Will a Historic Measles Outbreak in Texas Get Conservative Politicians to Promote Vaccines? Of Course Not

A deadly measles outbreak in West Texas has taken one life and reached over 150 cases and counting, spurring many families to seek out vaccinations at clinics that state and local health officials have set up to encourage people to get the shot. The majority of cases where vaccination status has been confirmed are individuals who have not been vaccinated against the measles. The outbreak, which has now been linked to exposures in North and Central Texas, has been centered in Gaines County, where there is only an 82% vaccination rate for measles among kindergarteners — well below the 95% rate that scientists say is necessary to prevent the disease from spreading. In one hospital in nearby Lubbock County, all of the admitted measles patients were not vaccinated.

The outbreak began in late January, and as concern reaches a fever pitch over the rapid transmission of measles, which can spread more rapidly than Covid-19 or the flu, the response from the leading federal health administrator and elected officials in Texas has been slow and tepid. It took weeks for the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ‘s and Gov. Greg Abbott to publicly comment on the matter. 

Kennedy Jr.’s first comments on the matter came on Feb. 26 and Gov. Greg Abbott’s first public statement on the outbreak came two days later. Kennedy’s initial comments downplayed the severity of the situation, describing it as “not unusual,” despite the fact that the measles death is the first in a decade and the first death of a child from measles in the U.S. since 2003.

Gov. Abbott’s statement called for state resources to be deployed. Neither Abbott nor Kennedy has unequivocally urged families to get the vaccine, which is proven to  be more than 97% effective at warding off measles and has not been linked to autism — something that Kennedy has repeatedly asserted in the past.

While Abbott has remained entirely quiet regarding vaccines, sidestepping a hot button issue among his base, Kennedy has written an op-ed that describes the vaccine as “crucial” and recommends that parents “consult with their healthcare providers to understand their options” but also that it is a “personal choice.”

Some have described Kennedy’s recommendation as an astonishing 180 degree turn. But Dr. David Gorski, professor of surgery and oncology at the Wayne State University School of Medicine and managing editor of Science Based Medicine, argues that Kennedy’s proclamation is riddled with vaccine skeptic dog whistles that suggest Kennedy has not changed his tune.

“My first impression was maybe he was dragged kicking and screaming to admit that the vaccine protects against measles and that maybe people who aren’t vaccinated should get it,” Gorski told The Barbed Wire. “But you’ll notice how much he obfuscates and how lukewarm his recommendation is. He says getting a vaccine is a personal choice.” 

Gorski debunked Kennedy’s various dog whistles in his own blog post, so I won’t bother repeating them all here. But there are particularly absurd red herrings that I think are worth mentioning: Kennedy’s claim that “improvements in sanitation and nutrition had eliminated 98% of measles deaths” by 1960, prior to the introduction of the vaccine. 

Kennedy goes on to write: “Good nutrition remains a best defense against most chronic and infectious illnesses.”

“He talks about Vitamin A and good nutrition for warding off the measles,” Gorski said. “Here’s a hint. They don’t. It’s obviously better to have good nutrition than not. But vitamin A and good nutrition are not going to prevent you from getting the measles if you’re exposed to the virus.”

Attributing measles elimination to improved sanitation is a similarly bogus argument that is based on a misreading of a logarithmically scaled graph and relies upon a false notion that clean water and indoor plumbing have a significant effect on prevention of the spread of an airborne virus, and excludes all mention of the benefits of the vaccine.

According to the Infectious Diseases Society of America, “measles cases dropped 97 percent” between 1963 — when the vaccine was introduced — and 1968, “despite the fact that hygiene practices and sanitation did not significantly change during that time.” While the measles death rate had fallen from 1913 to 1960, it plummeted even further to the point of reaching zero for many years, with occasional outbreaks in communities where parents have refused to immunize their children along religious or philosophical grounds.

There is a long history of vaccine skepticism and hesitancy, but it has typically been a relatively fringe anti-science position that has only recently entered the mainstream. A major 2015 measles outbreak linked to Disneyland in California made international headlines and resulted in a law being passed in the state eliminating personal belief exemptions for vaccines. This engendered anti-government backlash, a prelude to the politicization of the response to Covid-19 that supercharged long standing anti-vaccine rhetoric and foisted it into the center of right-wing political discourse, neatly tying it to conservative religious beliefs and anti-government sentiment.

Consider that the private school with the lowest vaccination rate for measles in Texas, 14.29%,  is run by Mercy Culture, a highly political conservative Christian church headquartered in Tarrant County that counts Republican state representative Nate Schatzline as a pastor. Mercy Culture’s lead pastor, Landon Schott, celebrated the school’s low vaccination rate in a video he posted on Instagram.

“I just want to congratulate all the family members of MC Prep that embrace freedom of health, and they’re not allowing government or science projects to affect how you live and lead your life,” Schott said. “I know the entire world was shut down with insanity and people were fired from their jobs for forced vaccinations. And freedom is something we take seriously.”

Rep. Schatzline posted a similar video on X celebrating the low vaccination rate while taking potshots at Rachel Levine, former Assistant Secretary for Health of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, and the Fort Worth Star Telegram reporter who first wrote about it.

“I am so excited to say that Mercy Culture Prep is celebrating medical freedom where we honor the wishes of moms and dads over any type of health official,” Schatzline said. 

Schatzline, like Kennedy, has embraced vaccine skepticism and aligned himself with Texans for Vaccine Choice, an anti-vaccination lobbying group whose efforts have contributed to the skyrocketing numbers of unvaccinated children in Texas. Now, groups like Texans for Vaccine Choice have allies in both the state house and atop the federal health bureaucracy. 

“All of the narratives about measles and the measles vaccine that we’re hearing again are very old,” Gorski told me. “But what worries me is that the anti-vaccine narratives and framing will soon be official CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] policy.”

One of the policies that Kennedy has advocated for with regard to vaccines is what he calls “informed consent,” which would require health care providers to give certain information to people seeking vaccinations. 

“That is another old anti-vaccine trope,” Gorski said. “Because what they mean by informed consent is very different from what a physician practicing evidence based medicine means by informed consent. I like to call it ‘misinformed refusal,’ because that’s really what it is. If you put out a narrative and all sorts of dubious evidence that the vaccine is more dangerous than the disease, or the vaccine causes all these horrible things and doesn’t really work, who on earth would give informed consent to take that vaccine if you believe what they’re telling you?”

And that’s not the only concern Texans should have. Closer to home, right-wing politicians have introduced bills to the state legislature that seek to expand exemptions of conscience for vaccine requirements, allow pharmacists to decide whether they want to administer a vaccine to someone who wants one, and expand the right of healthcare providers to not participate in care due to reasons of conscience. If passed, these measures could be particularly damaging to rural communities, where there are fewer healthcare providers, and could contribute to future outbreaks of deadly disease.

“In a lot of rural places, there’s only one pharmacy for many miles,” Gorski said. “It’s basically a denial of legitimate health care based on imposing your ideology on people who don’t share it.”

Such a denial can have real world consequences. For those who are unvaccinated and have been exposed to measles, being denied a vaccine due to a health care provider’s personal conscience exemption could mean a more severe infection, because getting the vaccine within 72 hours of having been exposed will likely prevent or decrease the severity of the illness. And when it comes to measles cases, as previously stated, the majority are unvaccinated.

Whether these bills will become law is uncertain. But what is clear is that many of our Republican elected officials have either embraced anti-vaccination ideology, or are willing to pander to it, regardless of the risk.