RFK Jr. Targets the Amish: Part I

On July 31, 2021, RFK Jr. traveled to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. His goal in the heart of the COVID pandemic was to scare the Amish away from lifesaving vaccines.

On February 13, 2024, National Geographic published a book I wrote called, TELL ME WHEN IT’S OVER: AN INSIDER’S GUIDE TO DECIPHERING COVID MYTHS AND NAVIGATING OUR POST-PANDEMIC WORLD. For the next few months, I’ll be writing about issues discussed in that book.

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Anti-vaccine activists often target isolated groups. For example, in 2017, as a direct result of a misinformation campaign by an anti-vaccine activist named Mark Blaxill, a measles outbreak occurred among a Somali American community in Hennepin County, Minnesota. Immunization rates dropped from 92 percent to 42 percent precipitating the largest measles outbreak in that area in almost 30 years. Among the 75 cases of measles, 91 percent were unvaccinated; 21 children were hospitalized with pneumonia or severe dehydration.

In 2018, using a glossy handbook titled “The Vaccine Safety Handbook,” anti-vaccine activists targeted an ultra-orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York. The pamphlet, which was written in part in Hebrew, likened the U.S. government’s promotion of vaccines to atrocities in Nazi Germany. Among the 649 cases of confirmed measles, 86 percent were unvaccinated; 49 patients were hospitalized, and 20 were admitted to the intensive care unit. The cost to the Department of Health to control this outbreak was $8.4 million.

The most dramatic example of how disinformation campaigns targeted to tightly knit ethnic or religious communities can kill occurred in Samoa in 2019. In July 2018, two Samoan nurses prepared a measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine for two 12-month-old children. Instead of diluting the vaccine powder in water, they inadvertently diluted it with a muscle relaxant. Both infants immediately stopped breathing and died as a result.

RFK Jr. seized upon the Samoan tragedy as proof that the MMR vaccine was deadly, trumpeting the two deaths on his Facebook page. Even after it had become clear that the MMR vaccine wasn’t responsible for the infant deaths, RFK Jr. visited Samoa, appearing with prominent anti-vaccine activists and meeting with senior officials claiming that the MMR vaccine was deadly. Influenced in part by his actions, the Samoan government suspended its measles vaccination program for 10 months. Immunization rates dropped from 74 percent in 2017 to 31 percent in late 2018, precipitating a massive outbreak of measles. Between September and December 2019, at least 5,700 people suffered measles and 83 died, most of the deaths were in children less than four years of age. During the outbreak, in a 4-page letter to the Samoan prime minister, RFK Jr. claimed that the measles deaths were caused by the vaccine, not the virus.

Two years after RFK Jr.’s actions contributed to the deaths of 83 children in Samoa, he visited Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, home to a large Amish population. In front of a crowd of approximately 1,500 people, RFK Jr. talked about his experiences with measles as a child. The transcript from which he prepared his talk later surfaced:

RFK Jr. later explained that “the cure for measles is chicken soup and vitamin A.” It is remarkable that following his role in a deadly outbreak of measles in Samoa, RFK Jr. was still sarcastically dismissing measles as a trivial, harmless childhood infection.

On October 9, 2023, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he was running for president of the United States. Three months later, he picked Del Bigtree, head of the virulent anti-vaccine group Informed Consent Action Network, to be his Communications Director.