RFK Jr. MMR vaccine support spurs backlash: 'So much for MAHA'

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: USA Today

Published 10:22 a.m. ET April 7, 2025 | Updated 4:59 p.m. ET April 7, 2025


Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been widely maligned – and celebrated, depending who you ask – as a vaccine skeptic. So when he wrote in a post on X on Sunday that "the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine" – after visiting West Texas shortly after a second unvaccinated child there died of the measles – public opinion flipped as social media users reacted to his support for the vaccine.

One user wrote: "This is so disappointing.. Who has you compromised?!"

"SELL-OUT," another X user shared. But infectious disease clinician-scientist Dr. Neil Stone appreciated Kennedy's words: "Words I never thought I would hear Robert F Kennedy Jr say," he wrote, "He's absolutely 100% correct, and I'm relieved to hear him say it." Still, many in the pro-vaccine community long-ago wrote off Kennedy and this shift is unlikely to win him much favor. "RFK is too little too late," one person tweeted. "Two kids have already died."

RFK Jr. and his "MAHA" movement's popularity appears to be at least in slight jeopardy with vaccine-skeptical supporters. But given the severity of the current outbreak, it seemed inevitable that he'd eventually need to endorse the science-backed solution to measles: the highly effective MMR vaccine.


Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2025/04/07/rfk-jr-measles-vaccine-backlash/82972685007/

[Duncanpup]

1. Three children have died that were not vaccinated.

[calimary]

2. It's three now? O. M. G.

Horrible!!!

And three times too late.

[Rebl2]

16. I think

it was two children in TX and one older person in maybe NM.

[marble falls]

8. There will be more.

[Duncanpup]

9. I'm afraid you're right

[marble falls]

11. I makes me so angry knowing this. And all we get is RFK Jr being slightly disabused ...

... of some of his vaxx misinformation. It's an obscene price to pay for his re-education: three and counting.

[IronLionZion]

22. And at least one adult that we know of

[Paladin]

3. This kind of tragedy is bound to happen...

...when one drooling lunatic, returned to office by millions of drooling lunatics, allows yet another drooling lunatic to control national health policy. Dead children, courtesy of so many drooling lunatics.

[pimpbot]

4. why does the media treat the loonies as normal

This both sides shit has to stop.

I dont really care what some crackpot on social media posted. Do we really need to quote them? Its just like swarming the local diner in podunk to get the opinion of some maga idiot.

[Delphinus]

5. What does "MAHA" mean?

Make America Hate Again? 'Cause it's certainly not 'healthy'!

[CurtEastPoint]

6. start at 52 seconds... Maha!

?si=33pNMQQgfSW34-Be

[AZLD4Candidate]

12. You beat me to it. Maha. . .aha! You want to speak dat. I want to talk dat

Shut up, you Flatbush flathead!

[3catwoman3]

15. Make America Healthy Again. RFK Jr's riff on MAGA.

Seeing as you were only getting smart-ass replies, I thought you deserved a serious answer.

[radical noodle]

18. So far MAHA means

measles and cavities.

[IronLionZion]

23. Make America Horrifically Awful

Make All Humans Afflicted

[marble falls]

7. Nothing like a litte slap of reality to break down a wall of hunches.

[Scrivener7]

10. Maha movement? What bullshit is this? There's no movement. It's a little ignorant cabal who don't give a shit about

anyone, including their own children.

[travelingthrulife]

13. Didn't these MAHA fools say those of us who took the covid vaccines would be dead

within 5 years. Or we would have two heads or some such thing. Do they notice we are not dead and not deformed from it.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

26. Initially they said 6 months. Then 3 years. Now they say the goobermint is hiding the statistics. . . . nt

[barbtries]

14. well, now both sides

know he's a fraud. okay.

[wolfie001]

17. A donkey is right twice a day?

Or something like that? What a jackass. Zero credibility. He's already done more than enough damage with his self-promoting narcissism. I wonder if he's still adding names (and ratings) to his lady-conquest notepad?

[bmichaelh]

19. MAHA is sure nonsense

I have heard the MAHA believe that if we eliminate GMO foods and vaccines, we will not need doctors.

This has no basis of historical evidence.

There is evidence some of the pharaohs had cancer and they did not have either vaccines or GMO foods.

[twodogsbarking]

20. and this....

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/03/17/nx-s1-5328765/measles-outbreak-health-risk

[Safe as Milk]

21. The opportunistic asshole should resign in disgrace.

He killed three people so far and won't accept accountability for any of it. He also killed people overseas with his anti-vaccine drivel. And not a word of apology or regret. Nope. Not Bobby Kennedy, living off his family's gravitas.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

27. Three? Maybe 83 + 3 deaths

In June 2019, American anti-vaccination activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited Samoa to meet with local anti-vaccination activists including Taylor Winterstein and Edwin Tamanese, whom he called a "medical freedom hero". Kennedy also discussed vaccines with then-Prime Minister Tuilaʻepa Saʻilele Malielegaoi,[27][28] and campaigned against the vaccine on social media.[29][30]

The 2019 Samoa measles outbreak began in September 2019.[5] By 6 January 2020, over 5,700 cases of measles and 83 deaths had been reported, out of a population of 200,874,[4][6] an infection rate of over three per cent.[7] The cause of the outbreak was decreased vaccination rates among newborns, from 74% in 2017 to 31–34% in 2018. Nearby islands had rates near 99%.

After the outbreak started, anti-vaxxers, including Kennedy,[35] attributed the dozens of measles deaths to poverty and malnutrition or to the vaccine, but cited no evidence for these claims. Clinicians reported that Vitamin A deficiency or immunodeficiency did not appear to be a substantial contributing factor to the outbreak.[8]

[4catsmom]

24. RFK Jr is going to learn the hard way

you can't use common sense and keep the anti-vax faction. they want the fantasy that vitamins and herbs will protect you from all evils. You have to continue to deny facts even when they crystal clear. Always works for Trump.

[Postal Grunt]

25. I have no reason to have any faith in the judgement of RFK Jr

so yesterday, I asked the friendly folks at the local CVS if MMR shots are available and covered by Medicare.They certainly are and after some paperwork I got the shot in my left shoulder muscles. I can't recall if I ever had a measles vaccine shot although I know I got plenty of shots during my first six months in the Air Force in 1971. The growing number of measles cases in SW Kansas could possibly end up here in NE Kansas so that was my motivation. I may have been cautious at first about getting a shot I'll never benefit from but after the small group of tuberculosis cases in KC, KS it didn't seem like a bad thing. I don't see where RFK Jr has my best interests in mind as he struggles with the real world.