RFK’s Anti-Vaccine Zealotry Is an Existential Threat to Public Schools

In November, public health officials in Clark County, Oregon, said outbreaks of whooping cough and chicken pox were affecting three of the county’s schools. These cases of whooping cough were 30 times higher in the county than in 2023, with most of the whooping cough and chicken pox cases hitting unvaccinated children.

“The childhood vaccines—for example, measles, mumps, and chicken pox—these diseases are not benign,” said Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. “They cause severe disability and death. We have, of course, forgotten about that because the good news is [vaccines] work so well that most folks don’t have the experience of seeing kids get sick from these diseases and how bad they can be.”

Benjamin said that when the public doesn’t get the right information in a well-articulated way, it creates chaos—ultimately the kind of chaos that will cause people to make decisions on the wrong information, get sick, and die. Although the debate over vaccines isn’t new, the level of moneyed support for the anti-vax movement has hit new heights in recent years.