity, and low fatality has maintained a remarkably stable biological balance over the centuries. And he goes on to show us the graphs as he sees it. And what you see is that case fatality rate, when you go out and you see that by the time you include the adults, you're at one in 10,000. See that 10, roughly about 10 per 100,000 cases or a death rate of 1 in 10,000.

So that's the number they wrote about in the time they're living in. an exaggeration to say one in 1,200, especially since you know you're not being sincere when you're only going with the reported cases. And are we alone on this? The CDC even knows this. When you go to the MMWR at the CDC measles prevention recommendation of the immunization practice advisory committee, this is what they write. Before measles vaccine was available, more than 400,000 measles cases were reported each year in the United States. However, since virtually all children acquired measles, the true number of cases probably exceeded four million per year, the entire birth cohort. So they make the assumption when they look at it

that is being made by the guy living in the time and running the CDC. We know we're not seeing all the cases. We're only seeing the ones from the people that panic when they have a childhood illness. The rest, everybody stayed home and didn't talk about it, so we assume that that was about million cases, which brings us to one in 10,000. So Bobby, will you please look at the data, this one in 1,200, it's a huge difference between that and 1 and 10,000. All right, let me move on, because I think it's important to see what he's really doing in here. The decision to vaccinate is a personal one. Vaccines not only protect individual children for measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to vaccinate due to

medical reasons. I probably take more issue with that statement than any other statement that was in this article. Let's bring it back. Can I look at it very quickly? Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity. We have pointed out all last week, and if you didn't see that show, definitely look at it, all of the vaccine failure that we're seeing. In a Disneyland case, we saw that 30% of the cases were unvaccinated. I don't think we're going to see that here in Texas because the reports that I'm getting here in Texas is that it's very remote. It's isolated to a Mennonite community. In this Mennonite community, they do not vaccinate, but they're very isolated.

And so this really is spreading in an unvaccinated community. Now, are they having measles parties, as Dr. Peter McCullough asked? I don't know. I do know that that was happening when I visited the Hasidic Jewish community when they were having a measles outbreak in New York several years ago. For all the reasons, we were reporting. reported last week, which is that would reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease and reduce their risk of so many different cancers. And I know they're very healthy. And I'm going to go with the Brady

Bunch sense of this virus. And I think they would do just fine. All right. Let's go on to the next paragraph. As health care providers, community leaders, and policymakers, we have a shared responsibility to protect public health. This includes ensuring that accurate information about vaccine safety and efficacy is disseminated. Now, right here, I've seen a lot of you panic. This is where I think you're seeing Bobby Kennedy's true colors. What he's saying is I'm going to start showing you the inserts. You're going to start looking into this in the future. I want total transparency. So we're going to really talk about the efficacy. We're going to really talk about the safety studies that we're done. He's telling you right there, but a lot of us took it because some of the other

lines, whether they're written by him or not, is he, you know, dealing with a bureaucracy? Certainly he is, but I'm not going to forgive that, but let's go on to the rest of this paragraph and tell me if you don't see that he is talking about being transparent. We must engage with communities to understand their concerns, provide culturally competent education, and make vaccines readily accessible for all those who want them. That, my friends, is the freedom to choose. Donald Trump has said that, and I agree with him, and I have said it from the beginning. If you want to choose the vaccine program, I would never take that away from you. In fact, if you really want to have a vaccine, bring it over here and I'll slam it into your butt for you. It's a free country.

You just can't tell me what to do. And that's what Robert Kennedy Jr. is standing right there. Let's go on. It is also our responsibility to provide up-to-date guidance on available therapeutic medications. While there is no approved antiviral for those who may be infected, CDC has recently updated. their recommendations. What are they updated to say? Supporting administration of vitamin A. Under the supervision of a physician for those with wild, moderate, and even severe infections. Studies have found that vitamin A can dramatically reduce measles mortality. My God, do you see

what a small step for mankind we just made for the first time in like 50 years? the FDA and the CDC are now going to be recommending vitamins as a way to take care of yourself. Remember, people lost their licenses during COVID for recommending vitamin D. Now the head of HHS is saying, we're providing vitamin A to Texas right now, and we're recommending that you start taking it because that deficiency could increase your experience with measles. That's huge, you guys. That is a giant step. I think we have another paragraph here.

By 1960, before the vaccine's introduction, improvements in sanitation and nutrition had eliminated 98% of measles deaths. Good nutrition remains a best defense against most chronic and infectious illnesses. Vitamin A, C, and D, and foods rich in vitamins B12, C, and E should be a part of a balanced diet. Look at this, folks. He's telling you, back in the 1960s, we watched this thing. eradicate itself, the death rate drop, we didn't need the vaccine. Of course, he's talking about this graph that we bring up all the time. When was the last time you saw ahead of HHS, show you this, that the measles vaccine arrived long after this disease had already taken care of itself

and become a trivial childhood illness for the majority of Americans. Now, when we talk about these things, I want to say, I am here to put pressure on the government, and I think that we should demand the truth be out there. And maybe when they say that the measles vaccine adds to community immunity, we should all at least tell our friends, hey, I think that that's baloney, and here's why go and check out last week's show on the high wire. But I do want to bring up something. This is a little bit more insider baseball, if you will, that I don't know that you will hear anywhere else. This is a conversation I've had both with Dr. Andrew Wakefield when I was making VACs that shocked me. And a conversation that's come up in some of the dialogues around, you know, running if we were

to run HHS long before Robert Kennedy Jr. got there. And this is a problem. This is a problem that those of us that don't believe in the vaccine program or don't believe that our children need to use it or maybe parts of it, again, it's a free country. But I want to talk about something because it's very easy to judge being the HHS secretary from our couches and our barcalaunchers in our house. But there are actually complexities that maybe you haven't thought of, and this is one I want you to think about right now. Prior to the MMR vaccine, prior to vaccinating for measles, infants that are the only really truly susceptible group of children that are in danger of measles. You do not want your day one old, one month old, two month old, five month old

infant to catch the measles. At that age, it is dangerous, no doubt about it. But here's what's shocking. The numbers when we look back in the 1950s and 60s had very few infants that died. The reason being that their mothers passed on measles immunity to the baby at birth. How did that happen? Every mother that caught the measles as a child kept that immunity through life. And once they started having their own children, that natural immunity passed on to the infant, to the baby. They were protected for at least six months, oftentimes a year. And if the mother breastfed that child, that immunity could last up to a year and a half long. But certainly at six months to a year, now that that immunity given by mom wears off, now the child is at a

place where they're healthy enough to handle a measles infection. It was amazing. Nature or God, if you will, had done an amazing job at protecting our babies. But then we started vaccinating every person in this country, starting in 1963, 64, depending on how you look at the data. And we've been vaccinating ever since. Here's the problem. No mother that's been vaccinated with the MMR vaccine for measles passes anything on to their infants. Our infants now have zero protection whatsoever. They've tried giving MMR vaccine to mothers while they're pregnant or before they get pregnant to see if they could pass something on. Zip, zilch, nada. So now every infant in the United States of America is in danger. They're in a vulnerable, vulnerable position if they were to get

a measles infection. That is caused by the pharmaceuticals. syndical industry and this vaccine program an issue that never existed before. So now there's a concern that Dr. Andrew Wakefield brought to me. He said, I wouldn't eliminate the measles vaccine. We're going to have to back out very, very carefully and slowly because if everyone just stops using a measles vaccine, then you are going to see measles infections, which would be fine for everybody except all of these infants that are not protected because of this vaccine program. So I don't know if Robert Kennedy Jr. is thinking all of this through exactly,

but you do imagine if you're saying, hey, if you want to get an MMR and that's something you want to do, go right ahead and do it. I want you to ask yourself, would you say that knowing what I just told you? Because if you have people just suddenly stop using a measles vaccine and we're not really careful about this, every death of an infant will be on your head as head. As head, of HHS. Do you want that on your head and how would you explain it? See, there's complexities that now exists in this world because the pharmaceutical industry has destroyed our natural world. Instead, in fact, let me make it even clearer. The pharmaceutical industry and this measles vaccine did not eradicate measles and it is clear it never will be able to.

The only thing this measles program, this measles vaccine program eradicated was herd immunity itself. We now have infants that have no protection because of this terrible vaccine program for a trivial childhood illness that killed almost nobody, one in 10,000. But now we have babies at risk. And now as head of HHS, you've got to figure out how you language to everybody. which leads me to my last point. I know there's those of us that had hoped that maybe Bobby Kennedy will go there and eradicate the vaccine program because we're convinced all it does is injure people. But that was never what Robert Kennedy Jr. ran on.

He never said that. And by the way, even if he did that, what value would that have? How long would that last? You would panic at least half of this country, maybe more, saying, I thought you said you weren't going to eradicate the vaccine program, and now you have, and now we're all going to die. And they would panic and they would scream. And whatever happened, two years, four years down the road, either he gets fired or a new administration comes in, and they'll just set it all right back to where it was.

Because the new sheriff in town that's been elected by the new half of the country that didn't agree with where this was going, are just going to change it right back. You really want to protect children. And I know that this is the concern. you're saying children are dying right now, children are being injured right now, they are. But we have got to convince and show the real science to this whole country. We've got to move out this country. They didn't have the injured child we had.

They didn't know the relative that lost their child. They didn't see it with their own eyes. Maybe they're just now starting to wake up to it. Maybe they have a COVID injury and they don't know it. But we've got to work with them the same way someone worked with you at some point in your life. because most of you were pro-vaccine people at one time. You're probably an ex-vaxer now because something happened to you or you saw it happen nearby.

When Robert Kennedy Jr. says, I am going to be radically transparent. He is being radically transparent. He's talking about other ways you can take care of yourself. He's talking about vitamins. But he has got to meet this country where they're at. Just like any presidential candidate and Donald Trump says, I am now president for the entire country, not just the ones that agree with me.

Robert Kennedy Jr. is HHS secretary, not just for the people that voted for him or followed him or like Donald Trump, but for the whole country. And I believe that if he carefully reveals the science, if he starts doing the studies that we all need to have done, you can't really say whether the MMR vaccine is, you know, that much more dangerous than the virus itself, because there's barely any studies. Studies done. Studies need to be done. And if he doesn't act too radically and continues to hold the hands of everybody and they go, wow, I thought he'd be scary, but he's not being so scary.

He's saying if I want a vaccine, I can. If I want vitamin A, I can. Maybe I should listen to him. Maybe I should read all the science that he's offering to me. I believe on that journey, if he can slowly lead everybody to the promised land of truth, that we will make a change. We will demand as a nation, not a politicized, divided nation, but a whole nation together recognizing that there is no such thing as a partisan issue around the health of our children.

If we do this carefully, if Bobby does this right, everyone in this country will recognize what half of us know to be true right now. And then when those changes happen, they will be lasting changes that won't just save the hundreds of thousands or maybe millions right now. It will go on to save the millions and hundreds of millions and billions in the future of this species. You're allowed to go ahead and have all the judgment you want. This is a man who cares about every child in America and every child in the world. It's going to take strategy. And I will tell you, I know this guy.

He's one of the greatest lawyers the world has ever seen. He's won cases that nobody thought could be won against the government, against big corporations, fighting for the little man. And now he is taking that education and that understanding and bringing a strategy to that position that we've never seen before. Can we give him a couple days? Can we see where this goes? can we at least celebrate the changes we're seeing right now?

That's all that I'm going to do. I'm going to continue to show you as I have the truth as I see it. I want to say this for sure. I can is never going to stop fighting for the vaccine injured and bringing attention to the fact that MMR vaccine causes incredible injury. I believe when the science really comes in, it will be shown to be a contributor to autism. We have Holly's law that's been passed around this.

vaccine injury is real and we are not going to stop fighting for the truth there. Now, all of that said, Mark Siegel interviewed Robert Kennedy Jr. after he wrote this article and see if it just gives you a little bit of context. Take a look at this. I've been in touch with the governor, with Governor Abbott, who I talked to last week. As you know, a little girl died. She was a member of the Mennonite community. She was unvaccinated.

And she's the first measles' death since 2015 in our country. the second measles death since 2005. So, you know, the disease is a self-limiting childhood disease and the little girl who died who may have, where malnutrition may have been an issue in her death. So there's a lot of poverty in that area. The food is kind of a food desert. The best thing that Americans can do is to keep themselves healthy.

It's very, very difficult. It's for measles to kill a healthy, person. So if you're healthy, well-nourished. In fact, the, you know, measles at one point was killing about 10,000 people a year in our country. But those deaths were eliminated through nutrition and sanitation. In 1963, prior to the introduction of the vaccine, there was about 400 people who died from measles. Almost all of them were malnourced children. CDC in the past has not done a good job at quantifying the risk of vaccines. We are going to do that now so that people can make a real informed choice about what's

best for them, for their families, and their communities. My approach to this issue is just going to be absolute radical transparency. We're going to get the information. You know, we have a vaccine surveillance system in this country that just doesn't work. The CDC system, the CDC was ordered in 19, In 1886, when Congress gave immunity from liability to vaccine companies, it ordered CDC, create a surveillance system that really captures all of all vaccine injuries. Under CDC's own studies show that the current system that we have, the VAIR system,

the vaccine, adverse event reporting system captures fewer than 1% of vaccine injury. That is absolutely inexcusable. People need to know, we don't know what the risk profile is for these products. Americans have the right to know to be able to make an informed choice. You need to know the costs and the benefits. And we've never quantified the cost. And that's why there's so much mistrust. And we need to restore government trust. And we're going to do that by telling the truth and by doing rigorous science. Understand both safety and efficacy issues. I want to celebrate Robert Kennedy Jr. for bringing up the fact that this was an

illness that the death rate had gone down 98%. That we know that vitamins and being healthy is the best way to protect yourself. And that really studying the truth, really studying the vaccine inserts, you should all be asking for it. Look at the side effects of the vaccine. Look at the ingredients. You know, the MMR is one of the few that actually has aborted fetal DNA in it? You feel like injecting the DNA in cells of a dead baby into your own child? There's a lot of people that don't like that idea right there, but how many know that's the truth. So let's get to transparency, but let's celebrate what's happening, because there's a lot of positive things happening.