Kennedy, Conspiracy, and the Measles Outbreak that Nearly Destroyed Samoa (continued)
The continuation of the story behind the Kennedy-funded disinformation campaign that killed children an ocean away (Pt. 2 of 2)
Author’s Note: This is Part Two of a two-part series. If you haven’t already, you can read Part One here. Thanks!
The trouble started on Friday, July 6th, 2018, when two mothers brought their infants – a baby girl named Lannacallysta and a baby boy named Opalameko1 – to Safotu Hospital for routine pediatric appointments.
Safotu Hospital is not the hulking colossus of sterile white rooms and corridors that comes to mind when Westerners hear the word “hospital”. Instead, it is a single-floor, cream-colored building with a dusky red roof and a beautiful ocean view. It is situated next to a mobile phone store, across the street from what appears to be a small plantation. Many families on the island of Savai’i, where Safotu is located, sustain themselves on such plantations. Even by Samoan standards, the island of Savai’i is rural and close-knit, with a total population of just under 45,000. The two mothers, who came from neighboring villages and very likely shared a lot in common, may or may not have known each other before July 6th.
Regrettably, the tragic events of that fateful day at the hospital would tie the women together for the rest of their lives.
Lannacallysta was the first to be seen by nurses. During this time, she received a routine dose of the MMR vaccine. Almost instantaneously following the dose, it became evident to her mother and attending healthcare providers that something was very, very wrong with the otherwise healthy infant. Within minutes, the baby girl was dead.
Given the size of the Safotu Hospital facilities, Opalameko’s mother – presumably waiting to be seen by practitioners – would have certainly been subjected to the chaotic turmoil that laces any unexpected medical emergency, as well as the somber suffocating atmosphere that settles when the best efforts aren’t enough to avert a nightmare. She may have heard screams and cries erupting from just a few rooms over. We don’t know exactly what Opalameko’s mother experienced that morning, but we do know this: she somehow knew that Lannacallysta’s death rapidly followed a dose of MMR vaccine.
I’m detailing these gruesome hypothetical details to help readers understand why Opalameko’s mother requested that he not receive the MMR vaccine that he too was coincidentally scheduled to receive on the morning of July 6th. Her hesitancy was not born of ignorance. It was a logical reaction to a concrete misfortune unfolding right before her eyes. In fact, the hospital’s protocol dictated that further MMR vaccination should have been suspended following the death of the supposedly healthy baby earlier in the day.
Despite this policy, the nurses at Safotu Hospital ignored protocol and their clients' explicit requests. Opalameko received the MMR vaccine, experienced the same severe symptoms as Lannacalysta, and died within a matter of minutes.
One baby dying immediately following the administration of a vaccine – in a hospital setting, no less – is highly unusual2. Two babies dying within hours of one another at the same facility is unheard of, astronomically unlikely. Given how alarming and unusual the circumstances were, news of the infant deaths spread like wildfire across the tiny country3.
Parents and grandparents, many of whom had set aside centuries-old traditional healing techniques and reluctantly put their faith in Western medicine for their children’s sake, didn’t just feel betrayed. They were struck with horror. Two vibrant, otherwise healthy, children had their lives cut short in the most devastating way imaginable. On top of that, a mother’s wishes were deliberately disregarded, and as a result, she lost a son. This is the stuff of nightmares, and the Samoan population was chilled to its core.
In response to the deaths, Prime Minister Tuila'epa Sa'ilele Malielegaoi launched an inquiry into the matter. Immediately, drastic action was taken when Director of General Health Leausa Take Naseri pulled Samoa’s MMR vaccination program entirely.
Straight away, investigators focused on the two nurses who administered the vaccines. This line of inquiry made perfect sense, as human errors have resulted in a sizable portion of conclusively proven vaccine-linked deaths in the past. Considering the proximity of the Samoan deaths and the sudden onset of severe symptoms in the victims, a medical mistake was always considered the most logical explanation behind the tragedy.
It took about three weeks for government officials to piece together the entire story. As was always suspected, one of the two nurses had indeed made a fatal mistake when preparing the vaccine dosages. Instead of mixing the powdered MMR vaccine with a diluent (saline water), she used an expired anesthetic and inadvertently created a lethal cocktail. The second nurse – unaware of her colleague’s error – broke protocol and ordered that baby Opalameko be vaccinated following baby Lannacallysta’s death.
After the second death, the first nurse retraced her steps and immediately realized that the problem lay with her preparation of the vaccine. Afraid of the consequences that awaited, the nurse concealed the incriminating evidence from authorities by gathering the remaining vaccine and the used vials in a plastic bag to bring home. Guilt ultimately got the best of her, and after two weeks, the woman confessed to the mix-up. Post-mortem analysis definitively confirmed that the deaths were caused by the botched preparation rather than the MMR vaccine itself. Ultimately, both nurses faced manslaughter charges.
The case, though temporarily slowed down by the initial cover-up, was about as straightforward as it could be. In theory, the MMR vaccine should have been reinstated the moment medical malpractice became evident.
Instead, it was suspended for ten months until May 2019.
There isn’t a straightforward answer as to why the Samoan government believed that withholding the population’s access to the MMR vaccine for so long was a brilliant idea. However, a telling clue lies in the Samoan Prime Minister’s initial statement concerning the 2018 deaths:
“As a grandfather and father, I can relate to the grief of the families for their loss.
I also almost lost one of my grandsons several years ago under similar circumstances. But with the Grace of our Father in Heaven, my grandson survived with the proper treatment. But he will never be the same, as he has lost the ability to speak.”
As mentioned previously, serious vaccine injuries are statistically quite rare, but they can and do happen. However, there is no viable evidence available to suggest that vaccine complications of any sort can result in children being robbed of their voices. Rather, the suggestion that the Prime Minister’s grandson’s inability to speak has something to do with him being vaccinated reeks of Andrew Wakefield’s retracted autism study from the 1990s as well as repeatedly disproven half-baked theories of vaccine-induced developmental disorder haphazardly tied up in the use of Thimerosal.
This was great news for Robert F Kennedy’s newly rebranded Children’s Health Defense. It signaled to the organization that their messaging was rattling around in the head of a world leader. It also signaled a promising growth opportunity for a newly onboarded team of social media managers and content creators, working long hours to transform the bare-bones operation that was the World Mercury Project into a juggernaut at the intersection of health and politics.
In 2018, CHD’s primary efforts were focused on producing easily digestible videos and articles to spread Kennedy’s rhetoric across an infinite digital landscape. Creating such content is not the cakewalk it may seem. CHD excels at what it does because it leans on junk science and half-truths carefully cherry-picked to cultivate panic and alarm. However, by the time 2018 rolled around, there was a need for fresh evidence to hook new skeptics. Tired arguments denouncing the risks of Thimerosal exposure had largely been mitigated nearly two decades prior. Fears of vaccine-induced autism crushable with Google searches capable of yielding dozens of results to the contrary.
To combat this colossal issue, CHD set to work creating and collecting materials designed to support a broader, more difficult-to-disprove two-pronged argument to draw in a new generation of anti-vaccine sentiment:
Firstly, CHD vehemently asserted that many of the diseases societies vaccinate against pose minimal risk to the general public. In opinion pieces and research analysis and Instagram reels alike, said diseases would be reduced to common colds and fevers to be slept off, bolstered by distorted data manipulated to suggest long-term serious risks that come from such illnesses are practically non-existent. “A person is 100 times more likely to die by [a] lightning strike than to die by measles,” a 2019 article titled “The Facts About Measles” states in bold baby blue letters, implying concerns over measles are drastically overblown and that vaccination is not the necessity authorities claim it to be. Even if this particular statement were true (it’s not4), it completely disregards the fact that deaths have dwindled precisely because of widespread, worldwide vaccination efforts.
Secondly, they peddled the idea that the impact of vaccination on the body is far more dangerous than the diseases they supposedly5 inoculate against. Since 2018, Children’s Health Defense has published dozens of baseless musings suggesting that the protection offered by vaccination has effectively short-changing the immune systems of children, in turn making them more susceptible to cancers and chronic illnesses. These hollow claims seemingly contradict dozens of other CHD articles, which suggest that certain vaccines are entirely ineffective and have seen “the last of [their] useful days”. In the midsts of these incongruities are videos of bereaved, tragedy-stricken parents that pull at heartstrings but fail provide demonstrable evidence that a vaccine brought about their misfortune.
In the early days of the rebrand, CHD faced an uphill battle. Downplaying the severity of diseases like measles – against generations’ worth of evidence relaying otherwise – was crucial to lend credence to the second, largely speculative part of the argument.
Samoa’s tragedy, stripped of its context, was the sort of “gotcha” CHD needed to bolster its base argument. No longer was it necessary to pretend that measles was something completely benign. Now, the vaccine-hesitant could point to the kernel of truth at the center of Samoa’s MMR deaths – that, minuscule as it may be, an element of risk that exists in the act of vaccination. Disregarding the medical malpractice that drove the disaster, it seemingly proved the (otherwise difficult to prove) point that a remedy could prove more deadly than a disease.
Neatly pre-packaged with deliciously morbid headlines and revolving around the sort of undeniably innocent children that Children’s Health Defense claims to defend, it was an irresistible checkmate.
Pinpointing precisely when word of the story first made its way across the ocean and into Kennedy’s periphery is difficult, but it didn’t take long. The Washington Post reported that CHD made several Facebook posts concerning the deaths in July and August 2018, though records of this activity have largely been lost6. An archived screenshot confirms that CHD was reporting on Samoa as early as August 5th.
By this date, Samoan officials were aware of the true cause of death in the initial MMR case. The subheading of the article shared by CHD on August 5th clearly cites the manslaughter charges against the offending nurses. However, CHD actively decided to present the story in a disingenuous way by attaching commentary implying that the subsequent investigation was not properly conducted and that more children remained at risk of meeting a similar fate.
It didn’t matter that the article shared provided answers to all the questions CHD posed. CHD hires almost certainly knew that most social media users who encountered the story would be sufficiently outraged by half-reading the headline, and in all likelihood would not take additional time to conduct further research7. What’s more, these CHD circulated posts arguably garnered more eyes than the posts of any other anti-vaccine group online.
A January 2020 analysis of the metric performances of Facebook vaccine-related advertisements shines some light on the disproportionate reach Children’s Health Defense had in the days leading up to the 2019 Samoan measles outbreak. Though the study found that there wasn’t a significant difference in the number of pro-vaccine advertisements and anti-vaccine advertisements8 circulating, it did identify several major differences in the strategies used to employ said advertisements:
The 163 advertisements the study classified as “pro-vaccine” were paid for by 83 different groups, averaging about 1.9 advertisements per advertiser. Meanwhile, the 145 advertisements classified as “anti-vaccine” came from just 27 sources, which would average about 5.4 advertisements per advertiser. However, this average is somewhat misleading. The study found that in actuality, the top five anti-vaccine advertisers were behind 75% of all anti-vaccine content examined in the study.
Facebook’s Ad Archive shows that over 45 of the 145 anti-vaccine advertisements (nearly 1 in 3 advertisements) came directly from Kennedy’s pet project.
81% of pro-vaccine advertisements referenced a specific vaccine for a specific reason – for instance, a local pharmacy getting the word out to stop by for an annual flu shot. In contrast, a whopping 82% of anti-vaccination advertising talked about vaccines as a largely dangerous monolith.
Only 14% of the pro-vaccine groups studied had budgets greater than $100 USD, and 40% of deployed advertisements garnered less than 1k views. A significantly higher percentage of anti-vaccine advertising campaigns (45%) launched with budgets exceeding the $100 USD mark, which shouldn’t come as a shock considering Kennedy’s wealth and heavy-handed role in the movement at large. Even more shocking, 90% of paid anti-vaccine advertisements surpassed the 1k view threshold9.
These metrics, though incomplete, tell the tale of an aggressive social media campaign launched by Kennedy’s team. They make clear that CHD existed in an entirely different league than the scores of other lunatics stuck somewhere between deeply confused and purposely disingenuous, hovering above the blinking cursors of comment sections. And damningly, the metrics reveal just how substantial a role Kennedy himself played in sustaining the feedback loop that fed foreseeable disaster in Samoa.
As news of Lannacallysta and Opamlameko spread, it’s not unreasonable to assume that some subset of Samoans – parents, in particular –sought further information concerning potential issues with the MMR vaccine. Unfortunately, individuals seeking honest answers online unintentionally provided fodder for flawed social media algorithms. Search histories, browser activities, and third-party data collections relayed to Facebook an interest uptick in vaccine-related content among Samoans. In response, vaccine-related content was increasingly pushed into the feeds of concerned citizens. Statistically, a sizable portion of that content would have been the fearmongering efforts spearheaded directly by Kennedy.
Samoans aren’t the only ones susceptible to falling into this trap – the rise of anti-vaccine sentiment following the COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated that people of all ages, races, and genders are vulnerable to disinformation campaigns. However, the close-knit nature of Samoan culture provided the perfect conditions for falsehoods to thrive. In 2019, 118,000 Samoans – approximately 57% of the population – had registered Facebook accounts. Considering that the average Facebook user has somewhere between 250-350 Facebook friends, it’s easy to see how a few strategically placed, well-crafted scary stories could generate full-blown fears of vaccination in a very short period of time.
News of the children lost in the summer of 2018 eventually came and went, as many anti-vaccine talking points do when they’re no longer considered useful. Even so, Samoans were haunted by horror stories floating between in the spaces family photographs and status updates. The Samoan government’s drawn-out restriction on MMR administration further cemented the idea something deeply threatening – potentially deadly, even – lurked in vaccine formulas.
It’s impossible to translate the impact of fear into something quantifiable. However, there’s a multitude of signs indicating the influence CHD manufactured rhetoric had specifically on the people of Samoa.
The most obvious of these signs was a dramatic plummet in vaccination rates among children of immunization age that failed to bounce back after the MMR ban was lifted in the spring of 2019. Whether convinced by claims of the superiority of “natural immunity” via childhood infection or by whispers of global cabals with nefarious intentions, Samoans grew deeply distrustful of their healthcare system. Months after the MMR vaccinations resumed, vaccination rates hovered at just 31%10. This number stood in stark contrast to neighboring island nations like Fiji and Tonga, which boasted vaccination rates of 94% and 85%, respectively. Just a few years earlier, in 2013, the immunization rate among Samoan children was a comparable 90%.
Furthermore, CHD’s polished looks and the legitimacy offered by the Kennedy name allowed smaller, more localized anti-vaccine influencers to thrive, in effect creating a much larger panic-based online ecosystem to develop and feed off of Samoan fears.
Among the most notable figures was Taylor Winterstein, the wife of Samoan-Australian rugby footballer Frank Winterstein11. A boost in online followers thanks to her husband’s status as a professional athlete drove Taylor to launch a health and wellness blog specifically targeting Pacific Islanders, called Tay’s Way, in 2017. By 2018, she went beyond the blogosphere and was called upon to be the Australian ambassador for a promotional tour of Vaxxed, the first in a series of propaganda films with strong ties to Kennedy’s efforts12. In 2019, in light of the MMR deaths, Winterstein ramped up her efforts and planned seminars on “informed consent” and “vaccine injury awareness” across Samoa, charging $200 per ticket. Though activists and Samoan government officials ultimately discouraged her from following through with the events, Winterstein continued to act as an outspoken opponent of vaccination. As an alternative, she promoted a cure-all purple rice powder sourced from Thailand, sold at a 10,000% markup, to over 20,000 social media followers.
Even closer to home was activist Edwin Tamasese. Edwin Tamasese is a Samoan plantation farmer13 and coconut oil distributor whose crops are manufactured into soaps and skin care products sold across Europe and the United States. In the mid-2010s, Tamasese began using his Facebook profile as a means of evangelizing the holistic and healing benefits of coconut and papaya leaf, which have long been mainstay ingredients of the traditional medicines utilized by indigenous Samoans for generations. Whether his praises were a means of promoting his wares or rooted in legitimate belief is difficult to say. However, in the wake of Kennedy’s influence, Tamasese shifted gears entirely. Using his experience as a farmer as a qualifier to his claims, Tamasese began to flagrantly conflate the toxins utilized in herbicides and pesticides to the ingredients used to create vaccines.
We know that Tamasese was heavily influenced by Kennedy because, on several occasions, Tamasese specifically praised Kennedy’s anti-vaccine efforts. In fact, Tamasese admired Kennedy so much so that he invited the American politician (as well as a few other CHD associates) to Samoa.
RFK Jr. readily accepted, anxious to witness the status of the seeds he, in part, helped sow. Having described Samoa’s massive drop in vaccination rates as a “natural experiment”14, he was eager to showcase to his platform a nation seemingly able to thrive without heavy-handed health initiatives. So, in June 2019, Kennedy headed to the other side of the world on CHD’s dime.
Tamasese arranged for Kennedy to meet with several government officials. Kennedy himself stated that the primary purpose of the trip was to persuade seemingly amenable Samoan health officials to adopt a CHD-backed “medical informatics system” to measure the efficacy of medical interventions and drugs on overall health15. Kennedy and his wife were also invited to be the Prime Minister’s guests of honor for an independence celebration, no doubt sending mixed messages to Samoans hesitant about the MMR vaccine reinstated just a few weeks prior.
During his downtime, Kennedy also rubbed elbows and posed for photographs with fellow anti-vaccine advocates, including Winterstein, who described their meeting as “profoundly monumental”.
While Kennedy actively advocated against the "unconscionably high injury rate” of MMR vaccines to Samoa (and anyone else willing to listen, for that matter), a storm brewed. At the start of 2019, in countries including Israel, Ukraine, the Philippines, Brazil, and even the United States, measles cases exploded. As people began falling ill, organizations like UNICEF and WHO warned Pacific Islanders of the imminent danger the highly contagious disease posed. They urged individuals to seek out vaccination. Some Samoans complied. But a far greater number hesitated out of fears of the unknown and widespread doubt in the utility of preventative medicine.
Months passed. Outbreaks came and went, but Oceania remained relatively unscathed. Relative isolation and pure luck led some to believe that Samoa and its neighbors had managed to avert disaster entirely
Unfortunately, this was not the case. Luck ran out in August 2019, when measles finally made its way to New Zealand16. In just a matter of weeks, the disease hopped from Auckland to the Samoan capital of Apia. 10-14 days after the virus initially reached Samoa, troubling symptoms began to manifest. The infected developed full-body rashes that would last for days. Some developed fevers reaching up to 104°F. Horrific complications – ranging from severe respiratory infection to acute encephalitis – began popping up in ill children.
By the end of September, it was clear that measles was spreading across the island. By mid-November, a full-blown state of emergency was declared. Before long, desperation set in as scores of Samoans got sick.
Hundreds of families, in attempts to save actively dying loved ones, turned to local taulasea (traditional healers) willing to implement cures passed down through the generations. Many acted in good faith – one healer spotlighted on Radio New Zealand (RNZ) worked without charge to quell the emerging crisis and claimed that her services were meant to complement rather than substitute the care offered by medical professionals. Others saw the growing number of distressed Samoans as an easy mark. In one highly publicized case, a man by the name of Fritz Alai'asa began selling afflicted families alkalized ‘Kangen water’ for $10 WST as a means of alleviating measles symptoms.
Edwin Tamasese, in particular, took a leading role in providing Samoans with alternative cures to the increasingly deadly disease. Alongside plant-based salves and remedies, he offered Vitamin A and D supplements as a means of healing measles victims17. On Facebook, Tamasese stressed that he had iterated to families that he was no doctor and that sick children should be taken to the nearest hospital, perhaps as a means of removing liability in the event his advice proved ineffective. However, Tamasese also boasted that his holistic treatments cured some children in as little as 16 hours. All the while, he continued proselytizing the supposed dangers present in hospital-administered MMR vaccines.
It’s impossible to know the outcomes of those Tamasese treated, since all of his accounts on the matter are anecdotal. What can be said with certainty is that the measles continued to spread. What’s worse, cases escalated. The virus and its complications, touted just months earlier by organizations such as the CHD as benign to the point of being preferable to vaccination, began to kill. Most severely impacted by the outbreak were children under five years of age, with the vast majority of the dead consisting of babies and toddlers.
On November 15th, Samoa launched a mandatory vaccination campaign in a frantic attempt to curb cases – a stark shift from the laissez-faire policies that just a few months earlier had attracted the friendly advances of Children’s Health Defense. Large gatherings with children were banned, and schools were shut down for the indefinite future.
Even as calamity unfolded, Kennedy stuck to his guns, asserting the MMR vaccine’s role in Samoa’s woes. In a letter to the Samoan Prime Minister dated November 19, Kennedy posited multiple ways in which the MMR vaccine itself might at best be ineffective in offering passive protection, and at worst directly responsible for the continued spread of disease. “Children who received the live measles virus during Samoa’s recent vaccination drive may have shed the virus and inadvertently infected vulnerable children. It is a regrettable possibility that these children are causalities of Merck’s vaccine,” Kennedy hypothesized, later adding that “further boosting with MMR vaccine might only exacerbate the situation and further spread the disease” before signing off with thoughts and prayers. As one might expect, Kennedy also vehemently denied that the “so-called” anti-vaccine movement contributed in any way to Samoa’s predicament.
Kennedy’s musings did little to sway officials, who increasingly implemented strict policies to stop the spread of the highly contagious disease. A strict curfew was implemented on Dec 2nd. Over one hundred mobile vaccination units were deployed to serve homebound citizens, who signified their need for help by tying red flags to the outsides of their houses.
“I’ll be here to mop up your mess. Enjoy your killing spree,” Edwin Tamasese commented on a social media post detailing the mass vaccination effort. Later on, after receiving multiple written notices to tone down his outspoken criticism and disinformation campaign, Tamasese was arrested for hindering vaccination efforts and violating the terms of Samoa’s State of Emergency18. On the same day as his arrest, Samoa’s government and private sector shut down to accommodate the tireless efforts of aid workers.
For a short period of time, Samoa once again found itself the talk of the international anti-vaccine community. Following the arrest of Tamasese and the implementation of extreme emergency safety measures, however, Samoa at its most vulnerable was no longer deemed a victim in need of defense. It instead was reimagined as an enemy that needed to be defended against, a totalitarian government stifling the freedoms of its people. Following Kennedy’s conjecture, onlookers online insisted that the blight plaguing Samoa was self-inflicted, entirely the result of the mass MMR inoculation efforts launched after measles infections got out of hand. Anti-vaccine advocates, a comfortable distance from the outbreak, cried out that Samoa had become a flow-blown fascist authoritarian police state. Taylor Winterstein went so far as to compare Samoan policy to “Nazi Germany”.
But you know what? Those drastic “Nazi Germany”-esque measures stopped the crisis in its tracks within a matter of weeks. By mid-December, 94% of the eligible population was vaccinated. Cases dropped dramatically, and existing illness faded. The health crisis was officially deemed a thing of the past by the end of the month. Ultimately, 83 Samoans lost their lives over the frenzied course of the measles outbreak. By no means an acceptable loss, but nothing short of a minor miracle given the circumstances.
Quickly, thanks to the onset of the far deadlier COVID-19 global pandemic in March 2020, those 83 people were largely forgotten by the world. But Samoa itself refused to let those deaths be in vain. If there is a silver lining to this story it’s that Samoans, unwilling to roll over and die, learned from their mistakes. An estimate from Johns Hopkins University of Medicine estimates that approximately 97.5% of the total Samoan population received at least one dose of vaccine as of March 2023. Worldometer reported just 31 Samoan COVID deaths as of April 2024.
That same silver lining does not hold true outside the confines of Samoa. Children’s Health Defense never faced repercussions for their actions. Instead, it turned its attention toward the litany of coronavirus concerns that suddenly cropped up, railing against everything from the apparent dangers of face mask usage to the flawed research protocols of laboratories in Wuhan. The eventual development of vaccines did little more than provide additional conspiratorial fodder. By 2022, CHD’s efforts were bringing in $23.5 million USD in contributions, grants, and other revenue. The organization opened chapters across 19 states (with an additional two focused on New England and members of the military). CHD even launched its own Substack, The Defender, around this time last year. There, a coalition of writers continues to generate hog slop at a rate of about fourteen articles per week.
Kennedy has voraciously written too, despite a 16-month bid for the US presidency. His books sport disjointed titles that read like run-on sentences, such as The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and A Letter to Liberals: Censorship and COVID: an Attack on Science and American Ideals. None of them, so far as I can tell19, focus on Children’s Health Defense, its influence, or the island nation of Samoa. It seems that Samoa hardly left the impact on him that he left on it.
Few individuals have pushed on the subject, though the story has seen renewed interest over the last few weeks in light of President Trump nominating Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. In the rare case Kennedy is asked about the subject, he denies culpability entirely. “I have nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa. I never told anyone not to vaccinate,” he stated in the 2023 documentary Shot in the Arm. Earlier this month, Children’s Health Defense released a piece “fact-checking mainstream media”, likening him to little more than a third-party commentator incapable of driving policy.
Is it fair to say that RFK Jr. personally murdered children in Samoa? No, it’s not. But the 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa can be heavily attributed to a massive disinformation campaign that misled government leaders and common everymen alike. And that, given the evident scope of CHD activities and influence at precisely the same moment in time, is directly attributable to Kennedy. To claim anything less is simply shirking responsibility. Maybe this take just makes me another cog in the global cartel of Pharma-compliant press. Perhaps the view from where I stand – that Kennedy is the exact sort of compulsively-lying media-manipulating oligarch he claims to hate more than anything else – is flawed.
Maybe.
Last month, Kennedy officially resigned as chairman and chief legal counsel of the Children’s Health Defense, though his face is still plastered across the site. The day after I publish this, Kennedy will undergo confirmation hearings for a spot in the presidential cabinet.
Honestly, I don’t know whether anyone will bother to bring up Samoa. If they do, I’m not sure it will make much of a difference. Perhaps we’re destined to be caught in a cycle tainted by disinformation, where some people simply have to die for the sake of “natural experiment” and profitable content.
But I like to believe we’re not tied to such a fate.
And I like to think that – much like people I’ll never meet, living on an island thousands of miles away – we too can find a way to learn, heal, and somehow find a way to stop fucking listening to Robert F Kennedy Jr.
If you enjoyed this essay and want to say thanks, please consider buying me a coffee 😎
(Sometimes referred to simply as Lameko, depending on the source)
As with all medications, vaccinations carry with them risks of complication. Some of these risks are foreseeable, and this is why some individuals at greater risk (such as immunocompromised babies) cannot receive certain vaccinations. Rarely, serious unexpected reactions such as anaphylaxis do occur. However, figures put the rate of such reactions at approximately 1 case per million doses, and for the most part, such complications occur pretty immediately and are easily treatable with the sort of prompt medical attention readily available at vaccination clinics. As a result, deaths directly and definitively linked to vaccination are incredibly rare.
For reference, Samoa’s total landmass is comparable to the state of Rhode Island. Sticking to the analogy, Samoa has about 1/5th the population of Rhode Island, hovering around 200,000 people.
My best guess as to where this number came from – and I have to guess, because the author fails to cite any source backing up this claim – is that this stat was concocted exclusively through mortality data among Americans. In the United States, between vaccination efforts and access to medical care, measles deaths are virtually non-existent; conversely, around 20 Americans succumb to lightning strike injuries each year. However, if we look at global statistics, roughly 100,000 people die from measles each year, whereas a 2023 study estimated that approximately 24,000 deaths annually can be attributed to lightning strike.
There’s also a subsidiary argument mixed into Kennedy's rhetoric that vaccines are more or less ineffective.
In August 2022, Children’s Health Defense was kicked off of Facebook and Instagram for violating site terms prohibiting the spread of misinformation. Some might argue that this action was in the public’s best interest, but with their departure went evidence of the group’s entire post history.
This is not a dig at those exposed to CHD content – it’s a well-established fact of how many of us interact with online platforms. Numerous studies on social media metrics have shown that the majority of Facebook users click on a very small percentage of the links that they’re presented with in a scrolling session. What’s more, a shockingly high percentage of users share links without opening them. While many influencers and advertisers attempt to combat this with enticing clickbait titles, CHD wisely went with the current of human nature and banked on the fact that most easily distracted users wouldn’t venture past the sensational headline.
For this study, advertisements were considered “pro-vaccine” if their content encouraged vaccination or described the benefits of vaccination (or were directly challenging anti-vaccine arguments). Advertisements were considered “anti-vaccine” if they questioned vaccine safety or promoted vaccine choice.
For the sake of transparency, the study did find that pro-vaccine content reached a wider audience. However, this is largely due to the fact that the pro-vaccine category had 3 advertisements with over 1 million views, making them extreme outliers that significantly skew the data. If we take those 3 outliers out of the equation, anti-vaccine messaging had significantly further reach.
For a single dose of the vaccine, that is. Just 13% of children received the recommended second dose of the MMR vaccine. Rates of vaccination had been in decline for a few years before 2019, but it’s quite clear that the events of 2018 caused those rates to plummet to truly unprecedented lows.
Rugby is Samoa’s most popular sport, and Winterstein played in the NRL, Australasia’s premier rugby league, until 2020.
Actually, Andrew Wakefield, alongside film producer Del Bigtree, spearheaded the first Vaxxed installment that Taylor promoted. However, Kennedy himself produced Vaxxed II in 2019. The production arm of Children’s Health Defense subsequently released Vaxxed III: Authorized to Kill in the fall of 2024. Del Bigtree eventually went on to work as the communications director of RFK Jr’s 2024 presidential campaign.
Coconut oil is among Samoa’s top exports, making it quite a profitable venture for Tamasese to undertake.
This descriptor, in particular, really sets me off and I think fully illustrates how disingenuous RFK Jr. is in his endeavors. “Natural experiment” brings to mind organisms floating in a petri dish rather than living, breathing human beings.
What exactly this means is anyone’s guess. Presumably due to the outbreak that followed Kennedy’s trip to Samoa, the Samoan government never followed through with implementing the proposed system.
Ties between New Zealand and Samoa are close – the Samoan population in New Zealand is nearly as large as the Samoan population in Samoa. Nearly 50% of all tourists visiting Samoa hail from New Zealand. About 8000 flights run between the two island nations each year.
It’s worth noting that Vitamin A deficiency is a widely recognized measles risk factor, and taking vitamin A can help manage the severity of a measles infection. However, to suggest that vitamin A has the preventative qualities of an MMR vaccination or the curative properties of prescription antibiotics (which Tamasese also opposed) to treat secondary infection is preposterous.
Tamasese was released from custody shortly after his arrest. In 2020, the charges placed against him were dismissed.
I’m not reading all of those books.