RFK Jr. Is Trying to Write Himself Out of 2019 Samoan Measles Epidemic
Kennedy's claim he "had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa" stretches credibility.
Alex Kasprak
Key points
- In 2019, Samoa experienced a measles outbreak caused by low vaccination coverage. Following Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s nomination to be President-elect Donald Trump's health and human services secretary, the talking point that Kennedy caused this outbreak via his activism re-emerged.
- The measles outbreak in Samoa was not "caused" by Kennedy. A tragic accident in 2018, in which two infants died from incorrectly mixed vaccines, and the controversial pause in vaccination that followed, bear primary responsibility for creating those conditions. This does not exclude the possibility that Kennedy exacerbated these existing conditions.
- Kennedy's assertion that he "had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa" is not credible. It is undermined by his direct engagement with the Samoan government on the topic of vaccines, his direct engagement with the Samoan anti-vaccine movement before, during, and after the epidemic, and his platforming of the two primary influencers advocating against vaccination in Samoa.
Following Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s nomination to be U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's health and human services secretary, the assertion that Kennedy played a role in causing or exacerbating a deadly measles epidemic in Samoa in 2019 saw new light. Such arguments appeared in The New York Times after previously appearing on MSNBC and being widely shared on social media.
A quantitative assessment of Kennedy's proportional effect on the outbreak or failed containment of measles in Samoa in 2019 is likely impossible. To suggest Kennedy "caused" the outbreak, as some people have implied on social media, would be to use the same logical fallacies about causation that many opposed to vaccines rely on.
In fact, a pause on the administration of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine following the 2018 deaths of two infants who were given incorrectly mixed injections was almost certainly the primary driver of low vaccination rates at the time measles struck. That period without vaccination lowered vaccination rates as well as trust in the Samoan health care system.
August 2019 post on Facebook by Kennedy's Charity Children's Health Defense
What is clear, however, is that Kennedy and his charity Children's Health Defense (CHD) exploited the deaths of those Samoan infants, the pause on vaccination it caused, the emergency vaccination campaign it later necessitated and the epidemic itself to further their own political goals and bolster their claims. Kennedy's promotion of activists who spoke against the Samoan vaccination campaigns added reach and legitimacy to vaccine opposition immediately preceding the epidemic's onset.
Kennedy, who upon receiving Trump's cabinet nomination pledged to "provide Americans with transparency," has regularly downplayed or changed the narrative regarding the facts of his direct engagement with the Samoan anti-vaccination movement before this deadly outbreak.
When asked about his role in the pandemic in the 2023 film "Shot in the Arm," Kennedy told the filmmaker he "had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa," that he "never told anybody not to vaccinate," and that he "didn't go there with any reason to do with that." These claims strain credulity.
In this story, Snopes provides a detailed accounting of Kennedy's contribution to the Samoan epidemic before, during and after it occurred, demonstrating both the failure of his talking points and the evolution of his claims of involvement. Kennedy did not respond to a detailed list of questions sent by email.
Before the Epidemic
In 2013, about 87% of Samoa's population had been immunized against measles, mumps, and rubella, according to a March 2020 paper in The Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal. Although these numbers fluctuated significantly in the years between 2013 and 2017, vaccination coverage for children younger than 1 dropped massively in 2018, hovering just above 40%.
The most significant reasons for this precipitous decline had nothing to do with Kennedy. In July 2018, two Samoan infants died minutes after their vaccination with the MMR vaccine. In response, Samoa — controversially — paused its measles vaccination program. However, an inquiry quickly revealed that two nurses' negligence in mixing the vaccines caused the deaths.
Despite the finding, the vaccination program remained paused until April 2019, eroding public trust in vaccination. This pause in vaccines also created what the World Health Organization (WHO) later described as "a pool of susceptible children under the age of 5 years" in Samoa.
Before and during the period in which Samoa was undergoing a crisis of confidence in vaccination, Kennedy became involved with a series of campaigns in the United States to challenge state bills mandating vaccination, particularly the MMR vaccine at issue in Samoa.
Kennedy, as part of this campaign, repeatedly pushed the notion that mainstream news reporting on the danger of measles was a conspiracy created by pharmaceutical companies to sell inherently unsafe vaccines to a frightened public. His stump speeches, articles and paid Facebook ads drove home claims that measles was not dangerous, that measles infections could in most cases be cured by vitamin A and that natural immunity to measles was stronger than vaccine-derived immunity.
In a May 2019 post for CHD, Kennedy wrote that "measles is usually a mild, self-limiting childhood illness." He claimed falsely that dying from measles was "about double the risk of dying from lightning." In an April 2019 speech in California, Kennedy said that vaccine makers hide behind measles because it is a "genuinely contagious disease," but that it is still not a significant risk, saying "nobody dies from measles.
In that same speech, he implied that vitamin A could prevent 80% of potential deaths caused by measles infections. Another common talking point, found in an October 2019 Children's Health Defense post, was that "The World Health Organization has touted the success of its vitamin A campaign in developing countries for reducing measles-related complications and deaths," a true statement manipulated by some activists to suggest that measles vaccination is unnecessary.
Furthermore, Kennedy has claimed the vaccine might carry unknown risks. In a September 2019 CHD article, Kennedy argued that the MMR vaccine had "an unconscionably high injury rate," and that "no one can say … that any one of the 70 vaccine doses currently recommended for American children saves more lives than it costs."
In multiple posts or speeches, Kennedy has suggested that natural immunity provided by a measles infection is stronger than vaccine-induced immunity. Further, his charity implied in 2018 that depriving children of such an infection could pose a cancer risk. Medical professionals reject these claims.
These talking points were common across the anti-vaccine movement and not unique to Kennedy. Peer-reviewed research has shown, however, that Kennedy was one of the most significant sources of misinformation about vaccines during this time.
In addition to amplifying and promoting these claims generally, Kennedy also validated the voices of those attempting to apply their logic specifically to Samoa. But Kennedy has an even more direct connection to the Samoan anti-vaccine discourse.
Just before the emergence of the measles epidemic in Samoa, Kennedy brought a large digital audience — thereby lending perceived credibility — to two key critics of Samoan vaccination efforts: Edwin Tamasese and Taylor Winterstein.
Tamasese, a Samoan coconut farmer, had been a vocal opponent of vaccines on Facebook for years. Winterstein, an Australian influencer and anti-vaccine activist, had been selling tickets to seminars promoting "informed decisions" about vaccines.
In June 2019, Kennedy was a guest of honor at a Samoan Independence Day Celebration. The trip was actually "arranged," Kennedy later wrote, by Tamasese. While in Samoa, Kennedy pitched a potential CHD-funded, vaccine-safety monitoring program to the Samoan prime minister, health minister and others. He also coincidentally ran into Winterstein, he has claimed.
Winterstein shared a picture to Instagram of the two together on June 4, 2019. Kennedy later shared a photo of all three — Winterstein, Tamasese and Kennedy — together in a post for the Children's Health Defense website:
Winterstein (far left), Kennedy (middle) and Tamasese (far right) in Samoa in June 2019.
"While in Samoa," the Samoa Observer reported in June 2019, "Mr. Kennedy said he spent extensive time with Mr. Tamasese who introduced him to local families who were sympathetic to anti-vaccine messages."
When panic over measles deaths set in several months later, many Samoans would initially turn to information that had been shared by Tamasese and Winterstein — the two people whose profiles had been amplified by Kennedy. Neither Winterstein nor Tamasese responded to Snopes' request for comment.
The Epidemic
The first Samoan measles cases were reported in early September 2019. On Oct. 16, the Samoan government officially declared a measles epidemic after the confirmation of seven cases. The government urged vaccination but was slow to implement solutions. By the end of October, the disease was spreading rapidly.
A problem immediately emerged for one specific anti-vaccine talking point: that death from measles was extremely rare. By the end of November, 39 deaths had been recorded — primarily children under 5. To explain this apparent contradiction, Tamasese and Winterstein latched onto a common talking point about lack of vitamin A.
"WHO/UNICEF clearly state vitamin A must be given as part of a measles treatment protocol in any vitamin A deficient country and any country that has a mortality rate equal to or greater than 1% of infected cases both of which Samoa has," Tamasese wrote in a Facebook post in late 2019.
Tamasese, with the help of Children's Health Defense and Winterstein, began a campaign that involved publicizing a protocol that he claimed could cure measles infections. That campaign also involved distributing vitamins to infected measles patients.
Winterstein shared stories to her nearly 50,000 followers of people allegedly being saved by Tamasese, arguing that Samoa children were "making a full recovery from measles" by adopting his vitamin "protocol."
In a post on Children's Health Defense site in 2021, Tamasese recounted the support he got from Kennedy:
The situation deteriorated by the end of November. Tamasese and other anti-vaccine advocates began to blame not only poor nutrition but the vaccine itself. Tamasese, whose posts included increased claims of danger from vaccination, was arrested after he posted threatening messages on Facebook against Samoan vaccination efforts, describing health officials' campaign as a "killing spree."Organizations like Children's Health Defense had reached out from the U.S. Quite quickly when I raised my concerns with them I was linked into a group of medical professionals by Mr. Kennedy and we worked on a protocol to ensure effective treatment. In addition, a nurses' group from Australia made contact.
I also decided to make public posts on Facebook passing on information on how to treat measles using vitamin C and A. I also passed on information on using Carica Papaya leaf Extract (CPLE) for those who did not have access to these vitamins as they are ordinarily beyond the affordability price point of many.
Kennedy did more than indulge the speculation of online activists like Tamasese; he brought them to the direct attention of the prime minister of Samoa. Using Children's Health Defense letterhead, Kennedy wrote a Nov. 16, 2019, letter to the prime minister that strongly suggested the MMR vaccination effort itself could be the problem and defended what he described as the "so-called 'anti-vaccine' movement."
"To safeguard public health during the current infection and in the future, it is critical that the Samoan Health Ministry determine, scientifically, if the outbreak was caused by inadequate vaccine coverage or alternatively, by a defective vaccine," Kennedy wrote, reiterating his earlier request for data.
"There is also the possibility," Kennedy claimed, "that children who received the live measles virus during Samoa's recent vaccination drive may have shed the virus and inadvertently infected vulnerable children." Experts consider such a risk to be extremely rare. Regardless, the Samoan epidemic was not caused by a vaccine-derived strain of measles or a mutant strain that evolved resistance to vaccination.
By the end of the year, Samoa had 5,707 reported cases of measles and 83 deaths — a mortality rate of more than 1 in 100. Subsequent research has demonstrated that low vaccination coverage was the primary driver of the disease's mortality.
After the Epidemic
Vaccination rates surged back to around 90% following the Samoan government's vaccination drive, stabilizing the pandemic in spite of efforts to mischaracterize the danger of both measles and the MMR vaccine. Peer-reviewed studies suggest vaccination, along with other containment measures, were the primary factors contributing to the end of the epidemic.
Before the Samoan measles epidemic, Kennedy repeatedly told his followers that death from the disease was extremely rare. Far from the one death for every 1,000 cases figure regularly lambasted by Kennedy as too high, the mortality rate in Samoa ended up being more than one in 100. Faced with this reality, Kennedy promoted, and continued to support, the voices of those who insisted, in spite of a lack of evidence, that vitamin A deficiency actually drove Samoa's high mortality rates.
Kennedy still touts similar talking points. In a June 2023 podcast interview with Joe Rogan, for example, Kennedy wrote off measles deaths in African nations as caused by malnutrition, arguing that "it's hard for an infectious disease to kill a healthy person with a rugged immune system." In August 2023, Kennedy published a book, based on deeply flawed or amateur science, that implied the MMR vaccine carried medical risks including an increased risk of autism, Crohn's disease and other chronic illnesses.
While Kennedy's talking points about measles and the MMR vaccine have shifted little since the end of the Samoan measles outbreak, Kennedy has tried to significantly revise his history with it. In spite of his pledge for transparency, Kennedy has severely downplayed his role in engaging with the Samoan anti-vaccine movement and government prior to and during the epidemic.
When asked by a reporter for the Samoa Observer in February 2021 whether he felt responsibility for low vaccination rates and, ultimately, the measles outbreak that followed, he said:
That is, in effect, what happened. Kennedy visited Samoa and legitimized the voices of people — Tamasese and Winterstein — who were telling Samoans the risks of the MMR vaccine might not be worth the reward because an infection could be cured, in most cases, with vitamin A and other natural remedies.That is an impossibility. When I was in Samoa, I wasn't talking to people about vaccines, I didn't make any public appearances, I wasn't campaigning. […] I was only in your country for five or six days and I never spoke to anybody. I wasn't giving speeches […] I never talked to crowds, I wasn't preaching to people. I was there talking to a few select people who were very sophisticated, not people saying "I am not gonna have a vaccine because Bobby Kennedy told me not to."
The Bottom Line
The measles outbreak in Samoa was not caused by Kennedy. Though he was a loud promoter of the talking points common to the anti-vaccine movement at this time, he was not responsible for lowering vaccination rates to the depths they reached in early 2019. A tragic accident in 2018 and a controversial pause in vaccination bears primary responsibility for creating those conditions.
The claim that Kennedy "had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa," is, however, not credible. It is belied, among other things, by his direct engagement with the Samoan government on the topic of vaccines, his direct engagement with the Samoan anti-vaccine movement before, during and after the epidemic, and his platforming of the two primary influencers advocating against vaccination in Samoa.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/12/31/ ... 1736176582
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