Americans are increasingly being exposed to false claims about measles and vaccines, according to a new KFF poll.
It found 33 percent of respondents had “heard” or “read” the false claim that “getting the measles vaccine is more dangerous than becoming infected with measles.” Last March, 18 percent said they had heard the same claim.
The poll found the percentage of people believing the unproven claim that “the measles, mumps, rubella vaccines, also known as the MMR vaccines, have been proven to cause autism in children” is “definitely true” or “probably true,” was largely unchanged since June 2023, hovering just below 30 percent of respondents.
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for years was a leading vaccine skeptic, as head of the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense. He continued to promote unfounded claims about public health, as part of his vision for healthier America, during his unsuccessful run for president in 2023 and now as President Trump’s HHS secretary.
Among Kennedy’s biggest challenges so far has been a measles outbreak centered on a largely unvaccinated Mennonite community in Texas, which has spread to other states.
On Tuesday, Texas officials said there had been 624 confirmed cases of measles in the state since the end of January. In total, 64 patients have been hospitalized during the outbreak, the Texas Department of State Health Services said Tuesday.
“There have been two fatalities in school-aged children who lived in the outbreak area. The children were not vaccinated and had no known underlying conditions,” the department said.
Fifty-one percent in the KFF poll said they were “very worried” or “somewhat worried” when it comes to “the outbreak of measles in the U.S.,” while 49 percent said they were “not too worried” or “not at all worried.”
The KFF poll was conducted April 8-15, surveying 1,380 people with a margin of sampling error of 3 percentage points.
