About 1,500 measles cases have been reported in the US so far in 2026. In 2025, almost 2300 cases were reported, the highest number since 1992 when over 2100 cases occurred, a more than a 4.5-fold increase from 2024. The majority of those infected were unvaccinated. The surge not only includes three deaths last year, but escalated hospital admissions by 17% , and increased medical costs by an estimated $244 million in 2025 alone.
The last time we saw a significant measles epidemic in the US was in 2019, with just over 1,200 cases reported, barely scraping the cutoff for the WHO status of measles elimination, achieved in 2000. In other words, we are regressing in prevention, increasingly burdening the health care system, and depleting taxpayers' pockets. Who is to blame? If you ask RFK supporters, it’s the pharmaceutical companies. Certainly not any rhetoric or (mis)representation provided by RFK to or for anti-vax groups.
Perhaps it’s just coincidental that the recent epidemics parallel the increase in unvaccinated individuals and rise in anti-vaxxers, or that RFK’s anti-vax organization, Children’s Health Fund and began its campaign in 2016; the same year as crony Del Bigtree founded the anti-vax Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN); or that RFK Jr. began global proselytizing against vaccines in 2018 with a visit to Samoa, an involvement he steadfastly denied during his hearings. After all, at most, all Bigtree and RFK contributed to the downfall of infectious disease prevention (and vaccine hesitancy) were their words.
The Power of Words
The power of rhetoric and oratory, outperforms expertise, and of this we must be mindful. As one proponent of these arts apparently [1] told Socrates:
“If a rhetorician and a medical expert should compete against one another to influence citizens voting on some public health measure, the rhetorician would win every time. … The art of rhetoric is so remarkably effective… that a skilled orator may easily discredit an expert on medicine [or anything else]. If he chose to do so, he could even cause great mischief in the city.”
In view of the acceleration of vaccine-preventable disease incidence, perhaps it is time to revisit RFK’s past anti-vax involvement to determine whether, perchance, anti-vax rhetoric led us to the sorry situation we now face.
RFK visited Samoa in June 2019. He denies it had anything to do with anti-vax rhetoric, and indeed, the Samoan measles outbreak hit its stride several months later. But much happened before and during RFK’S visit that set the stage for that epidemic; incidents in which RFK was fully involved or took advantage of, although he denies involvement.
“I had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa.” RFK
Not then, perhaps.
2018-2019: Measles Resurrects Itself Around the World
In the 1980s, when a two-dose measles vaccine regimen was first adopted, measles cases worldwide dropped dramatically.
“No vaccine has been more effective at reducing the burden of disease and child deaths than measles-containing vaccines.” - Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance
Until 2018, that is. In 2019, the WHO declared vaccine resistance one of the ten top health threats. By June 2019, measles had attacked Ukraine, the Philippines, the US, Israel, and London.
The Israeli anti-vax position was fostered by RFK ally Del Bigtree, who visited the country in November and held a 1000+ person conference in Tel Aviv (that I attended). By the time the Israeli epidemic of 2018-2019 was controlled, some 4300 would become sick, and three would die. That Israeli epidemic, transported by an Israeli traveler from the Ukraine, seeded America’s 2019 epidemic, which began in Kings and Rockland Counties in NY was, carried by Israeli travelers and fueled by anti-vax rhetoric promoted by Bigtree and RFK, Jr. who represented anti-vax groups in Rockland. Both counties enacted mandatory vaccine ordinances to control the epidemics.
In the Philippines, the year 2019 saw some 48,000 measles cases and 632 measles related deatrghs , a case fatality rate of 2.6%, similar to the rate sustained in the U.S. prior to the development of the measles vaccine in 1963. That year, Samoa, some 4,900 miles away, was similarly engaged. In the three-month period ending December 26, 2019, Samoa reported 81 measles-related deaths and 5,612 cases, all but seven under age fifteen, fostered by low vaccination rates. Hospitalization was 40%; the Samoan case fatality was 1.5%. It took a mandatory vaccination law addressed to all Samoan citizens - all 200,874 - and the arrest of a notable antivaxxer, to quell that epidemic.
Anti-vaxxism in Samoa began about a year earlier when two children were killed by an ill-formulated version of the vaccine (similar to the Somali experience in Minnesota some ten years before), a population as ripe for proselytizing. According to Dr. Kate O’Brien, of the WHO, the scare was fostered in the ensuing months, long before the epidemic began, by an anti-vaccine group
“Misinformation that is spread through social media channels is really affecting the decisions of parents around whether they are going to vaccinate their children and the impact is that children are developing measles and some of them are dying.” - Dr Kate O’Brien, Director of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals, WH.O
One month later, Children’s Health Defense, then headed by RFKs, took advantage of the situation and paid Facebook to post multiple ads sowing doubt about the vaccines. As the Pulitzer Center reports, “One ad, funded by Children’s Health Defense, claimed measles vaccines were linked to chronic illnesses and autism, claims widely debunked by scientific research.” The organization’s Facebook ads reached up to 110,000 people.
RFK Comes to Samoa
About six months later, RFK visited Samoa. By this time, measles was rife and vaccine uptake in Samoa had plummeted. Preparations for RFK’s trip earlier, when RFK started trying to reach Samoan government officials through a local anti-vaccine activist, and aided by individuals in the US embassy, the UN, and local activist groups A January 2019 email from the group’s then-president, Lyn Redwood, to Samoan activist Edwin Tamasese, asked him to “please share this letter with the Honorable Prime Minister Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi for Robert Kennedy. Kennedy went on to met with Samoa’s prime minister, although RFK claims he did not discuss vaccines with the Prime Minister when the visit occurred
While on the island, however, RFK posed with Taylor Winterstein, a Samoan social media influencer well-known for her anti-vaxxer messaging in Australia. Leilani Jackson, a Samoan nurse, noted RFK’s Samoan presence “was significant for the anti-vaxxers to push their message through.” Although Kennedy continued to insist that the trip had "nothing to do with vaccines," he admits it was organized by Tamasese before the outbreak and funded by the Children’s Defense Fund.
The Samoan outbreak began in September or October. By late October, the virus had infected almost 4,500 people. Of those who died, 57 were under age four. By November, Samoa declared a state of emergency. The state of emergency and closure of schools and businesses didn’t help. By December, the situation escalated. It took a mandatory vaccination order and the arrest of Tamasese, who had organized Kennedy’s trip, charged with incitement against a government order, to quell the outbreak.
Regardless of whether RFK discussed vaccines with Samoan officials in June, he concealed the fact that in November, he sent the prime minister a four-page letter specifically suggesting that the measles vaccine may have caused the outbreak.
In that letter, RFK, writing in his role as the chairman of Children’s Health Defense, claimed that the vaccine might have “failed to produce antibodies in vaccinated mothers sufficient to provide infants with immunity,” that it may have provoked “the evolution of more virulent measles strains,” and that children who received the live vaccine may have inadvertently spread the virus to other children.
The 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa did not arise in isolation. A convergence of declining vaccination rates, public fear, and the global resurgence of anti-vaccine activism set the stage. While Kennedy Jr. has denied direct responsibility, his documented actions and those of his organization and associates—before, during, and after his visit—exacerbated an already fraught situation through rhetoric, pressure, persuasion, and oratory. Ultimately, the runaway situation underscores how rapidly misinformation and artful rhetoric can exploit vulnerability and how public figures, with the power to either fulminate or contain a preventable epidemic, influence public perceptions.
[1] How to Think Like Socrates: Ancient Philosophy as a Way of Life in the Modern World, Donald J. Robertson
Sources: Newly revealed emails undermine RFK Jr testimony about 2019 Samoa trip ahead of measles outbreak The Guardian
Samoa’s Tragedy and RFK Jr.’s Alleged Role The Pulitzer Center
