The Implications of RFK Jr.'s Infectious Influence

In this episode, Olivia breaks down measles. She explains what it is, how the US reached measles elimination status in 2000, why it is making a comeback, and whether or not we will keep our measles elimination status. A combination of decreased immunizations during the covid-19 pandemic and the anti-vaxx rhetoric coming from our highest ranking federal officials (and spreading on social media) have contributed to a perfect storm that has allowed measles to find its footing and spread through vulnerable populations like wildfire.

Also, Mattie shares a few tidbits of public health good news and analyzes Survivor with a public health lens. You don’t want to miss this episode.

Recalls:

• Vital Nutrient Aller-C Dietary Supplement - Undeclared egg, hazelnut and soy 
• DTF Sexual Chocolate - Undeclared Sildenafil and Tadalafil 
• Karns Foods Mini Dark Chocolate Raspberry Cups  - May contain undeclared peanut allergen
• RAW FARM Raw milk cheddar cheese, shredded and block  - Potential E. coli
• Christopher Ranch, Garland Peeled Garlic -  Clostridium Botulinum
• Einstein Bros Bagels Honey Cream Cheese - Undeclared almonds 
• Falcon Trading Company Black Beans Organic , Chili Bean Blend Organic, Sunset Soup Mix Organic - contains pesticide residue 
• Gold Lion, ilum Chocolate - contains sildenafil and tadalafil

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

This is Public Health Group Chat, where a majority of our listeners are in Ashburn, Virginia, and we would like to know what's going on there.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Yes, please, because what was it, like 39 repeated listeners? Was that it? Or in Ashbourn, Virginia?

SPEAKER_02 0:23

No, so our so our top listener area location is Denver. And then very close to second is Ashburn, Virginia. Yes. And we did hit over 1,100 listens so far on the podcast. So that's really exciting. But like a solid amount of those come from Denver and Ashburn, Virginia. And I did look up Ashburn, Virginia. It's like near Dulles. So I guess you could technically call it like the Washington, D.C. suburbs.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Okay. So I don't know who's in Ashburn, but we love you. And shout out to Ashburn.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Yes. Please write in because we would like to hear more details. Um and just know you have a very special place in our hearts. We love y'all.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

We really do. We just we just don't really know how you found us or how it's transmitting through Ashburn, but keep it up, keep telling people, and we love to see it. So today it is Maddie and I.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

I'm Maddie. And I'm Olivia. We are missing Ariel today. We miss her very much. She, again, she's also fine. Um, she's just we just miss her. She's just not here. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

Yeah. She was in Japan for like two weeks and then had a crazy week getting back into the swing of things. And Maddie and I have been putting off recordings. So we are finally here. We are recording. We're excited. And yeah, let's get into it. What's our good news today, Mike?

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Oh, we also have to mention all views expressed on this podcast are our own. Yes. Um, and if you would like to get in contact with us, you can email us, you can text us, you can find us on TikTok, not really, um, or Instagram. Or you can find Olivia on threads where she's right.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

She has insomnia and she's talking in third person right now. But I love that all of my thoughts are on threads these days. So feel free to interact with me there.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

I really tried to do threads and I got no anything on anything I said, and I think I'm just not doing it right. So help. I'm a boomer. But we'll get into that. That's a different, that's a different topic for a different stuff. It's just a weird ecosystem.

unknown 2:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

It's not like figure out how to.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

I don't know how to, I think I'm treating it like Instagram and it's It's not Instagram because you don't have a bunch of friends usually following you that are interacting with you. People usually find you based on what you post, so like your topics or like you have to kind of create your niche. And after you create your niche, then you can kind of be ADHD and post random things. That's what I've found.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

I didn't I didn't do that. I don't think I've posted to topics. I think I've just said things into the ether and it didn't work.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Yeah. Yeah, I do love threads though. It's quite an interesting place. Um, okay, so what's our public health good news today?

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Good news. We have two, I have two little ones um because we had like a little gap in recording. So I had one I wanted to talk about. So our first one is a judge permanently blocked the executive order defunding PBS and MPR. It was U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, and he cited the First Amendment on March 31st um and agreed to permanently block the Trump administration from implementing a presidential directive to end federal funding for the NPR and PBS. He called it unlawful and unenforceable and said that the First Amendment right to free speech, quote, does not tolerate viewpoint and discrimination and retaliation of this type, end quote. And this was a huge step in the right direction for freedom of the press. So we really love to see it. And then our second one for Good News and Public Health is that research by the CDC scientists found that the COVID vaccine cut the likelihood of emergency room visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults last winter by half. That's huge. So, like there are two parts of this story because this is that study that the um CDC standing director tried to basically hide and not let come out, and they were delaying um, they were delaying it getting it posted and they were citing a methodology, but it's a methodology that's been used by a ton of other studies by different stuff throughout the CDC. So it's like nothing new. So clearly it was just about the COVID vaccine and they were just pulling things out of their asses. But so, like, that's the downside is that they are clearly trying to hide how good vaccines are. But the good news is the study itself. Um, the research found that between September and December of 2025, healthy adults who received the vaccine reduced their likelihood of COVID-related hospitalizations by 55%. And those who took the vaccine also reduced their likelihood of emergency and urgent care business by 50%.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Yeah. That's good news. I'm not surprised. We knew it kept people that you know it kept people out of hospitals. That's the whole point of the vaccine. We knew that pretty early on, but seeing it in research is nice.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

No, it is. It's nice to see it. I think that's where also people got confused is that a lot of the end goals for vaccines were like preventing hospitalizations and death, not preventing sickness themselves. So people would be like, I'm still getting sick. Why would I take it? I'm like, well, it is very effective in what it was meant for, which was reducing hospitalizations and death. You're still probably gonna get sick, but you're not gonna go to the hospital and you're probably not gonna die.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Which I think is great.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

So yeah, this is great. Um, interesting good news is that one is a win for the press. Two, it you know, only adds to our distrust of the current administration and is suppression of information. So who you vote for impacts your access to accurate information.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Yes, it does. And I think this is also a good commentary on how pretty much everything is public health. Like access to information comes in the form of freedom of the press or actually having access to studies that are done correctly and done accurately, having all of that access to it and also having the education and the literacy to be able to understand those studies and things like that. That's all public health.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Yeah, I agree. Um, do you want to talk about your hat?

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Oh, yes, you're so right. My other good news in public health is my hat. And it says, My cat said you're a hoe, which is something accurate that my cat Venus would say to anybody who voted for Trump.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

Also, I feel like that's totally accurate for Venus's attitude. Like if Venus could talk, she would be straight up probably a Virgo and a little bit of a jerk sometimes, but we love her her sass. But she's such a sweet cat.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

I think she's definitely got some Virgo in her chart. I think she's an Aries. Ooh. Is my guess. I also like collect Aries right and left. So, but she's definitely like a Virgo rising or something.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

Forget that Virgos like myself aren't notoriously jerks. We just say things people don't want to hear. And not that Aries are jerks, but sorry to my our Aries listeners, but they can be fiery. They're fiery. They pop off a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

They're unapologetically fiery, which can rub people the wrong way. Correct. Well, love your hat. Are you ordering more hats soon? I I'm gonna need to. I need somebody to sponsor us because I need to get some more hats. I need to order that one hat we talked about because at least five people sent it to me. I need to do that. We have to get public health group chat hats. I know we do need to get public health group chat hats. I got like four more hats left. That's it. And then I gotta get some new ones.

SPEAKER_02 7:39

This is good news. Um, we love PBS and NPR, and we love research that's methodologically sound, even if the acting director says otherwise. So we're going in the right direction, even if it sometimes feels otherwise and delayed, because the CD CD director delayed this, but you know, we're on we're on the right path here.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

All right, Olivia, what are we talking about today?

SPEAKER_02 8:02

Our main topic today has been something I've been wanting to talk about, or both of us have been wanting to talk about for a while now, which is measles. I'm guessing you've heard of it before, and I know Maddie has for sure. And in this last year or so, it has definitely been a hot topic. Um, so yes, today we are talking about measles, that thing from your grandparents' childhood, and that thing that we were supposed to have handled, which we did, but now we haven't. So we eliminated it and now it's coming back. Um, and every public health person you know is probably losing their mind over this. So let's get into it. What is measles? How did we beat it? Why is it coming back? And what in the world does it mean that we might lose our measles elimination status in the United States? I would like to start with just a quick mention that we are going to be talking about measles in the United States. So, our international listeners, this may be interesting to you, but it is not a worldwide view or perspective. Um all right, so what is measles? Measles is also called rubiola. Rubiola?

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Rubiola. It looks really close to areola. Um, and that is what I thought when I was reading, but it's rubiola.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

I wrote down how to say it, but me trying to pronounce it is just a mess. So measles, also called rubiola, is a viral infection. Um, and it spreads through the air through coughing, sneezing, breathing, or even just talking. It lingers into a room for up to two hours after said infection infected person leaves. It's one of the most contagious pathogens ever documented in humans. When measles is spreading through a population with no prior immunity, one infected person can infect anyone from about 12 to 18 others. So, for comparison, the original strain of COVID had a reproductive number or RO. We've talked about this in the past, especially in our um It's Always the Bats episode. Um, it has an RO of about two to three individuals for COVID. Measles is a completely different league. Epidemiologists actually estimate that when more than 95% of the population has immunity to measles, which is what we call herd immunity, that is reached. And at that point, measles transmission gets interrupted and large outbreaks can't really take hold as much. Below that 95% threshold, measles finds its opening and it runs with it. So symptoms start a lot like viral illnesses, which makes it a little complicated to determine is this measles or not. So we're talking that fever, cough, runny nose, red, watery eyes. And then a few days in, a rash may appear. It starts on the face and then it kind of spreads down to the trunk of the body, so that midsection area, and that's kind of where we usually realize this is probably measles. And while that might sound manageable, measles is not just really a rash situation. Health complications can occur in about 30% of measles cases, and about one in a thousand measles infections lead to death. Obviously, that number changes depending on the age of the individual, and there's other, if there's underlying factors as well that that person may have going into the infection. But I want to specifically mention something that we will come back to later in this episode, which is a complication called SSPE or subacute sclerosing panacephalitis. And SSPE is a rare but almost always fatal neurological condition that can develop years after the measles infection. So years after you or your child has what you consider recovered, um you think your kid is fine, and then six to ten years later, that virus re-emerges in the brain. And we'll talk a little bit more about what this leads to in a few minutes because it's one of the most important and least discussed reasons why measles is not just a childhood illness. Okay. Anything, Maddie, before we jump into the history about measles?

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Uh nope. The only thing is like one in a thousand measles infections leads to death. That is not an insignificant number because usually when we see deaths and stuff, it's like one in a hundred thousand, three in a hundred thousand, like a lot bigger. And one in a thousand is not a small number, you know?

SPEAKER_02 12:11

Especially you never you never think it's gonna be you.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

Yeah, one in a thousand is pretty significant. So I think another like comparison to kind of draw from is so measles is considered spread through the air, so it's an airborne virus. And I think that a lot of people can think of, oh, where did I hear this before? If you're not an infectious disease person like Olivia and I are. Um, this was a big topic of discussion during the beginning of the COVID pandemic because it was there was concern it was going to be airborne. And generally, diseases that are airborne typically are a lot can spread a lot easier. So that was a big concern. So if you're like, where have I heard this before? That is probably where you heard it.

SPEAKER_02 12:49

And COVID ended up being airborne, and it is airborne. Let's get and jump into the history here. So before the measles vaccine, the disease was part of what most people considered their childhood. Um, I won't say that everybody got it, but it was definitely a more common thing. And uh, you knew somebody that had had measles. And it was catastrophic. It is just, it was kind of built into the reality, but it was still catastrophic. It still impacted people the way that it impacts people today. In that I mean if you do get measles, the symptoms are dangerous and there's that risk of death. And before the measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, an estimated three to four million Americans were infected with measles each year. So that means about 40,000 people were hospitalized annually on average, and about 400 to 500 people died every year from measles, every single year. That's our baseline, right? And so it could have increased, it maybe it got a little bit better, but usually that was your average baseline of cases and mortality rates. And then the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps, and rubella, changed everything. So about two doses of this vaccine are 97% effective against measles, and that's extraordinarily high-performing vaccine, and decades of sustained vaccination campaigns, school requirements, and public trust in science built up to this landmark moment. So in the year 2000, the United States declared measles officially eliminated. And now this is an important distinction to define. Eliminated does not mean eradicated. Eradication means literally gone from the planet, which is really hard to kind of think about and understand and process because the idea that we were able to work across state lines, country lines, oceans to work together as a like a literal global effort against a virus and eradicate something is just insane to think about, especially now after the COVID pandemic. And so one example of an eradicated virus is smallpox. Elimination, though, on the other hand, means that the disease is no longer continuously spreading within a specific country or region defined by geographic boundary. And the virus can still be brought in from other countries. Imported cases happen, but it's not naturally spreading in the country. It's not spreading domestically for too long. Maybe an outbreak occurs, but then it's handled and then we move on. That is still eliminated. According to the guidelines used by the US and PAHO, the Pan American Health Organization, states, measles elimination is defined as the interruption of endemic measles virus transmission for a period greater or equal to 12 months in the presence of high quality surveillance. I want to underline the high quality surveillance aspect because we definitely don't have that anymore. So just keep that in the back of your mind. When you lay off and fire a bunch of federal workers and you stop funding public health, those incredibly important systems are no longer run, the data is no longer collected nor cleaned, and the surveillance ceases to exist. And that is what has happened in this last year in some capacity. But that was a technical bar. So a period greater or 12 months in the presence of high quality surveillance interruption occurred for endemic measles virus transmission. And we met that for about 25 years until now. Cool. Love that for us.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Love this journey for us.

SPEAKER_02 16:04

I love this journey for us. I wonder who caused it. Um, let's talk about where we are now. It started really in 2025 in an outbreak in Gaines County, West Texas. In January of 2025, measles outbreaks spread through a metonite community with low vaccination rates in Gaines County, West Texas. From there, it did not stop. The final 2025 tally shows about 2,100 confirmed measles cases, the highest annual count since 1991. And about 93% were among people who were unvaccinated or whose vaccination status was unknown. About 69% of those confirmed cases were among children and teens. And 11% of the patients that were identified as having measles were hospitalized, and three people died, including two children. So that's 66% of those that were uh that died were children. Um, the American Academy of Pediatrics also found and has reported that the first child death from measles occurred this year, and it was in 2025. It was the first in over a decade. So we're in 2026 now, the longest year of our lives so far, and it's not slowing down. As of April 9th, 2026, and we are recording on April 12th. 1,714 confirmed measles cases have been reported in the United States. Spread across 33 jurisdictions, 94% of cases are outbreak associated. It's really important to mention we are what just about three full months into this year, and we have more than half that we had in confirmed cases than all of 2025. So the rate of, yeah, the exponential rate that we're seeing an increase just in three months. And we still have, you know, nine, I can't do math, nine months left in the year.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Nine months left in the year with like a big chunk of those still being in respiratory season. Yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

We still have fall and winter coming, and that's when we're gonna see that jump again for sure.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

That's where all the respiratory diseases love to thrive, is when people are inside in confined spaces. Yeah. So I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but it's probably not gonna get better at this rate.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

Yeah, let's let's write it in stone right now. It's not probably gonna get better. We will talk about things in this episode about ways that it needs to be handled and some action-oriented items, because I don't want to end on a bad note, but I also want to be incredibly realistic that if we continue under the leadership that we have right now and the lack of investment in public health, this is going to get worse. Between 2001 and 2011, a full decade, there were 64 recorded measle outbreaks. In 2025 alone, there was 50. And in 2026, we already have 17 new outbreaks.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

I have a question. What is considered an outbreak? Is it one case or is it like so?

SPEAKER_02 19:04

A measles outbreak is generally defined by the CDC as three or more confirmed linked cases. So sharing that common time and location. Um, usually at least uh one has to be lab confirmed. Gotcha. And these cases occur within seven to twenty one days, which is that typical incubation period, the time of which you have the virus, but and you may be infectious, which you are with measles, but you're yet to show symptoms.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

There's already been 17 by now. Oh my god, there's so many.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

But if you also think about it, if we've had 1,700 cases with 17 outbreaks, we're talking it like on average, what each outbreak is 100 cases. Yeah. So those are large outbreaks.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

Yeah, like those are big.

SPEAKER_02 19:49

This is not like this is shut down a high school outbreak. This is not or shut down like an elementary school outbreak. We're not talking just a few kids in a neighborhood. Um, we're talking across a whole town or those kind of things. So it is definitely significant to mention that that's not a lot of outbreaks, but it also means they're big outbreaks. Another thing I want to highlight that doesn't get a lot of attention is who the most vulnerable are in these outbreaks, right? So babies are too young. Most babies are too young to be vaccinated and are among the most vulnerable to measles. And the disease can wreak havoc on their fragile bodies. So makes them so sick that they stop eating and drinking and they can develop pneumonia or brain swelling, so that encephalitis that I mentioned, and then sometimes die. And babies depend entirely on that herd immunity idea. So 95% or more of the population is vaccinated to prevent measle outbreaks. And so that when you take your baby to the grocery store and it hasn't had a dose of the measles vaccine, you can feel comfortable that the likelihood of your baby being exposed to measles is very unlikely when there's that 95% protection. When we let those vaccination rates slip, we're not making a personal choice here. We're pulling the safety net out from under infants and the most vulnerable people who also include immunocompromised individuals. And as one pediatrician in South Carolina put it in a PBS article, babies become sitting ducks. You don't know you're exposing your child in most cases, especially when we don't have high quality surveillance and communication from the federal government. And you take your child out to the grocery store, and that baby is brought to the grocery store by you, doesn't have a choice, and is exposed potentially to measles. So they become sitting ducks in a way.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

So I told you we would come back to SSPE. I wanted to add one thing to like help give context. The immunization schedule for measles is supposed to be your first dose at around 12 to 15 months. So that's like an basically almost an entire year of a child's life to kind of give context of like how much time there is where you don't have probably enough protection, like you might get some protection from. Mom through feeding, maybe, but probably not nearly enough that you need. So you don't get your first dose until 12 or 15 months, and then your second is at four to six years, and that's when you're considered like fully protected. So there's like a there's like a big chunk of kids in there that they're potentially really vulnerable. And I think there's probably not an insignificant amount of kids that are like lost to follow-up, so they only have the one dose, or they don't know when they got it, or things like that, so you might not be fully protected. And there's a lot of gaps in here.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

The first dose is only 93% effective, and that effectiveness can change depending on how old you are.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Yeah. So there's like a large chunk of kids are kind of left in this like sitting duck sort of situation. So when we say babies, it is up until like 12 months. I feel like it'd be easy to sit here and be like, oh, well, if you get it like four months, like that's not that much of a time, you're not really going out anyway, la-ti-da-di-da. But that's not what's the case is.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

And based on safety efficacy research, it has been determined that you could probably get the first dose for your child around six months. So some pediatricians, especially in high outbreak areas like South Carolina recently or Texas, you know, or Utah, those kind of places, a lot of pediatricians are highly recommending early dosage for the vaccine. And it's based off of safety efficacy research. But of course, like this is something to consider because a lot of the times, like I said, you spend that 12 to 15 months, you know, not bringing your child anywhere, or you have to be hyper-vigilant about who comes and visits your child. If your family's not vaccinated, if you they have kids, you know, being able to have those conversations is really difficult. They're important, of course, to put your boundaries down. But it's, you know, imagine going 12 to 15 months worried about measles when we originally had it eliminated. It's crazy. So I'm glad you brought that up because I totally didn't include that.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

It's so far. That's what I was wondering. I was like, are we gonna talk about the vaccine schedule? Because I was thinking, oh, you definitely have to have two doses to be considered fully vaccinated. And so there are, and like between 12 months to four years, like that is a long time that if you like don't have access to doctors or you don't have medical records or you move or whatever, it's really easy for that to get lost to follow-up. So like there are probably a lot of kids out there that aren't fully protected because they're like, oh, I got one shot, I'm good. And that's just not the case.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

True.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Very true. Yeah. It's messy.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

It's so messy. All right. So I told you we would come back to SSPE. So that's the subacute sclerosing panencephalitis. And SSPE typically takes years to rear its head. Um, a person can recover from measles and continue life as usual. They're no longer contagious, they don't have any identifiable symptoms, and sometimes it's for more than a decade or so. The average time is usually six to 10 years, but the decade over a decade can happen. And this is before all those problems appear. And so while some patients will end up severely disabled for a while, the condition is almost always fatal. Like I'm talking 95% of SSE cases are fatal. There's been 5% of individuals surviving, but when we're talking surviving, we're not talking living, right? So these people may have been in a debilitating coma or live with severe disabilities caused by that brain swelling. Um, and researchers now estimate about one in 10,000 people who get measles will develop SSPE. And that's incredibly terrifying. And the risk is significantly higher for those who contract measles before age five. So those infants that we just talked about, those ones that get it in their first year of their life, the risk is even higher. It's roughly one in 600. And that's crazy. So if you have your baby, like I said, you're really relying on that 95% herd immunity. You plan to get your child vaccinated, and then your child ends up getting measles because this herd immunity has dropped in your community. There is an outbreak happening, your child ends up getting measles, and then they end up recovering. They could potentially one in 600 chance end up dying from SSPE within the next six to 10 years. So that is terrifying. Doctors and researchers fear that if vaccination rates drop and measles spreads in the US, cases of debilitating complications will also rise. So the more cases, you know, we're going to see more SSPE issues occurring. And since the start of 2025, the CDC has recorded over 3,500 measles cases and more than in an entire, obviously, like we talked about in the last preceding decade. But this is mostly in unvaccinated people, and many were children. So for instance, a school-aged child in California who had measles as an infant just died from SSPE in this last year as well. Which is so, so heartbreaking. Yeah. And at the end of the day, it's heartbreaking because like we have a proven and safe vaccine available. And it is misinformation and disinformation because there is a clear difference, and we'll talk about that in a little bit, that is purposefully and also mistakenly changing parents' minds and shifting them towards becoming anti-vaccine. And this is leading to the deaths of children. Um, when it comes to SSPE, there is no cure, there is no reversal of SSPE. Um, as one neurologist at NYU put it, we don't have a way of knowing who's going to get it. We do not have a way of treating it. And the one thing we can do ideally is to prevent children from having to go through it in the first place, which means not getting measles at all. So the MMR vaccine, by preventing measles entirely, also prevents SSPE. And this disease should not exist in the US, and it does again. So all because society as a whole has let vaccination rates fall. Anything before I jump into the vaccination rate decline?

SPEAKER_00 27:51

No, other than like this just shouldn't be happening. This just shouldn't be happening. This sucks.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Yeah. It just shouldn't be happening. This is unpreventable.

SPEAKER_02 28:05

I feel like when we talk about these things, you and I are just like, oh, like, I don't really have anything to say because I've said it all before. This fucking sucks, you know?

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Yeah. Sorry to the listeners in Aspirin, Virginia. You gotta listen to me be like, what's gonna be prevented again?

SPEAKER_02 28:20

It's gonna be prevented.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

It's gonna have been prevented.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

Anyway, what were you gonna say about the vaccination rates? Let's talk vaccination rates and why they've been declining, because it didn't happen overnight. This brings me to what's really driving this outbreak. It's obviously not a mystery, as I mentioned. Gen rates have been declining for years. The national MMR vaccine rates dropped to 92.5% among kindergartners in the 2024 to 2025 year, from 95.2% in 2019 to 2020. There's probably some research about why related to the COVID pandemic and all the anti-vax rhetoric that came out of that. But those numbers, they sound close. I'm Maddie and I have like horrible faces on right now because we realize how not close those numbers are. They're not. Because remember, we need that 95% or above to maintain herd immunity for a disease because measles is extraordinarily contagious. And anything below that creates pockets where outbreaks can start up. And when you zoom in from those national averages to look at specific communities and counties. For instance, in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, the epicenter of one of the nation's worst outbreaks this year, less than 90% of students had gotten their required vaccines, like all of them. And at one of the schools in that county, only 21% of kids received all required vaccines, which makes me want to hit my head against this wall behind me. Like, I you could not pay me to be a public health official there.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

What I'm sorry, why are we using the word required if they're still allowed to do stuff without them? I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 30:03

What do you mean recommended?

SPEAKER_01 30:05

I want to hit someone with a dictionary. Like, come on. Like, don't say required if it's not required. Anyway, I did have one thought to add um about like how COVID also impacted children's vaccination rates, is a huge one, yes, is misinformation, disinformation. But another one is I think there was a lot of fear around going to the doctor. So a lot of kids missed their preventative care appointments where they would normally get those vaccines. So they were either delayed, again, skip, lost to follow-up, things like that. So that also took a huge chunk out of childhood vaccination rates, too. Was just like you weren't gonna go to the doctor because if you are scared about like getting getting COVID by going to the doctor because someone else is there with COVID, you're not gonna take your kid to the doctor. Or like people losing jobs and like healthcare coverage and things like that. It's like you don't you can't take your kid to the doctor or whatever have you, but there was like a uh a not significant amount of percent specifically from that chunk that came from I think the fear of going to the doctor and like missed preventative care appointments.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

That makes a lot of sense because that was like six or seven years ago. Yeah. So we're talking like elementary school ages. I would be interested to see looking at 2019 versus 2020, because they have data both from both years, what the drop-off was in 2019 versus 2020. I think that there was something stirring beneath the surface here with the anti-vaccine rhetoric before the pandemic. And then it really, like between the lockdowns and then the rhetoric, that likely never recovered after 2020. Um I would agree. But that's a really good point. Yeah, good thought on that. Um, so yeah, 21% at one school. Those numbers pretty much explain how South Carolina ended up with nearly a thousand measles cases this year. And as those rates fell, who has stepped in to fill the vacuum of information and support? Well, who do you think? An organized anti-vaccine misinformation networks. They're packaged in that wellness content. They're packaged in this idea that you are just asking, asking questions and that you have every right to. And you know what? The American like dream is to be able to ask questions, to be informed and how you want to be informed, to have the freedom to look into things how you want to look into things, and you should be able to ask questions. And I want to make it very clear as we get into this section, no one has ever said you shouldn't be able to ask questions, but they are taking advantage of parents and people by utilizing that terminology and saying otherwise that you haven't been able to. So let's talk about the children's health defense or CHD. The Children's Health Defense was founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who you might recognize on this podcast as Bubonic Bobby or Brainworm Daddy, depending on what episode you've listened to. He is also, unfortunately, our United States Secretary of Health and Human Services. And I want to be really, really clear about what CH is and does because it matters enormously to the story. So since 2005, Kennedy has promoted vaccine misinformation and public health conspiracy theories, including the scientifically disproven claim of a causal link between vaccines and autism. He is the founder and former chairman of CHD, which is notably an anti-vaccine advocacy group. They may not call themselves that, but they are. CHD initially inserted itself into the 2025 Texas measles outbreak with a media operation that repeatedly disputed the MMR vaccine. And when parents of a six-year-old girl who became the first child in the U.S. to die of measles complications in over 20 years decided to speak publicly, they gave an exclusive interview to CHD. And in it, they defended their choice not to vaccinate. CHD then produced this information, packaged it, and distributed it. And CHD also aired interviews with two Mennonite families, as we talked about in the 2025 outbreak in uh Texas, whose young children died from measles in the Texas outbreak. And in both interviews, the families claim that their children did not die from measles and that they still did not support vaccination.

SPEAKER_01 34:12

Okay, that really pisses me off because Mennonite communities are part of their, and I don't know a ton about it. So I'm gonna try to be as culturally sensitive to this as I can with my limited knowledge about the Mennonite community. Is they don't, I don't know if it's don't believe in medicine, but they don't use it. So exploiting two Mennonite families saying they don't support it and they didn't die from it is outrageous to me because you are completely ignoring their cultures and that's not like applicable to the rest of the world, you know? Like you're taking like their story, twisting it, and then putting it out to everybody saying, like, look what happened in these communities. But it's like if you don't know anything about the Mennonite community, you're not gonna think twice about it and you're gonna be like, Oh yeah, these parents, they said this, I'm a parent too, blah, blah, blah. Like, that's so fucked up. That's so fucked up and exploited everything. Really messed up to me.

SPEAKER_02 35:05

That's a really good point. I mean, I think two things, right? Herd immunity doesn't just protect infants, it also protects individuals who have a true religious belief against medicine or the use of vaccines. Like, there are groups in like the Jewish community that uh don't use vaccines and et cetera. And then there's Metonite, which comes from Christianity, I believe.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

Yeah, Mennonite, Amish. Um, I think like a sect of Jehovah's Witness, like, oh, uh, isn't like um Christ's not Scientology, but Christ Scientists, Church of the Christ Science, something like that. I don't know what its government name is, but like they also were like that. There's a handful of sects of different types of religions that don't believe in medicine.

SPEAKER_02 35:47

I I agree with you in that, like these are religious beliefs. They're not those that are anti-vaccine and backing themselves as religious because that's a way to get exemptions for their children not to be vaccinated to go to school. These are people that truly believe in these things. And going there and taking advantage of them as a purpose to spread disinformation about vaccines, I'm not surprised that CHD did this, but it doesn't make it any like, you know, less ethical. Also, on top of that, which makes me really mad, is regardless if they're metanine or not, you're taking advantage of some parents' extreme distress and mourning. And any parent that goes through this, especially somebody who really truthfully believes that they shouldn't vaccinate their children, that's asking them to question their own choices and blame them. Like if they came out and said, Oh, like I should have vaccinated, that's asking them to say, oh, it's my fault, you know, after also losing their child, which you could argue maybe it is, but also at the same time, like this is taking advantage of people in some seriously awful times for your own misinformation and disinformation.

SPEAKER_01 36:53

Yeah, like I've and I've taken like a lot of classes on vaccine hesitancy and anti-vax and like how to communicate with people who are vaccine hesitant. And parents are some of the most vulnerable populations because it's so easy to feel like whether or not it's true that what you did harmed your child, and there's a lot of doubt that can be sown in there, and so a lot of like this misinformation thrives on that doubt, specifically on such a vulnerable population. That is so fucked up to me. That's so fucked up. Like, like, I can't imagine preying upon such a vulnerable population for my own twisted whatever. That's crazy to me. I have like a lot of thoughts on misinformation around vaccines because it literally just thrives on sewing doubt in a super vulnerable population. And that is so twisted.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

Sick and twisted.

SPEAKER_02 37:54

So Kennedy has resigned from CHD's board when he be ran for president in 2023. And CHD still prominently displays former ties to Kennedy, though. He is a standalone tab on the group's about section, which credits him as their founder. Its video site features his public appearances in his current role as HHS secretary. And as HHS secretary, his public messaging on the measles outbreak has been, to put it generously, contradictory. So Kennedy called for people to get the measles vaccine while in the same breath, falsely claiming it hasn't been safely tested and that its protection is short-lived, saying we're always going to have measles no matter what happens, as the vaccine wanes very quickly. First and foremost, I want to put my head through the same wall that I wanted to earlier. We eliminated it. I just talked about this. It wasn't there.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

What do you mean? What do you mean it's always been there? It wasn't there. It wasn't there. Again, I want to smack him with a dictionary.

SPEAKER_02 38:55

It's just an outright lie. It's an outright lie. And I'm not surprised by it, but he's a liar through and through, and it's sad. Um so Kennedy has also repeatedly promoted vitamin A as a treatment for measles, framing it as an alternative or supplement to vaccination. And as Kennedy falsely claimed, vitamin A was both a prophylactic and a treatment for measles, which means a preventative and a treatment. Um, doctors in West Texas started seeing children infected with measles who also had also had symptoms in vitamin A toxicity in 2025. This happened last April. And vitamin A toxicity, we won't get into it too much, but it can cause uh liver failure. This messaging hasn't helped, obviously. It's directly harming children. It's been linked in multiple news articles and research as identifying, you know, the relationship between this is disinformation through CHD and through Kennedy to these outcomes that we've mentioned. And this is not new behavior. Before the US outbreaks, there was an outbreak in Samoa. In 2019, more than 5,700 people in Samoa were infected with measles and 83 people died. Most of them were young children, and the Samoan Ministry of Health cited Kennedy's visit and his rhetoric as exasperating vaccine hesitancy at a crucial moment. I want to be clear that the reason this happened in uh 2019 was because there was an accident where two Samoan nurses incorrectly prepared the MMR vaccine. They mixed it with expired muscle relaxant instead of saline, causing the deaths of two infants. So it wasn't actually any aspect of the measles vaccine produced. It was the way that it was prepared, and it was prepared with expired muscle relaxant instead of saline. And at this point, there was a lot of concern within the community about trusting the vaccine. And so, what did Kennedy do? And the CHD, they came in and exploited that. So the pattern is consistent. So now the person responsible for the pattern oversees the federal agencies that we consider responsible for protecting Americans from exactly this kind of outbreak. And when the CDC director Susan Monterez, which we talked about in the CDC episode, was ousted in August 2025, several CDC leaders quit over Kennedy's anti-science policies. And in a resignation note, the head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases wrote that Kennedy and his appointees threatened to the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant people. Nine former CDC leaders from both Democratic and Republican administrations wrote in New York Times that the shakeup at the agency was unlike anything our country has ever experienced. So this is career public health officials from both parties sounding the alarm in the middle of the largest measles outbreak in over three decades. All right, so what does this mean to lose a measles elimination status? Remember that definition we talked about earlier, which is measles elimination means no continuous domestic transmission for more than 12 months or more. The question health officials are now trying to answer is: has that line been crossed? Is the West Texas outbreak that started in January of 2025 still the same chain of transmission that's now driving cases in South Carolina, Utah, and 30 other states? Or are they separate introductions? This is where genome sequencing comes in, which is basically mapping the genetic fingerprint of the virus, and it becomes critical. Scientists have identified a particular genotype called D89171 that has been found circulating in West Texas, Utah, and South Carolina. But the limited number of measles genotypes circulating globally right now makes it hard to get the fine resolution needed to determine with certainty whether there has been continuous transmission since January 2025. Because of that uncertainty, the Pan American Health Organization has postponed its planned mid-April review of U.S. measles elimination, which should have been happening like now, for about seven months. They will review if measles is still technically eliminated in the United States in November 2026. But the timeline for what's being assessed, though, hasn't changed. Officials will determine whether continuous transmission can be documented for a full year after the start of the major outbreak, which began in January 20th, 2025, in the US. And if the answer is yes and there's evidence of a year or more of uninterrupted domestic spread, then we will lose that elimination status. And what does that actually mean? Well, first, it means that I'm sad. Second, it means that losing measles elimination status would signify the same commitment to measles prevention and control in the United States may no longer be present. It could also signal a future where measles is endemic and continuously circulating, because the further we get into this outbreak, the harder it is to control. And if vaccination rates continue to decline, this is going to bring more hospitalizations, more deaths from a very preventable disease. There could also be broader implications for communities which have may have to contend with more frequent decisions about whether or not they close data. Cares or schools, the societal cost of measles are high, and the continuous outbreaks would place an additional burden on already weakened and depleted public health systems. So all in all, I just want to mention that Canada lost its elimination status in November of 2025. The United Kingdom had several European countries that have lost theirs in recent years, and the US is potentially next. And I want to flag something absolutely wild that has happened in the middle of all of this. But before I do so, Maddie, do you also want to hit your head against the wall?

SPEAKER_01 44:33

Yes, please. Preferably Brit.

SPEAKER_02 44:37

I know. We should just like have a button that we press that says, kill me. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Can we get a button that's like, do the gallows?

SPEAKER_01 44:51

Do the gallows. Fuck. That was that's preventable. This is all preventable.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

Vaccinate yourself. Um, those are the buttons.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

Those are the buttons we need.

SPEAKER_02 45:00

Yeah, we need those buttons. Um, something that's wild that has happened in all of this. In January of 2026, the principal deputy director of the CDC, whose name is Ralph Abraham, he was put in this position in December of 2025. So he's brand new at this point, told reporters that he would not view the loss of measles elimination status as a significant event. He said, not really. You know, it's just the cost of doing business.

SPEAKER_01 45:26

Cost of doing business. I I'm sorry, business. I don't think the public's health is business. Are these finance bros? Get them the fuck off my screen. I'm sorry. Like what the fuck?

SPEAKER_02 45:38

It's children dying, and apparently that's the cost of doing business for a preventable disease. So we also have SSP, you know, reappearing. We're watching the quarter century of a public health achievement unravel in real time, and you get that response from a senior official of an agency responsible for preventing this. It's not like we're asking the Department of Labor director what he thinks about measles. We're asking the principal deputy director of the CDC about this. So that tells you everything you need to know about the current state of federal public health leadership right now in this country. So, what do we actually do? How do we wrap this up in a way that we believe in action and not just despair, which is really hard because, like I said, we need a button that says fuck. And right now it feels like a lot of despair. Um, you need to first check your own vaccination status. So two doses of the MMR vaccine is 97% effective. If you don't know whether or not you've had two doses, call your doctor and they might be able to do tighter tests. If you have infants in your life who can't be vaccinated yet, it's time to talk to your pediatrician if you haven't already. Especially in active outbreak areas, they have different ideas on ways to keep yourself safe. And now, like I mentioned earlier, the first dose can be given as early as six months instead of waiting. They also have guidelines for things for you to think about. Children that are between four to six years old, this is a routine time to receive the second dose. We talked about the first dose at 12 to 15 months. And children over six and adolescents, if they have not received a second dose, they should get one ideally at least 28 days after the first. So they might talk to you about potentially starting it over. You need to talk to your doctor about this, though. If you're an adult born between 1957 to 1967, that means your ages of 59 to 69, you might need another dose. The reason is that at that time they were only giving one dose of measles preventative. And like I said, that one dose is only 93% effective. So you might want to consider getting a second dose, especially for those that are higher risk, such as healthcare workers and medocompromised individuals or travelers. So call your parents, especially if your parents are like mine in that age range. Um, and then adults born before 1957. So we're talking ages 69 or older. These individuals are generally considered immune because they likely had measles, which is insane to say that out loud. Except I don't really want to give that b information out there and recommend that. I would say get your titers checked regardless. I am a huge proponent of reducing risk where you can. And so my recommendation wouldn't be just assume that you're immune. I would talk to your doctor about what's next, and that's the case. Second, understand that vaccination is not a personal choice in isolation. It's a community act, and the burden is on all of us to protect those that can't be protected by the vaccine itself. And as one pediatrician in South Carolina put it, your choice not to vaccinate affects the infant next to you in the grocery store who cannot be vaccinated. It affects the immunocompromised in your community whose vaccine may not have taken fully. This is about the social contract of public health, which I know all of us had to contend with during the COVID pandemic, and we didn't really do that great of a job. So think about continuing that social contract.

SPEAKER_01 48:48

The other thing that you need to remember too is that the MMR vaccine has some of the most lengthy safety studies on it. It is proven time and time again to be one of the safest vaccines that we have out there. There's so much information on it and so much focus on like the aftermarket safety of that vaccine that we also need to keep that in mind. And if someone comes up to you and is like, it's not safe, there's no data on it, there's a shit ton of data, I promise you.

SPEAKER_02 49:17

Yeah. And also when it comes to vaccine skepticism, thinking about misinformation and disinformation. And so we may have used those interchangeably in this in this episode, but I want to make sure that you know that there's a difference between the two, which is that misinformation is false and inaccurate information, but it's not created or shared with the intention of causing harm or deceiving others. So, like when your aunt shares something on Facebook because she's scared about it, she's probably not sharing it because she wants you to not vaccinate your children and for them to die. But if it's CHD, like the children's health defense, they're known for spreading disinformation, which is false information that has been deliberately created, manipulated, and spread to mislead, harm, and manipulate people, especially at their most vulnerable state. So knowing the difference between those two. And if you've ever shared misinformation, I mean I can say for certainty, I have unfortunately shared misinformation in my life. Not about vaccines, but I have shared misinformation. It is easy to get caught up in it. It is easy to repost. Don't be hard on yourself. Just consider going forward how you're actually going to keep your eye out for that and try to reduce the amount of interest you have in just pressing repost before you actually do some research into it. Finally, we need to hold our elected officials accountable, our policymakers accountable. We need to shame them for making RFK Jr. our HHS director. State legislators across the country are considering bills that would make it easier for vaccine exemptions and remove requirements for daycare aged children and further erode that infrastructure that got us to elimination in the first place. And at the federal level, a senior health official, like we've said, has sought to remake vaccine policy and oversees billions in public health cuts, and they have real, measurable, fatal consequences, and we're seeing that firsthand right now. The scariest part about it is you can't really know what the impact is now because it's silent. We don't have that surveillance that we had. Measles elimination was a choice, and losing it is also a choice, and that's what's happening now because of our leadership. So, like I said in episode four, the best outbreak is one that never becomes an outbreak. We knew how to prevent this one, we had the tools, and we still do. So I hope I haven't ruined your day. It's important to know about measles, it's important to know how to protect yourself, your children, and your friends and community. And just remember, vaccination is the best choice if you can get it. All right, that was a long segment, but it's so much information about measles.

SPEAKER_01 51:44

Okay, so for public health and pop culture, today we are gonna be talking about Survivor. I am a big fan of Survivor. I grew up watching Survivor. I probably watched the first like 10 seasons as they came out, and I was far too young to probably have watched it, but I did. Um, and then got back into it a lot more so recently and like rewatched a bunch of seasons and things like that. So we're gonna do a two-part series on this. This may end up being more parts because Survivor, despite being one of my favorite shows, is actually a very problematic show. And so the first chunk that I'm gonna do is I'm gonna talk about sexism and how it's a great and obvious case study for how sexism is apparent in our daily lives using Survivor. And then the second part that I'll eventually do is on the occupational health safety side of Survivor. Um, because two seasons ago we got like a good glimpse of what it looks like, and I think it's really interesting. And my dream job is to go be like the safety person on Survivor. I think that'd be super cool. But anyway, so let's talk about sexism and survivor. So this season is season 50, um, which is a huge milestone, and it is put kind of more in the hands of the fans. So all throughout season 49, you could vote on different things. Like you wanted them to start with rice, you wanted it to be longer or shorter, whatever. So, to give some context to the season 50 cast, the cast is split 50-50 on men and women. Um, but there are more people from the new era than the older seasons, which makes sense. However, the edit that this Survivor season is ignoring women, kind of blatantly. Like the women are getting the least amount of screen time. And Survivor has this like cult-like following with it. So there are people on the internet who have turned Survivor into a science, and they have done all of the calculating, figuring out percentages that really kind of across the board, women's stories are more swept under the rug. So, a really good case in point. There was an episode, like two episodes ago, where Zach Brown from the Zach Brown band is like apparently a big survivor fan. And so he had like a whole episode, and he was like part of the presentation, and like it was in a part of the reward challenge. And um, Zach Brown had more confessionals in that episode than Tiffany, one of my favorite players, has had the entire season. We are seven episodes in. Also, that I know, big AO, it was so gross. And like, I will say this made me very happy that that episode of Zach Brown is one of the lowest rated survivor episodes in survivor history because obviously this is like one of the biggest watch seasons. It's the lowest rated, thank God. Because I was like, why is this man on my screen? Why do we give a fuck? There's been like a lot of like weird celebrity interaction with this episode of like the season of Survivor, and I'm like, just do a whole celebrity season of Survivor. I think that would be better. Do it all then. I think that'd be great. It'd also be wildly entertaining. So one of the contestants, Angelina, has been really outspoken on this topic. She was originally on, I think it was season 37, David versus Goliath, with Mike White. Yes, the Mike White from like White Lotus started off on Survivor. And uh she had a cameo on, I think it was White Lotus season two, because Mike White brings back people from his tribe on Davis versus versus Goliath for cameos in White Lotus season. So that's like a fun little fact. But she was basically invisible for the last two episodes. But in her exit interview, she calls out production for making a lot of lip service to saying that they're focusing on diversity and inclusion, but then basically cutting all the women's storylines. So leading up to the vote where Mike White got voted off, apparently it was Emily who did a lot of the legwork for it, but it was edited in a way that it made it seem like all it was all the guys' ideas on the tribe and they did all the work. And Angelina was very outspoken on this fact. She was like, no, they got it all wrong in this edit. Like, that's not how this happened. So she's been very outspoken on this, which I do appreciate. There's also been a huge focus on male storylines this season. So coach is coach is everything. I hate coach, get that man off my screen. He's so gross. There's like a big focus on his beef with Ozzy from previous seasons and his whole Dragon Slayer persona bullshit. If you refer to yourself as the Dragon Slayer Tomato, Coach is back. Yeah, Coach is back.

SPEAKER_02 56:01

As somebody who hasn't really watched Survivor that much, but I've seen some seasons, like Coach is the worst. Why do they bring him back? Nobody wants to watch him.

SPEAKER_01 56:09

I think he's just good TV. He brings a lot of drama. He should have been stopped after Heroes versus Millains. I think that should have been the end of Coach. I'm sorry. Maybe that's a hot take, but God, he's so fucking annoying. Yeah, so Coach is back. Last week's episode was so focused on Coach and Jonathan and their beef with D, who D is elite. She is easily one of the greatest survivor players, I think, in history, especially in the new era. And she won two, three seasons ago. She's great. She's so good. And um, clearly, Coach's masculinity is just threatened. He's just really fragile. He could have said he has fragile masculinity problems, but instead he's saying, She makes me play like the Dragon Slayer, Dragon Slayer's back, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, okay, just say the quiet part out loud.

SPEAKER_02 57:01

She's so insufferable.

SPEAKER_01 57:03

He's so insufferable. But there's so much air to these all-male alliances, especially this like honor integrity bro group. And the women like Steph who uphold the patriarchy in their day-to-day lives, and then clearly do it as they're supporting this honor integrity bro group. They're latching themselves onto the patriarchy to get farther. And Steph is multiple different shades of problematic. And the fact that I think she was let on 50 is insane. And showing how production, again, makes this big to-do about diversity and inclusion, but then someone put someone who's blatantly racist and anti-Semitic online on season 50. I don't really care if she's a good survivor player or not. What the fuck? I don't know. There's been hundreds of survivor players. Why did you bring her back on when you could have had somebody else? That is my thought process. Anyway, another example is Chrissy. Her only significant moment in the first five episodes, maybe up until this last episode, was Coach telling her that she talked too much and was being annoying, which perfectly encompasses what it is like to be a woman in this world, especially in spaces that are male dominant, um, and where that male dominance is supported and encouraged. I was livid for Chrissy. I also think if Coach told me that, I would punch him square in the face.

SPEAKER_02 58:23

Here's the thing is that it's like they keep bringing Coach back, but it's also like they're making coach who coach is. Like he doesn't have anything in the real world. No. They just keep bringing him back on Survivor. If they didn't do that, Coach wouldn't have anything to stand on, you know?

SPEAKER_01 58:37

Yeah, coach is really weird because he's like, he's like, I'm an honor and integrity bro, but he is like the one of the bigger villains on Survivor. That I'm like, what mental gymnastics are you doing? So you think that about yourself, but okay, dude, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 58:50

He's a narcissist.

SPEAKER_01 58:51

And if men lie and do shady stuff, they're considered good game players and that's rewarded. But if women do the same thing, they're conniving or rude or a bitch, and there's a big to-do about them lying and being fake. Like, literally, Jonathan and Coach just did this to Dee. Like they were making this huge thing about her lying. And Dee's like, you all lie. Why does it matter if I lied about this one thing when you all lie about everything? And they were like, oh, you lied, you lied, you lied. And I'm like, get these fucking men off my screen. I fucking hate Jonathan. I fucking hate Coach. I just hate men. I hate them all. To the gallows, garbage. Get these men off my screen. I don't want to hear any more honor integrity borrow bullshit. Anyway, I'm pissed. And another case in point of this, Parverdi Shallow is one of the all-time best survivor players. She's won twice, and she's framed like a snake and a black widow. Case in point, they famously made this all-woman, like Black Widow Brigade Alliance on season 16 in Micronesia. But I don't know. And then another example is in season 39, Kelly was sexually harassed by one of her fellow contestants, and it took multiple instances of this behavior before he was removed from the game show. And it was addressed in at Final Tribal, but by Jeff in Super Tone-Def manner. And so these are just a small list of reasons how sexism I think occurs, especially for sure in dating shows and especially in game shows like Survivor. I think it's a really good case study on the interpersonal politics that come with small groups of sexism and how it's supported, whether knowingly or unknowingly, especially in these situations where you do have to vote people out and there's a lot of strategy and there's almost like the sense of narcissism because you are wanting to make sure that how is this gonna affect me? How do I become the best? How am I gonna move this to make sure it goes best for like my gameplay? Like there's a really, I think survivor is a really good case study for a lot of these things. So that is what I wanted to talk about in public health and pop culture is Survivor. So that's it.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:55

I love it. Yeah, no, I mean don't even get me started on Jeff. I know there's people that are like obsessed with Jeff out there when it comes to survivor. And I just personally think he's problematic in a lot of ways. And the biggest thing for me about survivors so far is when someone gets hurt and the doctor is coming up to see how they can help them. And Jeff's like, is he gonna die? Like he he's crying. Tell us more about what's going on right now. And the doctor's like, literally, I'm just trying to fix this guy and keep this guy from like having a heart attack. And Jeff's like, no, I want you to step me through everything that's happening right now. And the doctor's like, okay, but I'm busy right now trying to save this person's life.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:26

Like that's so problematic. It's again, like, I think Jeff Prost is Survivor because he is one of the executive producers. I might have this wrong, but I think he came up with survivor. Like Jeff Prost is Survivor, and I think there has been an effort to try to be better, but not by much. And again, he's always gonna do what's best for TV, which what's best for TV is bugging this doctor to share all of this personal medical information on TV. Which is so annoying. Because it's like at a certain point, like, can you just give them five minutes and then edit this out later? You do enough editing magic, let let them figure it out and then be like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:05

I have never been somebody that's a huge survivor fan, just because you're right, there's like a lot of problematic stuff in the baseline in the foundation. I think institutionally it has to do with producers. Like anytime you do reality TV, there's gonna be what is best for TV, and that's gonna be taking advantage of the nature of society's interests, which is drama, misogynistic comments, getting people riled up, especially women. Like it all kind of falls into that. Um, this was this is a good point. I think you should do more about this in the future.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:34

Yeah, I just I really think that there is a valuable place for reality TV because it is such good, like sociological studies on humans. I always love sociology classes, I think it's super fascinating. So it was using reality TV as a sociological study, I th I probably could write a dissertation on because it's so fascinating. But I think Survivor is a really great case in point of that because you are together for so long, without food, without infrastructure, without anything like that, and you're having to compete, and it's both like a team and an individual game. So I think there's so many different layers to it that it makes it such an exceptional case study. I do love to watch Survivor. I think it is a phenomenal concept. It is so problematic though. So yeah, I don't know. I could probably do racism in Survivor. So maybe Survivor will be like a three, four, five part thing. Who knows? Like I it is like the perfect storm of getting to study what people are genuinely truly like when you cut out everything that they have. It's almost like the, what was it, Lord of the Flies, a little bit like that. Getting to kind of watch that, which I think is very fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:42

So yeah. Well, thank you for this analysis. I will say I think we're gonna skip recalls this week just because of time. We'll just have them in the show notes so you can still access them at any time if you're interested in knowing the most up-to-date recalls. So, um, we will say that thank you for tuning in this week. This was Public Health Group Chat. Get vaccinated. And Maddie, what else?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:06

Watch reality TV and don't be a dick.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:08

That's right. And all views are our own, and you can find us at public health group chat at gmail.com or on Instagram and TikTok.