A few years ago, my friend Jessica Malaty Rivera () introduced me to Shot@Life, the UN Foundation’s global vaccine access campaign, and to Vaccinate Your Family, where I now sit on the board. Jessica is a science communicator I deeply admire, and getting to work alongside her (and so many other scientists and science communicators!) has been one of the greatest gifts of this work. Both organizations exist because of one simple truth: the diseases we’ve spent decades fighting off are not relics. They are one blip in vaccination coverage away from coming back for our kids, and I think we already know we are living in that blip as I type this.
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This is the simple truth grounding the PBS documentary, a Shot in the Arm, from director (no relation to RFK Jr., despite the name). It traces exactly how a “blip” happens, and what it costs our children and communities when it does.
In 2018, two nurses in Samoa made a fatal error. They drew up MMR doses using expired muscle relaxant instead of sterile water. As a pediatric ICU (PICU) doctor for over a decade, I frequently ADMINISTER muscle relaxants to children when I intubate them (or in simpler terms, place a breathing tube in their airway). The goal of this medicine is to stop all movement and breathing so we can safely do procedures - and this explains why two babies died within minutes of each other after receiving the MMR vaccine. It was a tragedy of human error, plain and simple. Not a vaccine defect. Not a policy failure. Two nurses and a terrible mistake which resulted in two convictions of manslaughter for their mistake.
But that isn’t the story that ended up spreading. Fear did. Samoa’s government suspended the entire MMR program for ten months while it investigated, and vaccination coverage collapsed from roughly 74% down to 31%.
That’s the moment Robert F. Kennedy Jr. showed up. He was chairman of the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense at the time (which was paying him hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to proselytize for). He met with local vaccine skeptics, and he later described Samoa’s now-unprotected infants as a “natural experiment.” Read that phrase again. It treats a country full of exposed children as a data set instead of what it actually was: a warning siren going off in real time.
Measles arrived from New Zealand two months later. By the time the outbreak was over, 83 people were dead. Most of them were children under five years old. Months into that death toll, Kennedy wrote to the Prime Minister suggesting the outbreak was caused by a defective vaccine, not the vaccination gap he’d just watched happen. There is no epidemiological support for that claim. None. He has since told NBC that whether measles even caused those deaths is a “very controversial supposition.” He still says he had nothing to do with Samoan parents choosing not to vaccinate, despite writing a letter to the PM of Samoa sharing that he was “disappointed” at his decision to re-institute their vaccination program recommend all children receive the MMR ASAP. The PM even went on national TV while receiving the MMR vaccine- a show of trust and force behind this life saving vaccine.
He is now the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. And right now, we are living through the worst measles year this country has seen in three decades. The 2026 measles case counts (2,134 confirmed, 30 new outbreaks as of late June) are on pace to exceed 2025, which was already the worst year for measles since elimination in 2000. A Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP - a non partisan public health research and news organization that tracks infectious disease outbreaks, antimicrobial resistance, vaccine science, and biosecurity issues) analysis concluded it's "highly likely that the USA will lose its measles elimination status in 2026," noting that the US was reporting more than 90 cases per 10 million people in early 2026, far above the elimination threshold of fewer than 1 per 10 million.
Just a few weeks ago, I testified at a congressional shadow hearing on vaccines and the MAHA agenda, and I’ve spent enough time reading the history, paying attention, and getting into the rooms where these discussions happen to recognize this pattern of subtle misinformation and disinformation the second I see it (I mean, I had a pandemic baby in April 2020 and became a full fledged science communicator during the pandemic because children were being grossly misrepresented in the national discussions and decision making). It never announces itself as an attack on children. It shows up dressed as concern, as curiosity, as someone “just asking questions.” By the time the body count is undeniable, the questions have already done their damage, and everyone who asked them has moved on to the next audience.
(video via Congressman Robert Garcia)
I don’t want to re-litigate one man’s guilt in one country’s tragedy, and honestly, that’s not even the point. What happened in Samoa was a demonstration of a method, and the method is what should keep you up at night. Find a population that’s already scared because of something real. Don’t even bother inventing the fear, just amplify it, dignify it, hand it a microphone and a title. Call a collapsing safety net a “natural experiment” instead of the emergency it is. And when children start dying, make sure the conversation is about the cause of death, never about the policy that left them wide open.
None of that requires malice to be lethal. It only requires someone with real power to keep telling frightened parents that their fear is correct, that the people asking them to vaccinate their kids are the ones who can’t be trusted. Parental fear isn’t irrational. It’s one of the most human things there is, and it deserves to be met with honesty, not mined for clicks and votes. What happened in Samoa, and what’s happening again right now from the top of HHS, is that the fear itself became the product.
I’m not asking you to re-litigate 2019. I’m asking you to notice that the same mechanism that killed 83 people in Samoa isn’t stuck in Samoa, and it isn’t stuck in the past. It’s running right now, wrapped up in phrases like “medical freedom” and “informed choice.” Those are good words. They deserve to mean something true. Samoa is what happens when they don’t.
So vaccinate your kids. Ask your pediatrician the hard questions, the real ones, the ones that come from love. Not a cabinet secretary with a media team and a body count he still won’t own. We already know exactly how this story ends. We don’t get to say we didn’t.
I am the one who cares for these children and their families in their most difficult moments in the pediatric ICU. I hold their hands, tell them this was not their fault - it was the fault of a health system anchored by “vibes” not science. The sad truth is more children will die if we continue to follow a career politician and naysayer over the scientists, public health professionals, and physicians who have pledged their life to save your children.
We are not the enemy, and we don’t blame you. Please hold that in your heart when you see your pediatrician next. We have one agenda, help you raise your kids into the incredible adults we know they will be one day. It is an honor and a privilege to care for you - and I will never take that honor lightly.
I am with you, and I am you as a parent to two young children.
Just as we said during the pandemic, we are in this together, and together we will get through this.
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