GOP Senator Knocks Trump Admin Over Measles Surge: ‘Get Vaccinated, You Don’t Die’

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) knocked President Donald Trump’s administration for not pushing vaccinations hard enough amid a measles outbreak.

Cassidy, who is finishing out his term in the Senate after a primary defeat, joined CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday, and Tapper asked Cassidy, a doctor, for his view of the ongoing measles outbreak and how Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been handling it.

“As a physician, what’s your reaction to these rising numbers? And are you concerned that RFK Jr., the HHS secretary, isn’t doing more to sound the alarm and to promote vaccinations?” Tapper asked the senator.

There have been more than 4,000 confirmed cases of measles this year in the U.S., according to the CDC. Tapper also noted that a sixth person recently died of measles in Pennsylvania. No one had died in the state from measles for 35 years until these new cases.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D) and others have pushed blame to Kennedy for low vaccination rates.

“This serious situation continues to be made worse by RFK Jr. playing games with public health and safety. It’s long past time for [Kennedy] to stop stoking vaccine skepticism and misinformation and compromising the serious mission of the nation’s public health agencies,” the governor said last month.

Cassidy told Tapper:

My concern as a physician is that everyone should be vaccinated for measles. And you may think it only affects me. That’s not true because you infect other people. And there was a recent case of a woman exposed to someone who was not vaccinated. She was pregnant. She was vulnerable, and she ended up losing her child. When she got measles, she lost her baby. And then we’ve just had these six people with measles associated deaths in Pennsylvania, an 18-year-old, a 40-year-old woman, these are people that that perhaps would not have died. Now, if they had not been exposed, but someone exposed them who wasn’t vaccinated, by the way, they should have been vaccinated too. But that’s how we help each other. If I’m not protected, but you are, then I’m not exposed. I’m all about asking people to be immunized for yourself and for others… Secretary Kennedy, I would ask that he also push it and that he have CDC and others push it. In fairness, he’s asked people to be immunized, he probably hasn’t asked him very vigorously, but nonetheless, he has asked him to be immunized.

“You’ve been more vigorous on the show talking about measles in the last minute than he has been in the last year, I would observe,” Tapper noted.

Cassidy wrapped up his interview by pleading with viewers to get vaccinated.

“I have seen people die from vaccine-preventable diseases. You get vaccinated, you don’t die. You’re not vaccinated, you do die. It’s almost personal for me. So I’ll just make a plea for anybody watching: Please be vaccinated,” he said.

Watch above via CNN.

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