BKTK Timeline figure of chronology of events
Critics argue that RFK Jr’s November 2019 letter to Samoa’s Prime Minister, which raised questions about alternative causes of the measles outbreak, attempted to spread misinformation or disinformation depending on the source. Was RFK Jr deliberately disseminating false information to deceive people? Was he disingenuously proposing alternative explanations for the etiology of the outbreak to mislead the Prime Minister?
Misformation and disinformation inherently involve three perspectives: the individual identifying and labeling the falsehood, the party responsible for spreading it, and the audience, who may be fooled by or complicit in spreading the incorrect information. The danger in these terms lies in using these labels as blanket dismissals, especially when the so-called falsehood is not established as such, turning the focus away from truth-seeking and toward silencing debate. Like anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists, they are often used as terms of dismissal and effectively non-responses to an argument. Anyone accusing another of patent falsehoods should be required to provide implicitly overwhelming evidence as to why their opponent's claim is meritless.
Based on his track record, it is difficult to conceive that RFK Jr's concerns about vaccine efficacy, vaccine-derived disease, and maternal immunity aren't genuine. Therefore, it seems highly unlikely he's deliberately trying to deceive anyone. It is always possible that he's deceiving himself. "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself," Richard Feynman famously claimed, "and you are the easiest person to fool."
Several stories report allegations that RFK Jr bears responsibilty for a 2019 measles outbreak in the island nation of Samoa that resulted in more than 5,000 cases and 83 deaths. For example, on PBS NewsHour, Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and member of the FDA advisory committee on vaccines, asserts RFK Jr “had everything to do” with the outbreak:
Now, very quickly, within two weeks, it was realized what that mistake was [that caused two infant deaths in Samoa within minutes of receiving MMR vaccines in 2018]. It was a nursing error. But, nonetheless, RFK Jr seized on that. He flooded Facebook with information that measles vaccine is killing children in Samoa. He went to Samoa. He met with anti-vaccine activists. He met with senior officials in Samoa and kept the drumbeat alive that measles vaccine was killing children in Samoa.
As a consequence, vaccination rates fell from 70 percent to 30 percent. And between September and December of 2019, there was a massive measles epidemic. In this island nation of 200,000 people, there were 57,000 cases of measles and 83 deaths. Most of those deaths were in children less than four years of age.
And Robert F. Kennedy Jr had everything to do with that. And that shows you how disinformation can kill.
(TK link to media misinformation PBS page)
Before considering whether RFK Jr was responsible for the 2019 Samoa measles outbreak and the deaths of 83 people, a brief overview is necessary.
On July 6 2018, two babies brought to a hospital in Samoa died within minutes of receving MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccines. Days later, the government suspended the MMR program and called for a full investigation. However the inquiry was put on hold until the trial of the two nurses who administered the vaccines had been completed. It wasn’t until April of 2019 when the Director of Health announced that human error caused the death of the two infants. The MMR program was restarted later that month — more than nine months after the suspension began — but only at hospital clinics. In July, the Director of Health said the vaccines were incorrectly mixed with the wrong diluent. The next month, the two nurses were sentenced to five years in prison and it was confirmed that one of the nurses mixed the MMR vaccine powder with expired muscle relaxant anaesthetic instead of water for injection supplied in a vial with the vaccine.
On October 16, a measles outbreak was declared as four specimens from September 30 had turned up positive. Government data later released publicly showed that Samoa had one case of measles reported to surveillance on August 28 as depicted in Figure 1 below.
<aside> <img src="/icons/sun_blue.svg" alt="/icons/sun_blue.svg" width="40px" />
Figure 1 | Measles cases between August 28 and November 8
This graph details the number of cases of measles reported to surveillance between August 28 and November 8. (Photo: Ministry of Health)
Samoa Observer, 2019 | 191115 | Samoa defends long wait on measles admission
</aside>
On November 15, a State of Emergency was declared. The government was criticized by some for reportedly waiting six weeks and more than 200 cases before declaring an SoE and reporting these cases publicly.