As predicted when President Donald Trump and his dangerous quack Health Secretary Bobby Kennedy Jr. cast doubt on vaccines, preventable disease is spreading, such as measles.

Now New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has now had to declare a state of emergency over the measles outbreak, which has exceeded 100 cases.

Surprising no one, these cases have been concentrated among rural communities where immunization rates are lower. At least we are not yet in the position of neighboring Pennsylvania, which is struggling with an outbreak of more than 1,000 cases.

Hochul’s order will provide some needed state resources and coordination to help overwhelmed counties and localities deal with the repercussions of the spread of a pathogen that is not only extremely contagious but has effects almost no other viruses have, including triggering so-called immune amnesia that can make children and adults more susceptible to other diseases that they’d already developed some immunity against.

It’s a shame to have to contend with this in a context where the federal government is not only not a partner, but in some significant ways a driver of the problem.

Kennedy hasn’t just used his position to spread his lies, he has taken harmful action, such as with his disastrous decision to stop the routine recommendation of six childhood immunizations, including for influenza, hepatitis, and COVID-19. Attorney General Tish James was right to join 14 other states in filing suit against this decision, which will only harm kids and their families and their communities.

As to measles, each and every case is a policy failure, or sabotage, if you want to look at it like that. This is not a disease that “just happens” or that we simply have to learn to live with until there is effective prevention and treatment. There is effective prevention, and there has been for quite a long time.

It was so effective, in fact, that measles was declared eradicated from the country in the year 2000, ringing in the new millennium with an incredible achievement: no spread at all for a period of 12 months. Put another way, we had cracked the code to having what was once a catastrophe among this nation’s children become effectively a non-issue.

To have measles spreading so aggressively again now, a quarter century after this momentous occasion, is not some unfortunate but unavoidable expression of nature, like an earthquake. It is a choice, or rather a series of choices made over time from people ranging from individual parents who refused to get their own children vaccinated to public officials who abdicated their responsibility to protect the public.

The measles virus is not any more dangerous, but the man leading the whole of this country’s public health infrastructure is. RFK had already dedicated the bulk of his career to baselessly and aggressively sowing distrust in the accepted medical consensus — rigorously established over decades of research and millions of inoculations — that vaccines are both safe and effective.

He is now using his perch to carry out his agenda, which runs counter to what public health should be. Nature created measles, modern science found the vaccine to stop it cold and end it forever and now horribly, Bobby Kennedy has brought it roaring back.

Every illness and every death is on his and Trump’s hands.

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