A Memo to RFK, Jr.

I recorded a quick video tonight about a story that’s been haunting me all day. And I didn’t want it to get lost amid all of the other chaos and bullshit:

“Millions of U.S. measles cases forecast over 25 years if vaccination rates decline” - The Washington Post

The United States faces millions of measles cases over the next 25 years if vaccination rates for the disease drop 10 percent, according to new research published Thursday.

FFS.

Measles is a deadly disease that had been eradicated in the United States. It is preventable and its disppearance one of the great miracles of modern medicine. But today we have a vaccine skeptic as Secretary of Health and Human Services — and a flood of medical disinformation and vaccine skepticism that is opening the door to an unimageable tragedy.

So, I imagined a memo to RFK — an imaginary memo from the legendary children’s author Roald Dahl. (HT/ Morgaan Sinclair)

TO: Secretary Kennedy

FROM Roald Dahl

In re: Measles

Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.

'Are you feeling all right?' I asked her.

'I feel all sleepy,' she said.

In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.

The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was...in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her. On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunised against measles.

...I dedicated two of my books to Olivia, the first was ‘James and the Giant Peach’. That was when she was still alive. The second was ‘The BFG’, dedicated to her memory after she had died from measles. You will see her name at the beginning of each of these books. And I know how happy she would be if only she could know that her death had helped to save a good deal of illness and death among other children."

Roald Dahl, 1986

I wish RFK Jr would read that. But, more important, I wish parents across the country would read it — to understand what is really stake here. Please help spread the word.