HONOLULU (KHON2) — Governors around the country are preparing for a balance of power shift in Washington, D.C. as President-Elect Donald Trump’s term begins in two months.
The President-Elect recently nominated Robert Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human services, which has come with much criticism from some in the medical community due to his thoughts on vaccines.
Hawaii’s Governor Josh Green is a physician who went to Samoa in 2019 to help administer vaccines during a measles outbreak that killed 83 people, many of them children. The virus broke out when vaccine coverage plummeted following a tragic accident in 2018 when two children were given powder-based MMR vaccines that were mistakenly mixed with muscle relaxants, leading to their deaths. Governor Green blames RFK Jr. for stoking fears of vaccines in the aftermath.
“RFK Jr. went to Samoa and demagogued the idea that vaccines were hurting people,” Gov. Green said. “He collapsed that vaccination program and that meant 83 people died. We were asked by the prime minister to come in and I took a medical mission team, to Samoa. We vaccinated the entire country. We did just under 37,000 vaccines in two days and that stopped the measles. If he does that kind of thing in America, you’ll see outbreaks of measles, mumps, rubella, polio, meningitis. He’s a terrible pick for HHS secretary and I hope that the President-Elect will pick someone else. A conservative Republican, perhaps, totally fine. His former surgeon general, Dr. (Jerome) Adams, is a good person, for example. So we have to, again, look out for our keiki. This stuff shouldn’t be political, and our RFK should go down.”
Currently, Hawaii’s health department requires 11 vaccines for schools. Incomplete immunizations have gone up from 3.44% in 2019-2020, to 7.63% in 2021-2022, and the latest report in 2022-2023 is 18.7%. Gov. Green is concerned about what is happening.
“That’s part of the trend where you have people, using misinformation or even disinformation to torpedo vaccination programs, which are totally safe. And then you’re gonna see outbreaks in areas that are more rural where people don’t have as much health literacy. I experienced that as a physician in Ka’u where sometimes we saw dips in the vaccination rates. Look, vaccinations are our best preventative measure to keep kids healthy. We should not be questioning that. There’s lots of good health debates that can occur, but vaccinations are safe.”