CDC Deputy Director Unclear On How It's *His* Job To Prevent Contagious Diseases Like Measles
Dr. Ralph Abraham has said measles are just 'the cost of doing business'
As of Tuesday, there have been 876 cases in South Carolina’s measles outbreak, making it the largest outbreak in the United States since the disease was first considered eradicated in 2000. So far, no one has died, but who knows how long that will remain the case. A Texas ICE detention center in which 300 children are currently imprisoned also reported two cases this week, so that will probably end really well.
Earlier this month, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed criticizing CDC Principal Deputy Director Ralph Abraham for having callously dismissed measles as “the cost of doing business” — sort of like how dead children are just the price we have to pay for the Second Amendment — blaming recent outbreaks on “our borders being somewhat porous [and] global and international travel.”
Now, that used to (sort of!) be the case. We’d have measles outbreaks because someone from some country where they don’t vaccinate passed it on to an unvaccinated kid at Disneyland. Those outbreaks, at that point, would be relatively small, because the majority of kids were vaccinated, and pretty much everyone from both sides of the aisle agreed that the parents of unvaccinated kids ought to be ashamed of themselves.
But now, as the WSJ pointed out, only two percent of US cases originate from abroad now. These outbreaks are also much larger than they used to be, because these days, not vaccinating your kids is a badge of honor for a large percentage of Republicans. Last year, we hit a 34-year high of over 2200 cases, and we’re already well on track to beat that this year.
USA! USA! USA!
On Monday, the site published a response letter from Abraham — who, as the surgeon general of Louisiana, decided to abort the state’s mass vaccination efforts — in which he argued that it was wrong to blame the recent outbreaks on American policy or the fact that the head of Health and Human Services is an ardent anti-vaxxer. Because, you know, other countries have measles, too.
Rising measles incidence worldwide has led to outbreaks in countries where the disease had previously been eliminated. Canada, the U.K. and Spain are among the developed countries that recently lost their measles elimination status.
Canada (5,063 cases) and Mexico (6,266) reported substantially more measles cases in 2025 than the U.S. (2,267), despite having significantly smaller populations. Across porous borders with high regional caseloads, repeated reintroductions of a common strain make precise attribution of outbreak sources difficult.
Yes, because there are people in those countries who, for stupid reasons, don’t vaccinate their kids either. That doesn’t mean we have to encourage that in our own population. For instance, by doing things like updating a CDC page to read “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism. Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.”
Yes, they were ignored because those studies were found to be entirely fraudulent. That is why Andrew Wakefield, who led the fraudulent 1998 Lancet MMR Vaccine study that “proved” that vaccines caused autism, lost his license to practice medicine. It was determined that he was guilty of manipulating the data. There have, however, been many large-scaled controlled studies that have found no causal link between the two. All of the scientific evidence available shows that autism develops well before children are even able to get the vaccine, possibly in the womb.
But go off, Abraham.
Although immunization coverage for measles is superior in the U.S. compared to peer countries, we can’t rely exclusively on vaccination. As described in detail in a recent CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, in a Colorado outbreak linked to an infectious international air traveler, four of nine secondary measles transmissions occurred among fully vaccinated travel-related contacts.
The important factor here is that there were only nine cases. They didn’t spread, probably because most of the people who came into contact with them were vaccinated — which is pretty lucky because the vaccination rate in Denver, Colorado is 89 percent, well below the herd immunity standard of 95 percent.
In Texas last year, however, there were 762 cases. We know that some people who have been vaccinated can still get measles, because all vaccines don’t work for all people. The MMR vaccine is 97 percent effective, so yes, some vaccinated people can still contract it. That is why herd immunity is so important. Breakthrough cases are rare, but those who do get them will have milder symptoms and are significantly less contagious than those who don’t.
Under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s leadership, the CDC has surged resources, including vaccines and therapeutics, nationwide to support state and local response efforts and contain outbreaks. We are setting the global standard for public health.
No, we’re really not.
There is no question that this is an American policy problem. We didn’t have this problem to this degree until our health centers were crawling with anti-vaxx lunatics, before the Right decided to make vaccinations a partisan issue. You can’t put people who believe insane things about vaccines in charge of health in this country and expect that people are not going to listen to them.
Indeed, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Abraham believes that we should just be chill about people choosing not to vaccinate their children.
“You know, the president, the [health] secretary, we talk all the time about religious freedom, health freedom, personal freedom, and I think we have to respect those communities that choose to go somewhat of a different route,” he said in the same press junket in which he claimed measles was “the cost of doing business.”
We do not have to respect those communities. Those communities put immunocompromised people and children who are too young to get vaccinated in actual danger. They could cause children to die, to become blind or to lose their hearing. It can cause "immune amnesia," in which the body more or less forgets any immunities it may have built up and becomes uniquely susceptible to infections.
That is not something to respect. These people are not exercising their own freedom, they are taking it from others.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
"These people are not exercising their own freedom, they are taking it from others. "
At the heart of what MAGAism is.
If what your organization is supposed to prevent happening is the "cost of doing business" you have no business being in that business.
-- Commodore Obvious