Quick Take
Santa Cruz physician Jeoffry B. Gordon warns that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new vaccine restrictions threaten public health, especially amid a growing U.S. measles outbreak. Kennedy’s limits on COVID-19 vaccine licensing exclude healthy children, pregnant women and many front-line workers, creating confusion and reduced access. Gordon cites falling vaccination rates — including just 91.1% coverage among Santa Cruz County kindergarteners — as leaving communities vulnerable to preventable disease and hospital disruptions. He urges readers to get COVID-19 vaccines and to support SB 144.
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Beware of President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
He is a boisterous advocate, draped in the words of science, advocacy and, now, official governmental authority, but he is more a carnival barker than a public servant. He has been a longtime advocate for a “natural” lifestyle, including promoting raw milk, avoiding ultra-processed foods, food additives and disease-preventing vaccines, but he ignores the major health challenges facing our country.
Most people know the science is clear on vaccinations. A March poll shows 79% of U.S. adults agree that parents should be required to have children vaccinated against preventable infectious diseases to attend school.
RFK Jr.’s questioning of vaccine benefits and emphasis on rare, harmful side effects is a dangerous disservice and promotes vaccine skepticism and avoidance.
To protect ourselves, California must overcome the federal misdirection and roadblocks to take immediate action making the 2025 COVID vaccine available to all residents over 6 months of age free of charge.
I urge all Santa Cruzans to talk to your doctors and get vaccinated. I also urge you to contact Gov. Gavin Newsom and our state representatives to encourage them to pass Senate Bill 144 in the state legislature. The bill authorizes the state to adopt its own evidence-based guidance for vaccine coverage, protects all licensed providers who administer vaccines and requires state-licensed health insurance companies and Medi-Cal to pay for them, thus bypassing the federal barriers.
Without the vaccines, many people, especially children, will be placed at risk. Some will die.
Currently, the U.S. is experiencing a spreading measles epidemic.
Measles is the most infectious virus known. Prior to the first measles vaccine in 1963, about 500,000 cases of measles and 500 related deaths were reported annually in the U.S. Because of near-universal vaccination, measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000.
Only three measles deaths occurred in the U.S. in the past 25 years. Because of falling vaccination rates, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as of Sept.5, we have had 1,431 known measles cases in the U.S., with three deaths (including two healthy children), across 39 states. Of those infected, 97% were unvaccinated and 13% were hospitalized.
California has reported 17 confirmed measles cases, exceeding the total for all of 2024. Santa Cruz County already had a scare in July 2024, when county health officials warned about a confirmed person with measles who ate at a local restaurant. An unvaccinated person in the same cafe would have about a 50% chance of catching measles, but luckily no spread occurred.
We’ve had two generations of vaccination success, leading many people to forget the significant everyday dangers of times past.
Many people now are overly concerned about vaccination “harms” and the distress their kids will feel from so many shots. A recent poll found 17% of U.S. parents have delayed or omitted recommended vaccinations for their kids. This makes us all vulnerable.
In fact, in 2024-25, Santa Cruz is at risk, as only 91.1% of county kindergarten students received all required measles vaccinations. The statewide average was 96.2%. The necessary preventive goal for herd immunity is 95%.
Low vaccination rates are primarily in North County, where the “natural, off the commercial grid, Cruzan vibes” culture holds sway. Parents think they are protecting their kids, but they are putting them – and all of us – at risk.
More than ever, we need to nurture our concerns for the safety of the whole community.
There is a well-known public health approach to measles, including targeted, localized vaccination campaigns, but RFK Jr. has avoided any public leadership or nationally organized approach, and the epidemic continues.
RFK Jr. has moved quickly to massively reshape U.S. vaccine policy and responsiveness through his oversight of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the CDC. The FDA is legally responsible for evaluating vaccines only for safety and efficacy, and the CDC for officially recommending how they are to be used. This past June, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the CDC’s outside expert Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), accusing them of bias. He replaced them with people with known anti-vaccine careers.
In early August, he stopped $500 million in research funding the successful and transformationally innovative messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine and cancer treatment, saying HHS will back “safer, broader vaccine platforms.” (Pfizer’s and Moderna’s effective and proven safe COVID-19 vaccines are based on mRNA.)
In August, Kennedy, without any transparent public record, announced restrictive formal licensing of 2025-26 COVID-19 vaccines by the FDA in a post on X, a determination usually left up to the CDC’s ACIP. COVID-19 vaccines are now licensed only for those 65 or older or those vulnerable due to named underlying health conditions. They are not licensed for use in the millions of healthy children or adults who do not fall into these categories. When the director of the CDC refused to endorse these baffling limitations, she was fired.
While Kennedy stated that the vaccines are available for all who choose them after consulting a doctor, his formal licensing restrictions created significant public confusion and practical barriers to access and will actually decrease freedom of choice. The vaccine is not licensed for healthy health care workers or teachers at high risk of infection. Evidence is accumulating that 7% to 18% of health care workers may experience long COVID-19 disabilities. Some hospitals have had to close wards because of staff absences or acute COVID-19 outbreaks. Under the new rules, the COVID-19 vaccine is not licensed for pregnant women, healthy children or others in families with high-risk or immunocompromised members. There is clear evidence that having COVID-19 while pregnant can lead to higher incidence of preeclampsia, preterm birth and other adverse pregnancy outcomes. Although most cases of COVID in children are mild, more than 2,100 children have died from COVID-19 in the U.S. since January 2020, including 184 in 2024. Long COVID in children is not uncommon.
RFK Jr. appears to have paid no attention to vaccines’ proven protection against serious illness, death and long COVID in healthy kids.
The restricted licensure for 2025 COVID-19 vaccines raises all kinds of legal, regulatory and logistical questions, creating policy chaos and real barriers to vaccine uptake.
This situation has already prompted the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to publish official COVID-19 vaccination recommendations that are scientifically based and more universal.
Some states, including California, have adopted these professional vaccine policies.
We must act.
California has the ability to keep our communities safe by passing SB 144.
If passed, SB144 would expand the list of state-approved vaccinations and of people eligible for free COVID-19 vaccinations. It would also allow licensed providers to give all state-approved vaccinations without specific doctors’ orders, and mandate that Medi-Cal and all state-licensed health insurance companies pay for all state-approved vaccinations. Already, you can brag that California’s elimination of personal and religious exemptions to mandatory school vaccinations will likely protect us all from the current measles epidemic.
For your own, and your family’s, protection, you should recognize that the current COVID-19 vaccines are effective and risk-free compared to the possible effects of an infection.
Get vaccinated.
Dr. Jeoffry B. Gordon had a family medicine practice in Santa Cruz for 35 years until his retirement 17 years ago. He spent four years in a federally qualified health center treating the unhoused. He is currently a member of the California Citizens Review Panel for Critical Incidents (fatalities due to child abuse). He served as a medical bioethics consultant at Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego for 10 years. He spent eight years on the Medical Board of California, which licenses and disciplines physicians. Gordon lives in Santa Cruz and is a widower with two daughters and four grandchildren.