The Opinions - Measles, MAHA Moms and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

A measles outbreak in West Texas has claimed two lives, and President Trump’s secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is spreading false claims about the disease and the vaccines that nearly eliminated it. In this episode of “The Opinions,” a Times Opinion editor, Alexandra Sifferlin, and an Opinion writer, Jessica Grose, discuss how the successes and failures of our modern health care system brought us to this moment and the Make America Healthy Again movement. We have eliminated “so many things that used to kill so many people that people have forgotten how dangerous those things are,” Grose says.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Opinions” at nytimes.com/column/the-opinions.This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. Edited by Alison Bruzek. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Original music by Carole Sabouraud, Isaac Jones and Pat McCusker. The show’s production team also includes Derek Arthur and Jillian Weinberger. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The Director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm Alexandra Sifrelin, and I'm a health and science editor for New York Times Opinion. For the last two months, we've been covering the ongoing and significant changes to public health institutions in the United States. We're starting to see how the cracks in the system are playing out. This morning, new numbers show the measles virus spreading like wildfire. Fifteen states across the U.S. are now reporting cases of measles. However, a majority of the cases are centered in Texas and New Mexico,

with at least two unvaccinated people dying in connection. Amid that, the new Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is blaming the toll on poor diets and lack of exercise. The best thing that Americans can do is to keep themselves healthy. It's very, very difficult for measles to kill a healthy person. I'm with my colleague, Jessica Gross, who has been writing about RFK Jr. And why he and some of his particularly controversial views have become so prevalent and popular. Great to see you, Jess.

Thanks so much for having me. Tell me, what do you make of Kennedy's response to the measles outbreak in Texas right now? It's woefully inadequate. quit. I was just looking up the response of Alex Azar, who was the Health and Human Services Secretary under Trump in his first term. And what he said when there was a somewhat similar measles outbreak in New York City among ultra-Orthodox Jews is just night and day to what RFK Jr. is saying in terms of RFK Jr. minimizing the threat and how contagious measles is. So let me read you what Alex Azar said in a

statement when there was an active measles outbreak in 2019. Measles is not a harmless childhood illness, but a highly contagious, potentially life-threatening disease. We have the ability to safely protect our children in our communities. Vaccines are a safe, highly effective public health solution that can prevent this disease. So contrast that with what RFK Jr. is saying. You know, he in the past has talked about how when he had measles as a child, he just got to hang out with his brothers and watch TV all day. just really minimizing how dangerous this disease is, and it honestly breaks my heart. I think that's such a good point contrasting the first Trump administration health leadership with the current one because it is so different.

You have Alex Azar, who is very involved in Operation Warp Speed, in bringing the vaccines that helped end the COVID pandemic. And then you have now one of the most famous vaccine critics in America in the same position, only a handful of years later. I think it's just remarkable. How do you think about the differences between Trump administration health officials the first time around versus now? So I don't think we were going to come out of what happened in 2020 and 2021 without some real dense. to public health. This just happens after pandemics. It is somewhat unavoidable because everyone is so afraid. It is a very, very scary thing to live through. And so I think people become sort of primed for alternative health information because they want to have a sense of control. So if the scary disease, it is spreading, you know, ripping through the country, if you say, oh, if I just take care of my health, if I exercise, if I, you know, don't eat GMOs, if I avoid, see, you know, or whatever the latest fat is, I won't die, I won't get sick from these diseases. And it's a very comforting message in some ways, even as it is not medically accurate or helpful for people.

So I do understand, at least psychologically, why this sort of messaging has caught on. I can't say how deeply Trump feels about vaccines or not, because, you know, as you just pointed out, he sponsored Operation Warp Speed. And so, you know, I don't know that he has some firmly held beliefs about vaccines. All I know is that Kennedy is now the head of health and human services, and I find that terrifying. Before we talk about that, if we can go back to measles for a moment, a question you and I are probably both getting a lot is how worried should I be about measles? So what I like to say is I am more worried than I have ever been in my 15 years of covering this issue, but I'm still not super worried. And the reason for that is that the vaccine

is still highly effective. The majority of American parents, the vast, vast majority still believe in the MMR vaccine. They still believe in the polio vaccine. They still have access to that as much as they can get it. I don't know what is going to happen in the next four years. And that's what scares me. You've written that Make America Healthy Again, which is Kennedy's approach to public health in America, is an emotional, not an intellectual movement. Can you say more about that and how you think about that as a mother as well? So I can understand how if you are worried about something about your kid, you can find any kind of rabbit hole. And if you don't have a lot of health knowledge to begin with and you don't have a lot of trust in doctors, maybe you had a really bad experience giving birth.

Maybe you had a very bad experience when you had an infant. there is a group of people willing to welcome you with open arms over your skepticism and say, yes, you're right to be skeptical. These things are evil. If you just do X, Y, and Z, you'll be healthy forever. Don't listen to those people who want to put poison into your body. And I've had experiences, you know, reporting on other things where you can sort of get an outsized idea of how prevalent something is just because you have read too much of it on the internet. So if all you're reading is vaccine injuries, my kid was never the same, this horrible thing happened, even if it's not true because we have no idea how much of what people are saying on the internet has any truth to it, it can do something to you. I was talking a couple months ago about how I had been doing all of this research on child sexual assault. And it's so bleak and so upsetting that I started to be like, I know the prevalence of this, but I'm starting to understand

why people begin to worry about their kids getting kidnapped from Walmart parking lots. Do you know what I mean? Like, I don't actually think that's going to happen to my kid, but if you just read enough online about these horrible true things that actually did happen to people, it starts to get into your brain. And it's very hard to combat when they've really, really fallen down the rabbit hole and become a true believer because you can show them all sorts of charts and graphs and say, look at the life expectancy in, you know, 1910 versus today.

That's all because of vaccines and antibiotics. And they'll have their sort of alternative facts that are not true. You've written about how Kennedy's ideas are not particularly new. Where does this movement and Kennedy's ideas come from? So I spent so much time trying to understand how RFK's coalition made sense intellectually because, you know, we've spent a lot of times talking about vaccines, but he has a lot of fellow travelers who are not anti-vaccine. They're pro-psychedelics or they have other sort of random health beliefs.

They love raw milk. And so I kept trying to make it make sense. And I said to my editor, you know what this really reminds me of this movie, The Road to Wellville, which was a movie that was in the 90s about an alternative health practitioner named John Kellogg. who started the cereal company with his brother. Sex is the sore drain of a healthy body, sir. Any use of the sexual act other than progression is a waste of vital energy. Wasted scenes or wasted lives.

In researching Kellogg, I found this guy, Bernard McFadden. And in the late 19th century and early 20th century, there were a lot of the same alternative health ideas that we see among RFK fanatics, but also just health fluencers on social media. So what was happening in 1990 in the United States? There was the Spanish flu pandemic, which was terrifying. Back then, it truly was very dangerous for children. So many children under five died.

The life expectancy was, you know, decades lower than it is today because we did not have vaccines and antibiotics and, you know, regular sanitary procedures. Like it's just, when you read the accounts, of what medicine looked like in, you know, the late 1800s, early 1900s, it's scary. And so the ideas that were percolating then and caught holes kind of made more sense. It wasn't just about the fear. It was because medicine really was a failure.

I think what we're seeing right now is a little different. I think medicine has become a bit of a victim of its own success. So many things that used to kill so many people. people have forgotten how dangerous those things are. So it's the raw milk. I recently started integrating just raw forms of dairy back into my diet after doing no dairy for four months and I've had zero issues. Anti-vaccines. Again, I am a proud anti-vaxxer, okay?

Distrust of the American Medical Association, sunning yourself, cold plunges. My health would not be what it is if I didn't use cold therapy. What is that? just like this whole set of, you know, seemingly plucked from random ideas, but that have been in the American bloodstream for a really, really long time. Kennedy recently met with officials and the Make America Healthy Again mothers, or Maha moms, as they're called. This was part of his first meeting of his new Maha commission.

Who are the Maha moms and why are they so politically important? and important to this particular movement in which those are the priorities. So something that's been very fascinating in the years that I have covered this issue is that the political valence of anti-vaccine fervor has completely 180. So in 2009, 2010, when I first started reporting on this, I don't think anti-vaccination really had a political valence. If anything, I would say it was slightly left-leaning, crunchy. sort of hippie coded, right? But this fully flipped in 2020 and 2021, and it became very, very right-wing,

pretty Christian, this very sort of individualistic worldview and a worldview that often is very much about God's plan. I just want to read you a quote from the Atlantic of the father who lost his daughter in the measles outbreak. The death of his daughter, Peter told me, was God's will. God created measles. God allowed the disease to take his daughter's life. Everybody has to die, he said, it's very hard, very hard. So this is not really RFK, but that is the group of people that he has lined up behind him, this sort of religious, crunchy Christian thing. And they are somewhat part of the Venn diagram of Trump supporters already, right? Because he has tremendous support among white evangelicals. To follow up a little on the political importance of the Maha moms,

I'm curious if you feel like there's anything about the culture of parenting today or the pressures that American parents feel that can make someone more susceptible to. these kinds of beliefs right now in this particular moment? I do think that we're in such an individualistic moment and there is this idea in American parenting that anything that goes wrong with your kid is your fault. Anything good that happens is because of something you did. Anything bad that happens is also because of something you did. So if that is the background noise to your parenting decisions, every single thing you do you think will have deep and permanent consequences. And so that sort of individualistic mindset is very challenging for public health

because you're not going to convince people with part of why you're getting the measles vaccine is because it helps the community. It helps people who can't get vaccinated themselves. Everything that happens to my kid is my fault. My honest. I think it all kind of goes along with that. I think this also brings up the question of trust. And we've seen significant changes at the health and science agencies like the CDC and the NIH, including recent layoffs, among other things. Now these agencies will or are being led by figures like Kennedy,

who have been longtime vocal critics of them. And this is a moment in time in which those agencies, especially post-pandemic, have a lot of critics and those criticisms have a lot of purchase among Americans right now. But once you've made sweeping changes and you are in charge and you become the face of the agency, how does that shift from outsider critic to insider leader potentially affect how these agencies are going to be perceived by Americans? Is this helpful for rebuilding trust in public health, or is this, are we just going to see a further backlash? I think it really remains to be seen. I think most parents really love their kids, not getting polio. And so I could almost see a renewed support for science and scientists, even if there is less trust in the CDC. So there might be this sort of, we don't trust the federal government on health, but we trust, you know, the New York State Department of Health because they're doing X, Y, and Z. And we trust the doctors at the local hospital more because we know that they're going to give us the help we need.

So I think we might see this sort of asymmetrical trust happening. That's my hope. My fear is that people will just trust nothing. and it will further devalue all this important work that needs to get done. Jess, thanks so much for joining me. I'm so happy to be here anytime. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. This show is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Bischakad, Fiby Lett, Christina Samuoski, and Jillian Weinberger.

It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alvarez, Alvarez, Alvich, Al-Durba. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek, and Annie Rose Strasser. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Saburo, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta, Christina Samuelski, and Adrian Rivera. The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Dresser.