Measles, MAHA Moms and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

By Jessica Grose and Alexandra Sifferlin

Produced by Vishakha Darbha

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A measles outbreak in West Texas has claimed two lives, and President Trump’s secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is spreading false claims about the disease and the vaccines that nearly eliminated it. In this episode of “The Opinions,” a Times Opinion editor, Alexandra Sifferlin, and an Opinion writer, Jessica Grose, discuss how the successes and failures of our modern health care system brought us to this moment and the Make America Healthy Again movement. We have eliminated “so many things that used to kill so many people that people have forgotten how dangerous those things are,” Grose says.

(A full transcript of this audio essay will be available within 24 hours of publication in the audio player above.)

Credit…Illustration by The New York Times; photograph by Al Drago/EPA, via Shutterstock

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This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Annie-Rose Strasser.Mixing by Pat McCusker. Original music by Carole Sabouraud, Isaac Jones and Pat McCusker. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

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