Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the notorious conspiracy theorist tapped by Donald Trump to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is not telling the truth about his involvement in a measles outbreak in Samoa, CNN health correspondent Meg Tirrell told anchor Jake Tapper on Friday.
"Renewed reports are emerging about Kennedy's alleged role in a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa, and it affected thousands and killed many people, including children," said Tapper. "He tried to deny any responsibility or involvement in the tragedy."
Tapper then played a clip of Kennedy.
"I am aware there is a measles outbreak, but I didn't have anything to do with that or people not vaccinating in Samoa," said Kennedy, who has baselessly linked vaccination to autism and has pushed antisemitic theories about how COVID-19 spreads. "I never told anybody not to vaccinate or go there for any reason to do that."
"That's not a fully transparent accounting of what happened and not a fully honest accounting for the role that RFK Jr. and his organization, the role they played in the Samoan tragedy, is it?" Tapper asked Tirrell.
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"RFK Jr. actually describes his trip to Samoa himself in a post on his organization's website from 2021, looking back on this in 2019, in which he describes going to visit the Samoan prime minister before this all happened on a visit that he described was to discuss a medical informatics system, to assess medical safety and efficacy of medical intervention on overall health there. And he further on calls it a 'mild outbreak' and then later associates the deaths with it to coming after they started vaccinating folks with a new vaccine."
"But to walk you through this timeline of what really happened with this outbreak, it is a real tragedy starting from the very beginning when there was a mistake in 2018 when two infants died who were given MMR vaccines improperly mixed with something that it shouldn't have been instead of water, which was an accident," said Tirrell. "The country did pause the vaccinations and recalled the vaccine. That lasted for nine months. And then in June of 2019, RFK Jr. visited Samoa, the visit he was talking about, where as part of the visit he met with anti-vaccine activists and posted about this on social media. And then in October of 2019, Samoa declared a measles outbreak, and you did see after that tragedy, the year before that, vaccination rates plummeted."
Then, she continued, "In November of 2019, RFK Jr. wrote a letter to the prime minister of Samoa, reported on by The Washington Post, encouraging that government to look into whether the outbreak was caused by inadequate vaccine coverage or alternatively by a defective vaccine, and in December of that year of 2019, the WHO warned that this outbreak was being fueled by misinformation. And by January of 2020, there had been more than 5,700 cases and 83 deaths from this measles outbreak. The majority of those deaths were in kids under five."
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