How RFJ Jr. spreads illness.Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get The Daily Prospect Monday through Friday. [link removed]

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**DECEMBER 15, 2025**

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Outbreaks of measles and whooping cough have been festering all across the country all year. But instead of doing anything to stop them, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing all in his power [link removed] to make them worse by undermining access to vaccines. Of all the Kennedys, this one is the worst.

**–Ryan Cooper, senior editor**

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Rebecca Noble/AP Photo

The Kennedy Center of Contagious Diseases [link removed]

One defining feature of the second Trump administration is how, like in a particularly rotten late-empire monarchy, so much depends on the precise details of mental derangement afflicting the national leader and his top courtiers. Probably the most deranged Trump cabinet official, if his tawdry affairs [link removed] and wildly erratic behavior are any indication, is Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—though the competition is admittedly stiff.

During the 2024 campaign, Trump promised that he would let Kennedy “go wild on health.” At the time, I thought this would be very bad [link removed], but if anything it has been even worse. In just a few months, Kennedy has obliterated a vast amount of government capacity and expertise that took generations to build up, gravely undermined [link removed] American medical science, and above all waged an undeclared war against vaccines. The worst outbreaks of measles and whooping cough (or pertussis) in many years are festering around the country, and not only is the federal government AWOL, but Kennedy is expending great effort to make these outbreaks worse, and add more diseases.

So far this year, there have been something like 25,000 recorded cases of pertussis, and no doubt many more that have not been reported. At least 13 people [link removed] are dead, almost all of them babies under one year old. Last week, classes were canceled [link removed] in one Iowa district thanks to an outbreak.

Meanwhile, America is suffering its worst outbreak of measles [link removed] since it was declared eliminated in 2000, with a reported 1,837 cases [link removed] at time of writing. Authorities in South Carolina are dealing with two large outbreaks [link removed], with hundreds of people in quarantine.

The reason for this simply has to be declining vaccine coverage. The measles and pertussis vaccines are highly effective, and if the coverage rate is maintained above the “herd immunity” rate—about 90 to 95 percent [link removed] for these viruses, which may require an occasional booster in the case of pertussis—any outbreak will burn itself out. It follows that it is vitally important for even young, healthy people to get vaccinated, to protect those who can’t be vaccinated, like very young babies.

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