Anti-Vaxxers Are Grifting Off the Measles Outbreak—and Claim a Bioweapon Caused It

CHD has also pushed the debunked claim that vitamin C offers protections against contracting measles. The group’s website is currently promoting an ebook titled The Measles Book: Thirty-Five Secrets the Government and the Media Aren’t Telling You about Measles and the Measles Vaccine. The foreword of the book is written by Kennedy, who is now the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).

CHD, Kennedy, and the HHS did not respond to requests for comment.

On X, anti-vaccine influencers claimed without evidence that hospital employees had mistreated the first patient, leading to their death. One of those pushing this narrative was Syed Haider, a doctor who was part of the notorious Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), which formed during the pandemic and pushes dubious and ineffective treatments. Haider has almost 170,000 followers. Henry Ealy, a naturopathic doctor based in Oregon with 50,000 X followers, also pushed this claim. Ealy’s 2022 report falsely claiming that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had altered records to boost deaths linked to Covid-19 has been cited in the past by CHD.

Marissa Brooke Alesi, an influencer known as Red Pill Patriot, posted a video on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook claiming the child was hospitalized for pneumonia and RSV. “They then proceeded to give that child the MMR vaccination,” Alesi says, suggesting that the use of the MMR vaccine contributed to the child’s death. The video has been viewed over 3 million times on Instagram alone.

Haider, Ealy, and Alesi did not respond to requests for comment.

Pierre Kory, a doctor best known for his role as the founder of FLCC and a central figure promoting ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19, has also been pushing the narrative that measles was not the cause of the deaths of two children in Texas. In recent weeks, he has claimed without evidence that the measles crisis was, in fact, a targeted attack on the Mennonite community.

In August of last year, the American Board of Internal Medicine revoked Kory’s certifications; just a month earlier, Kennedy described Kory as a “brave dissident doctor.”

“Do you want to know the real story on this case?” Kory told a physician and activist last month. “Several of us believe that they weaponized this measles virus—on purpose. She got sicker from this measles probably because they monkeyed with the virus.”

Kory did not respond to a request for comment.

Kory has called Willis a “friend,” and the pair have collaborated multiple times in the past on webinars and podcasts. In 2023, Willis turned Kory’s War on Ivermectin book into a documentary.

Willis also claimed in the webinar that he has been given exclusive access to the Mennonite community in Texas after Bartlett convinced community members to speak only to him and people from CHD, and to avoid speaking to members of the mainstream media, who Willis described as “vultures.” Willis said he has interviewed at least 20 people for a short documentary that will be released in the coming days.

“This is a very contemporary example of very old tropes, which is that an extremist who’s seeking to radicalize someone else, separates them from people that might persuade them otherwise, whether that’s doctors, family, community, journalists who might be asking them questions to expose what’s happening,” Ahmed says. “You need to separate them out so you can indoctrinate them without impediment.”