In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread. Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio. A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.
Polls show that many Americans either believe the myth or think it could be true.
Trump has spread this myth and withdrawn the US from the World Health Organization.
Now his administration is actively defending disinformation.
Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers:
WE’VE SANCTIONED: Imran Ahmed, key collaborator with the Biden Administration’s effort to weaponize the government against U.S. citizens. Ahmed’s group, Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), created the infamous “disinformation dozen” report, which called for platforms to deplatform twelve American “anti-vaxxers”, including now-HHS Secretary @SecKennedy . Leaked documents from CCDH show the organization listed “kill Musk’s Twitter” and “trigger EU and UK regulatory action” as priorities. The organization supports the UK’s Online Safety Act and EU’s Digital Services Act to expand censorship in Europe and around the world.
Thanks to RFK Jr.'s lies, there have been 2,012 confirmed measles cases in the US this year. And things are likely to get much worse.
Epidemiologists contend that a 95 percent childhood vaccination rate, especially in the case of measles, is crucial to achieving what they call herd immunity — when enough people in a given geographic area have immunity to disease, so that it no longer spreads easily, eliminating the threat of epidemics.
In this context, 95 percent is a tipping point, and falling below it opens the door to a cascading series of adverse developments that worsen as the gap between herd immunity and the actual rate widens. One of those adverse developments is a rising death toll.
In an article in April in The Journal of American Medicine, “Modeling Re-emergence of Vaccine-Eliminated Infectious Diseases Under Declining Vaccination in the U.S.,” Mathew V. Kiang, Kate M. Bubar, Yvonne Maldonado, Peter J. Hotez and Nathan C. Lo wrote:Over a 25-year period and under a scenario with current state-level vaccination rates, the simulation model predicted there would be 851,300 cases of measles, 190 cases of rubella, 18 cases poliomyelitis and eight cases of diphtheria. Under this scenario, we projected 851 cases with postmeasles neurological sequelae, 170,200 hospitalizations and 2,550 deaths.If Trump, Kennedy and the anti-vaccine movement were to succeed in pushing down vaccination rates by 25 percentage points, the authors estimated:26.9 million cases of measles would occur within the 25-year period, 790 cases of rubella, 87,600 cases of poliomyelitis and 11 cases of diphtheria. Under this scenario, we projected there would be 26,900 cases of postmeasles neurological sequelae, 100 cases of paralytic poliomyelitis, one case of congenital rubella syndrome, 5.4 million hospitalizations due to all infections and 80,600 deaths due to all infections.There are now fewer than 10 cases of postmeasles neurological sequelae annually in the United States, and even an increase to 26,900 over 25 years would mean the illness hit just 0.008 percent of a population of 340 million. It is, however, an illness you would not want to wish on anyone, especially in its most virulent form, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis.
