Why Do the Mainstream Media Insist on Lying about Measles?

The mainstream media’s reporting on the measles outbreak in Texas is typically deceitful. As usual, they are spreading vaccine misinformation to manufacture consent for public vaccine policy instead of telling parents the truth. Two of the lies being told are the following claims:

• 1 out of every 1,000 children infected with the measles virus will die from the disease.
• HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has done a disservice to the public by suggesting vitamin A supplementation as a treatment for measles.

Measles Fatality Rate

The lie about the measles fatality rate is tiring. Instructively, when the media repeat this falsehood, they are simply following the example set by the CDC. Since it is so often repeated, I have also repeatedly debunked it, including in the following articles:

• How to Immunize Yourself Against Vaccine Propaganda (February 7, 2019)
• CDC Lies About, and Media Repeats, Risk of Dying from Measles (April 23, 2019, for Children’s Health Defense)
• 15 Facts about Measles the Mainstream Media Won’t Tell You (May 30, 2019)
• NY Times Deceives about the Odds of Dying from Measles in the US (January 23, 2020, in response to an op-ed by Dr. Peter Hotez, who blocked me on Twitter for it)
• How the CDC Brazenly Lies about the Fatality Rate of Measles (January 6, 2023)

Every time you see the media repeat the lie that 1 in 1,000 children infected with measles die from it, confront the lie by reminding that this is a case fatality rate (CFR), which is deaths per reported cases, and that it is deceitful to report a CFR as though it were the infection fatality rate (IFR), which is deaths per estimated infections.

To debunk the lie, we need look no further than the CDC’s own medical textbook Epidemiology and Prevention of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases, otherwise known as “The Pink Book”, where the CDC has this to say about measles mortality (emphasis added):

Before 1963, approximately 500,000 cases and 500 measles deaths were reported annually, with epidemic cycles every 2 to 3 years. However, the actual number of cases was estimated at 3 to 4 million annually.

Thus, during the pre-vaccine era, CFR of measles was 0.1 percent, or one death per 1,000 reported cases. However, most measles infections were never reported. According to the CDC’s estimate, only 13 percent to 17 percent of cases were ever reported. Thus, the IFR of measles, by the CDC’s own account, was between 0.0125 percent and 0.017 percent.

That’s not one to three deaths for every 1,000 children infected with measles; it’s one to two deaths for every 10,000 measles infections.

The CDC’s lie thus exaggerates the measles fatality rate by an order of magnitude.

We can confirm that the pre-vaccine era fatality rate for measles was about 1 in 10,000 from other sources, also. A paper published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in 1975 estimated the fatality rate for measles during the pre-vaccine era in the US to be one death per 10,000 cases. A 1994 Institute of Medicine review titled “Adverse Events Associated with Childhood Vaccines” confirms that in developed countries like the US, “the measles fatality rate is 1 per 10,000 cases”, or 0.01 percent.

Here is what the decline in measles mortality looked like before the vaccine due to factors related to an increasing standard of living—including better nutrition:

Vitamin A and Measles

As for the claim RFK, Jr.’s suggestion that vitamin A is an effective treatment for measles, it seems that the US media are oblivious to the fact that the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends high-dose vitamin A as a treatment for measles in developing countries where malnutrition is rampant.

“There is a well-established scientific basis for the treatment of measles cases with vitamin A supplementation,” the WHO observes, accurately.

It is farcical how the media will call this an “unproven treatment” while touting mRNA COVID‑19 vaccines for young children despite the complete absence of data from clinical trials demonstrating safety and efficacy of the vaccine for this age group.

In fact, contrary to the media’s lie that the shots are “approved” for children as young as six months, the use of the vaccines in children under age 12 continue to be distributed under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), a regulatory status for FDA unapproved products that have not been licensed for the recommended use and are still considered experimental or investigational.

I’ve previously mentioned the utility of vitamin A treatment for measles in numerous articles, including:

• On the Crime of Heresy Against the Vaccine Religion (April 29, 2017)
• A Measles Death, Vaccines, and the Media’s Failure to Inform (July 5, 2015)
• How to Immunize Yourself Against Vaccine Propaganda (February 7, 2019)
• 15 Facts about Measles the Mainstream Media Won’t Tell You (May 30, 2019)
• Is the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Evidence of Vaccine Safety? (July 1, 2019)

However, I haven’t ever covered the vitamin A topic in depth, and I’m too preoccupied with other priorities for now to be able to do so, but in lieu of that, here are sources from the medical literature that you can consult to see for yourself how (a) vitamin A deficiency is a known risk factor for severe measles disease and (b) vitamin A treatment is effective for reducing the risk of complications and death from measles:

• Fawzi et al., “Vitamin A Supplementation and Child Mortality: A Meta-analysis,” JAMA, February 17, 1993
• American Academy of Pediatrics, “Vitamin A Treatment of Measles”, Pediatrics, May 1, 1993
• Butler et al., “Measles severity and serum retinol (vitamin A) concentration among children in the United States”, Pediatrics, June 1993
• Ross and Cutts, “Vindication of policy of vitamin A with measles vaccination”, The Lancet, July 12, 1997
• D’Souza and D’Souza, “Vitamin A for treating measles in children”, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, April 23, 2001
• Tang et al., “Vitamin A for treating measles in children”, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, October 19, 2005
• Trottier et al., “Retinoids inhibit measles virus through a type I IFN-dependent bystander effect”, The FASEB Journal, May 15, 2009
• Kouadio et al., “Measles outbreaks in displaced populations: a review of transmission, morbidity and mortality associated factors”, BMC International Health and Human Rights, March 19, 2010
• Sudfeld et al., “Effectiveness of measles vaccination and vitamin A treatment”, International Journal of Epidemiology, March 23, 2010
• Imdad et al., “Vitamin A supplementation for preventing morbidity and mortality in children from 6 months to 5 years of age”, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, December 8, 2010
• Imdad et al., “Impact of vitamin A supplementation on infant and childhood mortality”, BMC Public Health, April 13, 2011
• Mayo-Wilson et al., “Vitamin A supplements for preventing mortality, illness, and blindness in children aged under 5: systematic review and meta-analysis”, BMJ, August 25, 2011
• Bello et al., “Routine vitamin A supplementation for the prevention of blindness due to measles infection in children”, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, April 13, 2011
• Mahamud et al., “Risk Factors for Measles Mortality Among Hospitalized Somali Refugees Displaced by Famine, Kenya, 2011 Get access Arrow”, Clinical Infectious Diseases, July 2, 2013
• Iannotti et al., “Review of the safety and efficacy of vitamin A supplementation in the treatment of children with severe acute malnutrition”, Nutritional Journal, September 12, 2013
• Bello et al., “Routine vitamin A supplementation for the prevention of blindness due to measles infection in children”, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, January 16, 2014
• Jones and Berkley, “Severe acute malnutrition and infection”, Paediatrics and International Child Health, December 5, 2014
• Bester, “Measles and Measles Vaccination: A Review”, JAMA Pediatrics, December 2016
• Magno and Golomb, “Measuring the Benefits of Mass Vaccination Programs in the United States”, Vaccines, September 29, 2020
• Imdad et al., “Vitamin A supplementation for preventing morbidity and mortality in children from six months to five years of age”, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, March 16, 2022
• “Vitamin A supplementation”, World Health Organization

So next time you see the media trying to portray RFK, Jr. as some kind of lunatic for suggesting that vitamin A is an effective treatment for measles, just remember that it’s the HHS Secretary who’s telling the truth.