Tragically, a young girl died last week in a hospital in rural Texas. Every child’s death is a life cut short and a source of tremendous grief for the family.
We understand from sources in contact with the parents that this child was being raised in a religious Mennonite family and was hospitalized with serious respiratory problems. In the hospital, she tested positive for measles according to a PCR test.
The mainstream press has run with an oversimplified narrative — that the child “died from measles” because she was unvaccinated.
Twice in recent memory, important states — California in 2015 and New York in 2019 — abolished the right to religious exemptions from school vaccine mandates in the wake of measles outbreaks.
In neither of those cases did a single child die. Nonetheless, non-stop media fearmongering drove California and New York to repeal long-standing parental rights to reject compulsory vaccination on religious grounds.
We are likely to witness this “measles-to-religious exemption repeal” playbook again — this time, in Hawaii. Why?
Legislators have already introduced bills for repeal in both houses. The press is already predicting measles outbreaks in Hawaii. And Hawaii is a one-party state — the governor, majorities in both houses of the legislature and the attorney general are all Democrats.
The clearest indicators, however, are the words and actions of Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, a physician. For months, Green has railed against Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services.
In media appearances, Green suggested that Kennedy: “will cause outbreaks”; “you will see outbreaks … and children will die”; and “he will be deadly for our country.”
Green, a fierce advocate for vaccination, won the governorship during the COVID-19 pandemic while vigorously promoting COVID-19 vaccination.
Further, Hawaii Department of Health Director Kenneth Fink has stated that the religious exemption repeal is necessary because the state is “facing a growing risk for a measles outbreak.”
From 2015 to 2021, the momentum was behind repeal proponents, with California removing its exemption after the Disneyland measles outbreak and New York losing its exemption after a measles outbreak in Orthodox Jewish enclaves in Brooklyn and Rockland County.
Maine and Connecticut — also deep blue states — repealed exemptions in 2019 and 2021, respectively.
Oddly enough, New Jersey — Big Pharma‘s home turf, with the same forces at play — narrowly rejected the religious exemption repeal in early 2020, shortly before COVID-19. Would New Jersey have lost the exemption had it been on the heels of a measles outbreak? No one will ever know.
The anti-religious momentum stalled, however. In 2023 and 2025, Mississippi and West Virginia — red states with strong religious traditions — restored religious exemption rights.
Perhaps to even the score in the culture war over religious and parental rights, Hawaii seems poised as the next blue state to reenact the measles-to-repeal scenario.
For all Green’s rhetoric about how deadly measles is, especially to immune-compromised children, the reality is that measles is rarely deadly. Until the recent Texas death, which may not actually be “from” measles but rather “with” measles, the last one occurred in the U.S. in 2015.
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While measles can have serious complications, especially among the malnourished and chronically ill, with a fatality rate of 1 in 10,000 cases, it is not a serious disease for the vast majority of children. Furthermore, vitamin A, vitamin C and treatments to support breathing are effective.
The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine — the only measles vaccine available in the U.S. (a story unto itself) — is not as safe as it is being portrayed in the media. Its known side effects include brain inflammation, seizures, autoimmune disorders, thrombocytopenia (low platelet count leading to bleeding disorders) and severe allergic reactions.
In healthy children, measles typically means a rash and a few days of rest with vitamin A.
Hawaii’s children are at risk of death — but it’s not from measles: They suffer high rates of death from accidents, homicide and suicide.
- Children ages 1-4: 1,149 deaths from accidents, 284 deaths from homicide.
- Children ages 5-9: 714 deaths from accidents, 155 deaths from homicide.
- Children ages 10-14: 778 deaths from accidents, 534 deaths from suicide, 191 deaths from homicide.
Hawaii’s Gov. Green would do well to focus attention on the real causes of children’s deaths — and allow parents to make their own informed decisions about the risks versus benefits of MMR vaccines.
