Dr. Paul Offit: RFK Jr. Misleads When He Says We’re Doing Better at Controlling the Measles Outbreak than Other Countries

EXCERPT:

OFFIT: “Right. Well, RFK Jr.. Misleads us when he says we‘re doing better than other countries. Let‘s go back to 2000. We eliminated measles from this country. Now, at the time, there were more than 10 million cases of measles in this world. There were more than 100,000 deaths from measles in this world. And international travel was common. So people with measles came into this country all the time. The reason that we were able to stop that, that spread from one American child to another, was a critical percentage of American children were vaccinated. More than 95 percent. Now it‘s no different. The only difference is not that there‘s measles in the world. It‘s not that international travel is common. It‘s not that measles comes in this country. It‘s that we have lower immunization rates in children. So that you see these outbreaks in Utah or west Texas or in South Carolina. That‘s the difference.”