Anti-vaccine activists, and the U.S. health secretary, are promoting unproven treatments in place of vaccination.

A second child died from measles in Texas this month. Both of the girls, ages 6 and 8, had no previous health conditions, other than being unvaccinated.

The outbreak in Texas has now risen to 541 known cases and 56 hospitalizations.

The outbreak has also spread to New Mexico, where 58 people have tested positive, four have been hospitalized, and one has died; to Oklahoma, with 12 known cases; and possibly to Kansas, which has identified 32 cases and one hospitalization since March 13.

“It’s a pretty serious, massive measles epidemic,” said Peter Hotez, dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. The current numbers are likely undercounted, he said: “There could easily be 1,000 cases or more”—and this outbreak “still has a lot of energy behind it.”

The U.S. needs to mount a major vaccination campaign, which is the only way to bring this outbreak under control, Hotez said.

Yet Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, said yesterday: “We need to do better at treating kids who have this disease, and not just saying the only answer is vaccination.”

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While Kennedy has said, tepidly, that vaccines work, he has also said that unproven and sometimes toxic treatments like vitamin A help.

And now, he’s praising “two extraordinary healers,” Richard Bartlett and Ben Edwards, who he claimed have “treated and healed” children using inhaled budesonide and clarithromycin.

I went into Bartlett’s background, as well as whether these medications help with measles, in my latest story for The New Republic.

It would seem that anti-vaccine advocates are blaming doctors working in hospitals for medical errors and mismanagement, rather than attributing the deaths to measles itself.

There’s a lot that is disturbing about all of this, but perhaps the most disturbing is how Kennedy is also doubling down on the long-discredited link between vaccines and autism — thus contributing to rising rates of vaccine hesitancy.

To battle misinformation, people need to have good relationships with trusted medical providers and understand how to “weed through this firehose of stuff that comes at us on social media,” said Elizabeth Murray, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at the University of Rochester.

“If it’s scare tactics being used instead of facts, then it’s very easy to be misled,” she said — but even so, “the overwhelming majority of families throughout our nation are choosing to vaccinate themselves and their children.”

I hope, dearly, that the trend continues, and people understand the importance of protecting their families through vaccination as this outbreak continues spiraling out of control.

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Top image: Dave Haygarth