Tuesday marked the five-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic — and right-wing media’s abject abandonment of their responsibility to keep safe and healthy the people who depended on them for information. Fox News propagandists and their fellow travelers responded to the rising death tolls by downplaying the danger posed by the virus, touting fake miracle cures, lashing out at public health authorities and their recommendations, and ultimately waging an all-out assault against the vaccines, with deadly consequences for their right-wing audience. 

The legacy of the right’s COVID-19 catastrophe was on display Tuesday night as Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. discussed the ongoing measles outbreak in the American Southwest in an interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity. Kennedy, an antivax kook rehabilitated by MAGA media, used his time with Hannity’s audience to downplay both the danger posed by the measles and the importance of vaccinating against it.

A measles outbreak, which began in West Texas in late January, has infected at least 223 people in the state, almost all of whom were unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status, and has spread to New Mexico and Oklahoma, according to public health officials. An unvaccinated child is confirmed to have died of measles in Texas while New Mexico health officials are investigating the death of another unvaccinated person who tested positive for the disease. 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is on the ground in Texas and working in partnership with its Department of State Health Services, which has responded to the outbreak in part by telling Texans that “the best way to prevent getting sick is to be immunized with two doses of a vaccine against measles, which is primarily administered as the combination measles-mumps-rubella vaccine.” 

But that advice is being undermined by Kennedy, who spent years as an antivax activist pushing the myth that the MMR vaccine causes autism and falsely arguing that “no vaccine” is safe and effective. Even in his confirmation hearing, he was unable to offer an unqualified “yes” to Sen. Bill Cassidy’s (R-LA) question, “Will you reassure mothers unequivocally and without qualification, that the measles and hepatitis B vaccines do not cause autism?” (Cassidy subsequently joined nearly every other Republican senator in voting for Kennedy, ensuring his confirmation.)

Hannity tried to keep Kennedy on message during their Fox interview, repeatedly prompting the secretary to talk about how the Trump administration is providing vaccines in response to the outbreak. But the loyal Trump propagandist’s efforts were unsuccessful, with Kennedy repeatedly pivoting back to antivax talking points. 

Hannity began by minimizing the outbreak, calling it “very small” and adding, “We have had measles outbreaks long before you were Health and Human Services secretary.”

“We had 16 measles outbreaks last year,” Kennedy replied, “Some years, we have hundreds of measles outbreaks.”

In fact, CNN reported, citing CDC data, that “measles cases for 2025 are already approaching last year’s total of 285 cases in the US.”

Kennedy acknowledged that outbreaks occur in part because “there are people who don’t vaccinate.” But he immediately followed that up by saying that “also the vaccine itself wanes,” which “means older people are essentially unvaccinated” and “that tends to shift measles infections to older groups and also to very young children.”

In fact, only five of the 223 Texas measles cases and one of the 33 in New Mexico said they had received at least one dose of the vaccine. Of the Texas cases, 98 were in children ages 5 to 17.

Kennedy went on to say that “it used to be when you and I were kids, everybody got measles” which gave them “lifetime protection against measles infection. The vaccine doesn't do that.”

“Vaccine is effective for some people for life, but many people, it wanes, and one of the problems is it does not appear to provide maternal immunity,” he continued, suggesting that babies “were protected by breast milk” when their mothers had been infected by measles.

Hannity tried to pull Kennedy back following that paean for the days before the measles vaccine. “First of all, Governor Abbott was singing your praises, talking about you going all in, you providing the vaccines.”

The secretary acknowledged that “we’re providing vaccines,” but then immediately added that “we’re providing vitamin A,” and said, “You know, there are many studies — some showing 87 percent of effectiveness of vitamin A against serious disease and death.”

Kennedy went on to argue that measles “does not have a high infection fatality rate,” particularly in those who are not “malnourished,” and suggested that the decline in measles deaths was due less to the measles vaccine than to the inception of “the WIC program, which fed all of these hungry kids in our country” the year after the vaccine’s introduction. 

Hannity then tried once again to bring the conversation back to the benefits of immunization and how the federal government is providing vaccines for free in an exchange that roughly resembled pulling teeth: 

HANNITY: There are people that are choosing not to get vaccinated.

KENNEDY: Yeah.

HANNITY: You — one thing Governor Abbott did emphasize, he said you have made vaccines to whatever number they need available immediately to the state of Texas and any other state.

KENNEDY: Anybody — anybody who wants a vaccine —

HANNITY: Can get it.

KENNEDY: And we will make sure of that.

HANNITY: And they can get it for free.

KENNEDY: Yes.

Hannity contrasted this action with how “people wanted to create an image that you're against that,” adding, “You're not.”

Kennedy responded that he was “a freedom of choice person” who supported “transparency,” before giving Hannity’s viewers more reasons not to support measles vaccination.

“There are adverse events from the vaccine,” he said. “It does cause deaths every year. It causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes — encephalitis and blindness, et cetera, and so, people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves. And what we need to do is give them the best information, encourage them to vaccinate. The vaccine does stop the spread of the disease.”

Hannity immediately seized upon the half-hearted endorsement of the vaccine Kennedy offered after spending several minutes denouncing it. 

“I want everyone to just hear — you said ‘encourage them to,’” Hannity said, before suggesting that this debunked critics who described Kennedy as antivax.

“That frustrates me because I listen to people talk about you, and they don't tell the truth,” Hannity said. “And that bothers me. You know, I don't like when people don't tell the truth.” 

Any Fox viewer who was on the fence about vaccinating themselves or their children and saw Hannity’s interview would come away from it having been told that the measles is not particularly dangerous, that natural immunity acquired by infection is superior to vaccination, and that the vaccine might blind or even kill them — and all by the nation’s top health official.