Washington D.C. – Reuters reports that the Trump-RFK Jr. CDC is finally sending help to South Carolina health officials amid the worst measles outbreak in the U.S. in over 30 years: “The first CDC on the ground assist comes some five months after the South Carolina outbreak began.” Axios adds: “The state has had almost 1,000 cases in the outbreak, with almost all unvaccinated.”
Meanwhile, anti-vax misinformation super spreader and Trump Health Secretary Robert Kennedy still has yet to publicly acknowledge the measles crisis he contributed to, while his handpicked former deputy CDC director has downplayed the likely loss of the U.S.’s measles elimination status as a “cost of doing business.” Now the inexcusably late CDC assistance comes as a chorus of health experts “say that the Trump administration has failed to take obvious steps to contain the spread of measles.”
As The Guardian notes: “Previously, the CDC would have issued regular reports, alerts, and social media posts to help people protect themselves during outbreaks like these. But CDC communications about measles outbreaks over the last year have been minimal.”
It is no wonder a new poll “found that trust in major U.S. health agencies including the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health has shrunk, with roughly three-quarters of people saying they trusted those agencies in 2024, compared to roughly 6 in 10 in 2026.”
“It’s about damn time for the CDC to lend a hand with this historic measles crisis, but in the meantime, so much damage has been done with months of inaction and continued anti-vax propaganda from the Trump administration,” said Kayla Hancock, Director of Protect Our Care’s Public Health Project. “Too many kids have been put in unnecessary danger by Trump officials who baselessly scared families away from safe and effective vaccines. It’s going to take a lot more than a handful of federal health workers on the ground five months late to fix the catastrophic backslide on vaccination rates that Trump and RFK Jr. fomented with misinformation. The return of once eradicated preventable diseases will tragically be a lasting Trump legacy.”
CDC Foot-Dragging = Refusal To Admit Consequences of the Trump Anti-Vax Agenda. Top Trump health officials and the President himself have repeatedly contributed to the decline in vaccination rates, including for measles, by spreading baseless misinformation about proven safe and effective vaccines, including:
- Reuters, 3.4.26: “The previous acting [Trump] CDC head, Jim O’Neill, raised questions about the safety of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine last fall, without evidence, and called for it to be split into several shots.”
- During a nationally televised interview last March, Health Secretary Kennedy made outrageous and completely unfounded claims that the MMR vaccine leads to “deaths every year” and that it causes “all the illnesses” of the disease.
- CBS News, 10.2.25: “President Trump’s suggestion last [year] that combination childhood vaccines, including the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, shot, should be separated marks a sharp break from decades of immunization practice in the United States. … Dr. Peter Hotez, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and vaccine expert at the Baylor College of Medicine, argued that the call to split vaccines is part of a broader campaign to discredit vaccinations.”
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