When measles cases started popping up in Lubbock in early 2025, local health officials did what they’ve always done: called the CDC for guidance. Except this time, no one picked up. Under Trump, the CDC had been muzzled, gutted, and shoved into a corner, leaving Texas health workers in the dark as the worst measles outbreak in three decades ripped through West Texas and beyond.
Local officials like Katherine Wells, Lubbock’s public health director, were reduced to begging state contacts for scraps of advice while kids filled hospitals. One child in Lubbock died before the CDC even returned her call. Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — now running the health department — was on TV telling parents vitamins could do the job vaccines have been proven to do for half a century.
The result? Over 4,500 people sick across multiple states and Mexico, at least 16 dead, and hospitals running out of resources. Families were left dosing their kids with toxic levels of vitamin A while federal funds to fight the outbreak arrived months late — long after the virus had burned through every unvaccinated pocket of Seminole and beyond.
West Texas didn’t just get hit with measles — it got hit with the Trump-Kennedy double feature: science denial from the top and silence from the feds. When politics muzzles public health, children pay the price.
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/texas-measles-outbreak-cdc-vaccines-rfk-trump/
