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Sliding vaccine rates hang over vote on CDC director nominee as US measles cases hit dangerous milestone

CNN

an hour ago

CNN

Sliding vaccine rates hang over vote on CDC director nominee as US measles cases hit dangerous milestone

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday tallied the highest number of US measles cases since the disease was declared eliminated a quarter-century ago, just as a key Senate committee split the vote to advance President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the public health agency. There have been more measles cases in the US this year than any other since the disease was declared eliminated a quarter-century ago, according to CDC data, with at least 1,288 confirmed cases. Just halfway through the year, the case tally has already surpassed the previous record from 2019, when there were a total of 1,274 cases. And it's well above the average of about 180 measles cases that have been reported each year since the disease was declared eliminated in the US in 2000. CNN reported this new milestone on Saturday using data from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Outbreak Response Innovation, which updates its numbers more frequently than the CDC. HHS has not responded to CNN's request for comment about the measles milestone. Childhood vaccine coverage has been declining in the US, and the vast majority of measles cases this year – more than 90% – have been in people who were unvaccinated or whose vaccination status was unknown, according to the CDC. When the measles case count reached its previous record in 2019 – during the first Trump administration – both the CDC director and the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services at the time released statements emphasizing the safety and effectiveness of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and encouraging Americans to get vaccinated. However, almost six months into Trump's second term, the CDC still does not have a director and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a long and complicated history with measles vaccines. Concerns about vaccine skepticism were front and center Wednesday as members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee voted to advance President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the CDC, Dr. Susan Monarez, for a vote by the full Senate. Committee members voted 12-11 to move Monarez's nomination. All of the committee's Republicans backed the longtime immunologist and government scientist, who spoke in her confirmation hearing about restoring trust in the CDC and defended Kennedy's decision to replace the members of a federal panel of vaccine advisers. The vote puts Monarez one step closer to taking the helm at the public health agency, and she will now progress to a full Senate vote. HELP Chairman Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and a doctor, voted to advance Monarez's nomination but nodded to falling vaccine coverage and the ongoing measles outbreak. 'Dr. Monarez will work to modernize our data health systems, to improve public health coordination and response while protecting American sensitive health information,' Cassidy said. 'This is especially crucial as the nation combats reemerging public health threats like measles, which has taken three lives in the United States this year.' He continued: 'One that's not included but is tragic: A Canadian woman who was pregnant got exposed to measles and lost her child. [The ongoing outbreak has] hospitalized many more due to misinformation regarding the measles vaccine.' Cassidy publicly pressed Kennedy last month to delay a meeting of the health agency's new vaccine advisers — several of whom have expressed skepticism and safety concerns about long-approved immunizations — amid concerns about their biases. During Wednesday's meeting, Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, called on the committee to hold a hearing about the ongoing measles outbreak and Kennedy's shakeup of vaccine oversight. 'I am concerned because this committee, it feels like, has all but abandoned its serious oversight of this crisis,' she said. 'We haven't had a hearing on the record-breaking number of measles outbreaks or a hearing on how the CDC vaccine panel is now stacked with people who are actually not vetted, and all the previous board members, every single one of them, was removed with no credible explanation.' There needs to be congressional oversight of these actions, Murray said after casting a vote against Monarez. 'I really do hope that Dr. Monarez will defy my expectations. I hope she will stand up for science and put public health first. But again, I hope I have hoped that for others, and here we are today,' she said. Some health experts have emphasized the importance of vaccination rates and their trepidation about precedents being set under Kennedy's leadership of HHS. 'It is no surprise that the most widespread measles outbreak affecting the United States in a generation has occurred under Secretary Kennedy's watch,' Dr. Richard Besser, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and former acting director of the CDC, said in a statement Wednesday. 'His decades-long campaign to discredit vaccines at every turn, which has continued unabated during his time as health secretary, directly contributes to the alarming decline in routine childhood vaccination rates in our country that is resulting in more frequent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases,' he said. 'In addition, the dramatic funding cuts to public health will mean that small outbreaks will grow and spread.' Three people have died of measles in the US this year – two children in Texas and one adult in New Mexico, all of whom were unvaccinated – matching the total number of US measles deaths from the previous two and a half decades. 'I worry that even more children will be forced to pay with their lives or health because of Secretary Kennedy's malfeasance,' Besser said. 'As a pediatrician, I strongly encourage all parents to talk to their healthcare providers, listen to their local public health officials, and learn the facts about measles vaccines, which are incredibly effective and safe.' The MMR vaccine is highly effective. One dose offers 93% protection against measles, and two doses are 97% effective, according to the CDC. 'Vaccines work—full stop. They are one of the most powerful tools we have to protect patients, families and entire communities. We can prevent diseases through vaccines, but too many diseases that we once had under control are starting to reappear because people are choosing to delay or skip immunization,' Dr. Jennifer Brull, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, said in a statement. 'There's a lot of confusion around vaccinations, but patients don't have to navigate this alone. Family physicians, pediatricians, pharmacists and other public health workers can help patients wade through all the information and cut through the noise,' she said. 'The bottom line is vaccines are safe, effective and save lives. It's critical that we continue to protect not just individual families, but the health of our entire nation.'

CNN

an hour ago

CNN

Sliding vaccine rates hang over vote on CDC director nominee as US measles cases hit dangerous milestone

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday tallied the highest number of US measles cases since the disease was declared eliminated a quarter-century ago, just as a key Senate committee split the vote to advance President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the public health agency. There have been more measles cases in the US this year than any other since the disease was declared eliminated a quarter-century ago, according to CDC data, with at least 1,288 confirmed cases. Just halfway through the year, the case tally has already surpassed the previous record from 2019, when there were a total of 1,274 cases. And it's well above the average of about 180 measles cases that have been reported each year since the disease was declared eliminated in the US in 2000. CNN reported this new milestone on Saturday using data from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Outbreak Response Innovation, which updates its numbers more frequently than the CDC. HHS has not responded to CNN's request for comment about the measles milestone. Childhood vaccine coverage has been declining in the US, and the vast majority of measles cases this year – more than 90% – have been in people who were unvaccinated or whose vaccination status was unknown, according to the CDC. When the measles case count reached its previous record in 2019 – during the first Trump administration – both the CDC director and the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services at the time released statements emphasizing the safety and effectiveness of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and encouraging Americans to get vaccinated. However, almost six months into Trump's second term, the CDC still does not have a director and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a long and complicated history with measles vaccines. Concerns about vaccine skepticism were front and center Wednesday as members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee voted to advance President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the CDC, Dr. Susan Monarez, for a vote by the full Senate. Committee members voted 12-11 to move Monarez's nomination. All of the committee's Republicans backed the longtime immunologist and government scientist, who spoke in her confirmation hearing about restoring trust in the CDC and defended Kennedy's decision to replace the members of a federal panel of vaccine advisers. The vote puts Monarez one step closer to taking the helm at the public health agency, and she will now progress to a full Senate vote. HELP Chairman Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and a doctor, voted to advance Monarez's nomination but nodded to falling vaccine coverage and the ongoing measles outbreak. 'Dr. Monarez will work to modernize our data health systems, to improve public health coordination and response while protecting American sensitive health information,' Cassidy said. 'This is especially crucial as the nation combats reemerging public health threats like measles, which has taken three lives in the United States this year.' He continued: 'One that's not included but is tragic: A Canadian woman who was pregnant got exposed to measles and lost her child. [The ongoing outbreak has] hospitalized many more due to misinformation regarding the measles vaccine.' Cassidy publicly pressed Kennedy last month to delay a meeting of the health agency's new vaccine advisers — several of whom have expressed skepticism and safety concerns about long-approved immunizations — amid concerns about their biases. During Wednesday's meeting, Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, called on the committee to hold a hearing about the ongoing measles outbreak and Kennedy's shakeup of vaccine oversight. 'I am concerned because this committee, it feels like, has all but abandoned its serious oversight of this crisis,' she said. 'We haven't had a hearing on the record-breaking number of measles outbreaks or a hearing on how the CDC vaccine panel is now stacked with people who are actually not vetted, and all the previous board members, every single one of them, was removed with no credible explanation.' There needs to be congressional oversight of these actions, Murray said after casting a vote against Monarez. 'I really do hope that Dr. Monarez will defy my expectations. I hope she will stand up for science and put public health first. But again, I hope I have hoped that for others, and here we are today,' she said. Some health experts have emphasized the importance of vaccination rates and their trepidation about precedents being set under Kennedy's leadership of HHS. 'It is no surprise that the most widespread measles outbreak affecting the United States in a generation has occurred under Secretary Kennedy's watch,' Dr. Richard Besser, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and former acting director of the CDC, said in a statement Wednesday. 'His decades-long campaign to discredit vaccines at every turn, which has continued unabated during his time as health secretary, directly contributes to the alarming decline in routine childhood vaccination rates in our country that is resulting in more frequent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases,' he said. 'In addition, the dramatic funding cuts to public health will mean that small outbreaks will grow and spread.' Three people have died of measles in the US this year – two children in Texas and one adult in New Mexico, all of whom were unvaccinated – matching the total number of US measles deaths from the previous two and a half decades. 'I worry that even more children will be forced to pay with their lives or health because of Secretary Kennedy's malfeasance,' Besser said. 'As a pediatrician, I strongly encourage all parents to talk to their healthcare providers, listen to their local public health officials, and learn the facts about measles vaccines, which are incredibly effective and safe.' The MMR vaccine is highly effective. One dose offers 93% protection against measles, and two doses are 97% effective, according to the CDC. 'Vaccines work—full stop. They are one of the most powerful tools we have to protect patients, families and entire communities. We can prevent diseases through vaccines, but too many diseases that we once had under control are starting to reappear because people are choosing to delay or skip immunization,' Dr. Jennifer Brull, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, said in a statement. 'There's a lot of confusion around vaccinations, but patients don't have to navigate this alone. Family physicians, pediatricians, pharmacists and other public health workers can help patients wade through all the information and cut through the noise,' she said. 'The bottom line is vaccines are safe, effective and save lives. It's critical that we continue to protect not just individual families, but the health of our entire nation.'

‘Kneecap' Producer Trevor Birney on ‘The Negotiator' Doc About the Irish Peace Agreement and Its Architect George Mitchell: ‘That's What America Can Achieve'

Yahoo

2 hours ago

Yahoo

‘Kneecap' Producer Trevor Birney on ‘The Negotiator' Doc About the Irish Peace Agreement and Its Architect George Mitchell: ‘That's What America Can Achieve'

The groundbreaking anarchic, drug-soaked and political semi-biopic 'Kneecap' opened the Galway Film Fleadh in 2024 on its way to a BAFTA award and a chance at an Oscar nomination, having been submitted by Ireland and making the Academy's international film shortlist. While Kneecap the band are still touring (they recently played at Glastonbury) and sparking headlines as they go, the film's producer Trevor Birney returns to Galway this week with an altogether different project. More from Variety Bob Vylan Speaks Out Amid Glastonbury Outrage: 'We Are Not for the Death of Jews... We Are for the Dismantling of a Violent Military Machine' Glastonbury 2025 Recap: Politics, Girl Power and Indie Nostalgia Deliver an Action-Packed Fest Before Next Year's Break Kneecap Leads 'F-- Keir Starmer' Chant at Massive Glastonbury Set Amid Growing Controversy in the U.K. 'The Negotiator' is a feature doc telling the story of George J. Mitchell, the U.S. senator who was instrumental in what would become 1998's Good Friday Agreement that brought an end to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The film charts Mitchell's journey from Maine to Washington D.C. to almost six years as senate majority leader to being selected by Bill Clinton as the special envoy for Northern Ireland. But it also puts what was achieved in a wider context, examining the role of the U.S. in resolving global conflicts and the efforts required to find peace where it would seem an impossible task. For Birney, who alongside 'Kneecap' has produced docs including the 'Let the Canary Sing' about Cyndi Lauper and Alex Gibney's 'No Stone Unturned' about an unsolved Irish mass murder in 1994, 'The Negotiator' took him back to his roots as a journalist. In 1994, Birney was working as a radio reporter in Northern Ireland and remembers seeing an 'exotic-looking guy' turning up in Belfast and at the time thinking: 'What are you doing here? What have you signed up to?' Up until then, most of the politicians sent over to Ireland 'were very aloof, stern British government ministers' who had usually 'crossed Margaret Thatcher and had been dispensed to Belfast as punishment.' But in Mitchell, he saw someone different. And his arrival came during a period of hope. An IRA ceasefire had come into effect in August 1994, but Ireland was also experiencing a booming economy, while the Irish soccer team had just made it to the last 16 of the World Cup having famously beaten Italy in the group stage. 'There was an incredible sense of relief and belief that, maybe, this could be different,' he says. 'And in some ways George Mitchell epitomized that difference. Because why would he come and spend time here if all we're going to do is going to go back to killing each other?' In the end, it did prove to be different. As 'The Negotiator' shows, Mitchell was able to succeed in Ireland because of his quiet determination and patience when it came to the negotiations, his ability to work with and get to know all the various factions involved, whether it be Gerry Adams or those representing the loyalist paramilitaries, and a healthy splash of charm. Other politicians such as Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern had hugely important roles to play, but for Birney, the guy in the middle of it all — the 'ringmaster' — was Mitchell. Birney spoke to Mitchell several times as a journalist during the peace process (he even received a signed letter of thanks from him afterwards — one of several he sent to reporters covering what was happening). But he said he only had the idea to make a biopic a quarter century later after seeing Mitchell speak at Queen's University to mark the Good Friday Agreement's 25th anniversary. 'He was in his late 80s, and he said, 'I think this is going to be my last time coming to see you. I've battled leukemia, I've had lots of health issues and I don't think I'm going to be able to come back,'' recalls Birney. 'And I sat in the audience and went, my God, we've got to tell this guy's story. Because I could see the love and the emotion that was in the room for him.' As Mitchell reminded the crowd that had come to hear him speak, the Good Friday Agreement has proved to be shining example of exactly what can be achieved. In the 25 years before it was signed, more than 3,500 people lost their lives in the Troubles. In the 25 years that followed, it was less than 200. So while Birney wanted to tell the remarkable life story of Mitchell, the man from Maine who had helped end decades of violence in Northern Ireland, he also wanted to use the film to explain what it takes to be at peace and how you negotiate to bring it about. 'Because I think that's a very important contemporary message,' he says. 'And I think there's never been a more relevant time for us to consider what it takes to make peace with your enemies when you look at the world today. We need more George Mitchells.' As Birney also asserts, with wars raging in the Middle East, Africa and Ukraine, America needs to get more involved in peacemaking like it did back in the 1990s rather than taking sides and pouring fuel on conflicts. 'What happened in Northern Ireland is a fantastic example American soft power. That's what America can achieve and it should really use its might and it power to bring peace, not to make more war and to arm countries around the world,' he says. 'What it should be doing is sending peacemakers like George Mitchell out to help us all come to terms with our past and help us all create a new future. That's what George Mitchell did. And that's what this documentary is all about.' 'The Negotiator' — which following its screening in Galway is eyeing a festival run, including in the U.S., before a sales company is attached later in the year — may appear on the surface level to be a wildly different film from Birney's last feature 'Kneecap' (although Gerry Adams does appear in both, in news clippings and as a talking head in 'The Negotiator' and in 'Kneecap' during a ketamine-induced hallucination). But as the filmmaker points out, the two are inextricably linked, the latter only made possible because of the events outlined in the former. 'Kneecap would not be Kneecap if it wasn't for what George Mitchell did in 1998,' he says. 'Kneecap would not be ceasefire babies if George Mitchell had not pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed with those political parties to make peace.' 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Sliding vaccine rates hang over vote on CDC director nominee as US measles cases hit dangerous milestone

Sliding vaccine rates hang over vote on CDC director nominee as US measles cases hit dangerous milestone

‘Kneecap' Producer Trevor Birney on ‘The Negotiator' Doc About the Irish Peace Agreement and Its Architect George Mitchell: ‘That's What America Can Achieve'

Concern after Loyalist bonfire in Belfast is sited close to electricity substation

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Sliding vaccine rates hang over vote on CDC director nominee as US measles cases hit dangerous milestone

Sliding vaccine rates hang over vote on CDC director nominee as US measles cases hit dangerous milestone

‘Kneecap' Producer Trevor Birney on ‘The Negotiator' Doc About the Irish Peace Agreement and Its Architect George Mitchell: ‘That's What America Can Achieve'

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