Six-Year-Old Texas Girl Dies Of Measles, First U.S. Measles Death In A Decade Arrives Two Weeks Into Tenure Of Health Secretary Who Built Career Opposing The Available Vaccine

SEMINOLE, Texas. A six-year-old unvaccinated girl in Gaines County, Texas, has died of measles, the first measles death in the United States in a decade, federal and state health officials confirmed this week. The death arrives two weeks into the tenure of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime opponent of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine that, in two doses, is roughly 97 percent effective at preventing measles infection.

The outbreak, centered in a Mennonite community in West Texas, had grown to more than 130 confirmed cases by the time of the death, with a second probable measles fatality reported in nearby New Mexico in the following days. Public health experts noted that the United States had formally declared measles eliminated in 2000, an achievement that requires the country to maintain sustained vaccination rates of roughly 95 percent. The Texas county at the center of the outbreak had a kindergarten MMR vaccination rate of approximately 82 percent, well below the threshold at which a single measles introduction can be contained.

Secretary Kennedy, who had spent the preceding two decades arguing that vaccines were unsafe, characterized the outbreak in public remarks as not unusual, and indicated that the Department of Health and Human Services would encourage parents to consider cod liver oil and vitamin A as supplemental treatments. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose published guidance had historically described the MMR vaccine as the best way to protect against measles, updated its outbreak materials in the following weeks to emphasize parental choice over routine immunization.

"It's a beautiful family. Very tragic," said the President, asked about the death at an unrelated event. "But you know, a lot of children get measles. It's just one of those things." Sources within the administration told reporters that the President had been assured the affected community posed no political risk on account of having voted overwhelmingly Republican in November.

The federal response, which included no national press conference, no nationwide vaccination drive, and no expansion of outreach to under-vaccinated counties, was characterized by senior HHS officials as a deliberate departure from what one anonymously described as the panic-based public health responses of prior administrations. Pediatricians' associations across the country issued statements urging vaccination; the statements were not amplified on federal channels.

At press time, the Secretary was preparing remarks on the importance of medical freedom, to be delivered at a venue confirmed in advance to contain no working medical school.