How measles tore through a remote West Texas city

SEMINOLE, Texas — In order to treat children with measles, Dr. Ben Edwards don his scrubs and drove to a sheet metal building in this small West Texas city on a Saturday in mid-March. His face was mottled with red spots; Edwards also had measles.

In Gaines County, a rural community with one of the lowest childhood vaccination rates in the nation, an outbreak of the disease was growing. Lines of families had been circling the dusty parking lot of the building for two weeks. Nearly all of them were members of the Mennonite community, a religious sect that speaks Low German and keeps to itself. They primarily sent their kids to church-run schools. The disease that had spotted their children’s bodies and made it harder for them to breathe worried the parents, but they also had a deeper mistrust of hospitals and vaccines. Edwards’ options appeared to be a better option.

The area where Edwards worked was hastily converted from a general store to a clinic, and it contained little more than folding tables, plastic chairs, and private plane-transported boxes of vitamins and supplements. Children with fever had coughed and whimpered. The infant was lying in his mother’s arms, flushed. On her mother’s lap, another youngster curled up under a blanket. It was all captured on camera by a team from the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense.

In addition to prescribing steroid inhalers, Edwards distributed cod liver oil, which are strong liquids and pills that are high in vitamins A and D. Medical associations have cautioned against using either treatment because it cannot prevent or cure measles; however, Edwards claimed to have witnessed the treatments “work beautifully.”. “.”.

Later in his podcast, Edwards defended his choice to manage the children’s clinic while he was contagious by saying, “They had nowhere else to turn.”.

A measles patient waiting room at the sole hospital in Seminole, however, was frequently empty. Just four people visited the county’s free vaccination clinic on a recent weekday, indicating that despite the rise in infections, there was little demand for the only effective method of preventing them.

Thus, two strategies were in place to address a highly contagious illness that primarily affects young children. One was headed by overburdened public health officials and was based on science and data. The other was motivated by mistrust and propaganda, supported for the first time in history by the federal government itself under Robert F. Kennedy, and disseminated by anti-vaccine activists and alternative practitioners like Edwards. Kennedy, Jr.

Kennedy spent twenty years creating the contemporary anti-vaccine movement as the founder, chairman, and chief counsel of the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense. Now that he was the health secretary, he was minimizing the risks of measles, spreading myths about vaccine risks, and telling parents to “do your own research.”. “”.

As the worst measles outbreak since the 1990s erupted in one of the most vulnerable areas—an isolated Mennonite community already wary of outsiders, ready to oppose government intervention, and swayed by false information that Kennedy had helped mainstream—Kennedy broadcast these messages. Within weeks, a disease that had previously been eradicated in the US would ravage Gaines County’s unvaccinated population, resulting in the hospitalization of numerous children and the deaths of two young girls.

The anti-vaccine movement arrived during the surge, turning Seminole into a battleground for an information war waged by politicians, fringe doctors, and anti-vaccine activists who promoted unproven remedies, unrealistic optimism, and a narrative that redirected the blame to conventional medicine after the consequences of vaccine refusal became abundantly evident.

Based on numerous interviews, podcasts, news reports, and descriptions from public health officials, Mennonite residents, traditional and alternative physicians, and anti-vaccine organizations, The Story of Seminole provides a glimpse behind the lines of battle and serves as a warning to a nation that is becoming more and more divided not only by politics but also by conflicting realities.

First measles, then false information.

In January, sick children started to arrive at hospitals in Texas.

Doctor. When the first child arrived at Seminole’s emergency room, Leila Myrick was on call. She verified measles, a condition she had never seen in person, by consulting a medical textbook.

In 2020, Myrick relocated her family from Atlanta to Seminole, a conservative yet diverse community where many of her patients were Mennonite and Latino. She was attracted to the prospect of practicing small-town medicine in a city carved out of the desert. In the following five years, she had cared for their families during COVID, childbirth, and all the other events. Outside Myrick’s office, a framed poster of her holding newborns is displayed in the hallway.

Now that measles was a threat to these kids, Myrick tried her best to convince parents to get their kids vaccinated. She worked weekends at the hospital, stayed late at her clinic, conducted interviews, and took calls on a local German-language radio program.

However, her message was competing.

For many years, the nation’s biggest anti-vaccine nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, has minimized the risk of measles by claiming it is harmless and good for the immune system. The group was unfazed by the Seminole outbreak, erroneously claiming that it was the result of a local vaccination campaign. They then put forth other, conflicting theories, such as the vaccines failing, shedding the measles virus, or possibly working too well, which in some way produced a super virulent strain.

In a neighborhood Facebook group called “Seminole TX Residents NEED to KNOW,” Myrick observed her neighbors repeating these lies, occasionally mentioning her by name.

One woman wrote, “Every doctor who pushes the jabs gets commission from the big Pharma.”.

The Gaines County library put up a flyer in late February requesting that people who are not vaccinated or who are ill with measles refrain from entering. The library took down the post by the evening following a furor in the comments.

“I see a vulnerable population being misinformed and using that information to make decisions about their children’s health,” Myrick stated. And I’m powerless. “.”.

The South Plains Public Health District’s executive director, Zach Holbrooks, was tasked with overseeing the outbreak.

After working in Lubbock and Austin, Holbrooks returned to Seminole in 2008 to serve as the public health leader for four counties. Operating on roughly $2 million in grants annually, the health department’s duties are extensive and include everything from family planning and vaccinations to disaster response, fire safety, food safety, landfills, inspections, permits, and more.

Although he is quick to point out that he probably should have, Holbrooks didn’t anticipate the measles outbreak because vaccine exemptions in Gaines County had more than doubled in the previous ten years and roughly one in five kindergarteners were now skipping the shots.

Holbrooks said, “My heart sank” when the first cases were confirmed at the end of January.

In order to prepare for new families moving into the area, the district only kept a few doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines on hand. This was not done in case of an unexpected outbreak. The two epidemiologists that Holbrooks employed were immediately overburdened with case studies. Additionally, Holbrooks had neither a relationship with the Mennonite community nor outreach materials in Low German, both of which he desperately needed to enter.

He looked to the state for assistance, and they provided nurses, testing materials, and vaccines. A spray-painted arrow on incomplete plywood marked the location of his vaccination and testing clinic, which he set up outside Seminole Hospital District.

One Mennonite woman who drove by daily in a small gold car was recalled by Billie Dean, a nurse and site leader at the clinic.

“When we saw her pull in, we thought, ‘Oh, she’s back,'” Dean recalled. Every day, they informed her of the number of individuals who had received vaccinations the previous day and the fact that none had experienced any negative side effects. Two weeks later, she declared herself ready and rolled down her window. She returned with her daughter and grandson a few days later.

Holbrooks provided updates on local TV and radio stations and printed flyers in English, Spanish, and, with the help of a local writer named Low German, to hand out at grocery stores, libraries, post offices, and churches.

However, because officials knew that many people were not being tested, the number of cases in the area increased, almost doubling in a week to 80, which is undoubtedly an undercount. In a letter that appeared in the German-language publication The Mennonite Post in February, a married Seminole couple stated that there were “many sick people here.”. Many people have measles, diarrhea, vomiting, or fever. “”.

In epidemiology, numbers are everything. Approximately 200 children will need to be hospitalized, 50 will get pneumonia, and one to three will pass away for every 1,000 cases of measles.

In February, the numbers caught up to Seminole. 26.

Activists against vaccines come to town after a child dies.

Six-year-old Kayley Fehr was. According to her obituary, she loved to sing and make people laugh. She had two brothers and two sisters. She didn’t have a vaccination.

Around the same time as her four siblings, Kayley contracted measles. She had trouble breathing and grew exhausted as her fever increased. The doctor prescribed Tylenol and a cough remedy, but she was still having trouble breathing and was unable to eat due to oral sores.

Kayley’s parents brought her to Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, where she was admitted to the intensive care unit after receiving a pneumonia diagnosis. Kayley rapidly deteriorated. Her mouth was sticky from thirst, her breathing was shallow, and she was too weak to speak during her last hours. They put her on a ventilator, sedated her, and intubated her.

When Kayley’s parents sat down for an interview with Children’s Health Defense a few weeks later, the details surrounding her death were revealed. They told their loss story while crying and using an interpreter.

That interview cemented a narrative that was evolving. After Kayley passed away, Children’s Health Defense shifted to a narrative that the organization had honed during earlier outbreaks and refined with Covid: that Kayley had died from measles, not from it; that the virus was a coincidental cause and that she had died of another illness or failure. The activists needed a higher-ranking individual to tell that story. Their doctor was needed.

Ben Edwards worked as a conventional family doctor in a small-town clinic in Post, Texas, but he claims that around 2013, he became disillusioned after being amazed by a holistic practitioner from Amarillo who rejected the idea that germs have any power and advocated the antiquated theory of terrains, which holds that a disease develops based on the constitution of the body.

A “threat to the public welfare,” Edwards’ new guru, who had lost his medical license, offered lifestyle coaching, supplements, and nutrition advice, along with some unconventional and untested treatments like ketamine to “cure” autism. Edwards was dismissed from his county clinic when he attempted to put what he was learning into practice; he now felt free to pursue his own interests.

More than ten years later, Edwards has a modern, cash-only clinic in downtown Lubbock. It features a studio where he hosts his podcast, “You’re the Cure,” a lounge for IV treatments, and a small waterfall outside the lobby. “.”.

After Kayley passed away, a chain of events led to Edwards and, eventually, Children’s Health Defense moving to Seminole.

Tina Siemens, one of Edwards’s first patients, who frequently refers to herself as “the bridge” between Seminole’s Mennonites and the outside world, called him at the end of February. Siemens had assisted local authorities in translating information on testing and vaccination into Low German. Siemens also operates a small museum dedicated to local Mennonite history. She now revealed to Edwards that Kayley’s parents were concerned about their other kids, who were still ill with measles.

On March 1, Edwards met the family at Kayley’s viewing and gave them cod liver oil and a prescription for budesonide, a steroid inhaler used primarily for asthma. Edwards had received the idea from Richard Bartlett, an Odessa emergency medicine physician and devoted Christian, who claimed to have been inspired by God while napping and to have found the steroid as a “silver bullet” against Covid. There is conflicting evidence regarding its effectiveness. ).

Edwards pondered the following morning: What if he could treat everyone?

His supplier sent him 1,000 bottles of cod liver oil and vitamin C, which a pilot, who was also one of Edwards’s patients, flew to Scottsdale, Arizona, to retrieve. Back in Seminole, volunteers unloaded the boxes of liquids and capsules in the vacant area next to Health-2-U, a Mennonite-owned store. With tables and chairs brought in by the afternoon, there was a clinic on one side and a waiting area on the other.

More than $16,000 was raised through a fundraiser organized by Children’s Health Defense to “cover the cost of essential vitamins, supplements, and medications necessary to treat children enduring complications from the measles.”. “.”.

By Edwards’ count, about 70 children made it through the first day. Some people were already ill, with persistent coughs and fevers that wouldn’t go away. Other people’s symptoms were only starting to appear. The following day, Edwards was back at his pop-up clinic. He was awaited in another crowded room.

The story of the doctor from Lubbock who helped children for free quickly went viral. Edwards started crying when he was asked about his recent rise in popularity among the Mennonites.

During a March phone interview, Edwards stated, “It makes me really sad.”. “Why am I the only medical professional treating these children?”.

Edwards, in the meantime, encouraged his friend Bartlett, the physician who supported budesonide, to visit Covenant Children’s Hospital in order to be involved in the most severe cases. As the ailing child lay in the pediatric intensive care unit, Bartlett, dressed in his white doctor’s coat, met her parents. He pulled Covenant’s attending physician aside and introduced himself as a “friend of the family,” a term he later claimed on his podcast he used to get access to the secure floor. Budesonide, according to Bartlett, has saved COVID patients and will now be effective. According to Bartlett, the parents requested the treatment, so the doctor gave in and added it. Bartlett then proceeded to another pediatric intensive care unit room.

“The same physician examined me,” Bartlett remarked. He was annoyed. “You again?” he asked.

Bartlett’s intervention was considered to be interfering with care at Covenant Children’s Hospital. The hospital placed a picture of Bartlett in the security office and issued a trespass warning.

Edwards’ makeshift clinic was ravenously covered by Children’s Health Defense, and Kennedy addressed the doctor directly on Fox News, lauding his treatments for yielding “very, very good results.”. “”.

Once Children’s Health Defense arrived in Seminole the following week, they transformed the crisis into something constructive. In order to “see for ourselves what was going on,” they drove in from Austin through dust storms under the direction of Polly Tommey, a self-described autism mom and co-creator of the anti-vaccine “Vaxxed” films. “.”.

Kayley’s parents were among a group of Mennonite parents who came together to share their measles and vaccine-related stories on camera. They talked about a boy in Mexico who had seizures after receiving an MMR vaccination as a baby, a teenage girl who had exhausting tics and limb pain from childhood vaccines, and a mother whose church in China raised money for a stem cell transplant to repair the vaccine damage that had left her son in a wheelchair. Children’s Health Defense has raised over $67 million in the past ten years thanks to these stories, which are both compelling and unproven.

In her Mennonite history museum, Siemens, who had brought Edwards in to treat Kayley’s siblings, hosted the taping. She called the parents’ accounts “mighty, mighty testimonies,” describing how the community’s families and congregations were given living warnings that made the most recent generation of parents conclude that vaccinating their children was too risky.

The parents of Kayley were familiar with those tales. They informed Tommey that they would still not vaccinate him. According to her mother Eva Fehr, “the measles wasn’t that bad.”. She suggested that Kayley’s death was caused by the hospital’s inadequate care, and Children’s Health Defense stated unequivocally.

Requests for comment from Kayley’s parents were not answered.

Following the online circulation of the video that featured them, Covenant Children’s released a statement claiming that it contained “misleading and inaccurate claims.”. Although patient confidentiality was a requirement for the hospital, “We can say that our physicians and care teams follow evidence-based protocols and make clinical decisions based on a patient’s evolving condition, diagnostic findings, and the best available medical knowledge.”. “”.

Siemens, Tommey, and Children’s Health Defense did not reply to inquiries for comment. Bartlett opted not to respond. During a recent stroll close to his clinic, Edwards stated he would only talk off the record, but he later wrote back to answer a number of questions.

The claims were taken personally by Covenant Children’s doctors and nurses who were still tending to the sickest measles patients while also grieving for Kayley.

“Hearing the statement, ‘I have my own facts, and I have done my own research, and I don’t believe your facts, and I know you’re a doctor, but I have different knowledge,’ is exhausting,” said Dr. Lara Johnson, the chief medical officer of the hospital. Because everyone tries to do what’s best for themselves and make the best decisions possible, I always want to be sympathetic and caring to patients. “.”.

The alternatives presented their own set of challenges. Johnson said that children who had measles and had taken too much vitamin A, one of the supplements that Edwards promoted, ended up at the hospital with liver issues. Edwards rejected in a text the notion that cod liver oil caused any illnesses in children. He stated, “I suspect that the diagnosis of vitamin A toxicity is highly dubious.”.

Johnson saw the public’s mistrust as a rerun of the Covid pandemic.

According to her, “everyone is kind of mourning the loss of the way it used to be.”.

Federal public health officials attempt to create connections.

Texas requested federal assistance in response to Kayley’s passing. Jonathan Yoder transferred to Holbrooks’ Seminole office after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dispatched a team of epidemiologists to Lubbock.

Yoder requested to attend. His upbringing took place in a traditional Amish Mennonite church. In the Florida Panhandle, his father, who he claims “got off the farm and went to school,” operated a small environmental health department where he received calls regarding rabid animals, septic tanks, and other issues. I will never work in public health, Yoder vowed. Yoder pursued a master’s degree in public health after working as a social worker and studying psychology, but he eventually burned out and ended up at the CDC. He has spent twenty years traveling to disaster sites all over the world, including Flint, Michigan, Covid, and Ebola.

Yoder began calling everyone with ties to the community in Seminole, including pastors, midwives, the county judge, the host of the German-language radio program, the editor of a Mennonite newspaper that had been around for fifty years. He has a slow, deliberate cadence and speaks softly. He mostly listened during these calls. He discovered that no one desired a clinic in their church or school, and Mennonite pastors were unwilling to discuss vaccinations from the pulpit.

The history of the community was intertwined with mistrust of governments in particular and of outsiders in general. In the late 1970s, a conservative Anabaptist group from Mexico relocated to Gaines County. Within months of pooling their funds and investing millions in dubious land deals that obtained acres of farmland but not the rights to the water beneath it, hundreds of families received notice that they would be deported.

They resisted, and their faith and work ethic won them over neighbors, the Seminole mayor, Texas lawmakers, and ultimately Congress, which in 1980 passed a law granting them residency. But anxiety among undocumented Mennonite families who had recently arrived from Mexico, as well as fears of being expelled, persisted.

Yoder understood that it would be crucial to “not go in telling people what to do,” as stated by Lubbock’s public health director in an email sent to the state earlier this year. “”.

Due to an excessive number of sick children, Dueck was unable to stay with families during his Seminole trip as he usually did. A few weeks after that, he released an editorial detailing the facts regarding vaccination and measles. He wrote, “By taking action to stop the spread of this disease, we can show others how much we care and how much we love them.”.

Dueck acknowledged the criticism he received. Newer vaccines were seen as more dangerous by many Seminole people he had spoken to. He was told that the COVID pandemic had demonstrated how health officials could plan a crisis or even manipulate people’s lives with vaccines.

“They were terrified,” Dueck remarked.

In Seminole, RFK is drawn to a second death.

Another child passed away just over a month after Kayley.

Daisy Hildebrand was eight. She wore spectacles and had blond hair. She loved to play outside and was the eldest of three children. She didn’t have a vaccination.

Despite being in good health overall, Daisy had been experiencing symptoms for weeks. She experienced breathing difficulties and eye soreness while traveling to Mexico with her family. She was found to have pneumonia and measles. Daisy struggled to breathe upon admission to the Lubbock hospital of UMC Health System, was intubated, and passed away on April 3.

Distinguishing between the pneumonia and the measles that preceded it, a group of fringe physicians connected to Children’s Health Defense went back to the drawing board and asserted that the hospital was once again at fault. This time, Daisy’s father, Peter Hildebrand, was interviewed by Tommey via webcam. He maintained his decision to forgo vaccination and blamed the hospital for Daisy’s death. “It will save lives,” Tommey assured him of the interview. “”.

Hildebrand and his spouse began receiving “random phone calls, people telling us that we’re going to hell for killing our daughter” in the weeks that followed as he attempted to have the measles removed from his daughter’s death certificate. “”.

He declared, “I love my kids,” during a phone interview. “You know, I don’t need that kind of bulls— on top of what I’ve been dealing with.”.

Due to patient confidentiality, UMC Health chose not to comment.

Kennedy, who traveled to Seminole to attend Daisy’s funeral on April 6 and then made her name public for the first time on X, served as Hildebrand’s unexpected official source of support.

It was a startling break from public health protocol, which carefully shares the deaths of individual patients, particularly children.

Kennedy defied other conventions. The HHS secretary had direct contact with Edwards, who oversaw the temporary clinic, and Siemens, who oversaw the Mennonite history museum. Despite downplaying vaccines’ efficacy and exaggerating their risks, he gave them only a passing endorsement. On national television, he made the false assumption that the girls who perished might have been malnourished or ill. He called the untested treatments developed by Edwards “miraculous.”. “.”.

He was now in Seminole, the country’s top health official, promoting alternative medicine during a fatal outbreak.

Following Daisy’s funeral that evening, Kennedy went to Siemens’ museum to have a private dinner with the families. There were Bartlett, the proponent of Budesonide, and Edwards. Holbrooks, who was in charge of the county’s response to the measles outbreak, also arrived, shook Kennedy’s hand, and expressed gratitude for sending Yoder. Photographs from the event were later tweeted by Kennedy. He described Edwards and Bartlett as “extraordinary healers” in the caption. “.”.

The conflagration goes over.

Finally, there were no more unvaccinated children for the outbreak to infect by the beginning of May.

Yoder was back in Atlanta, packing up. Two nurses were working at an abandoned show barn that still provided drive-through vaccinations, but it was getting too hot for them, and not many people were still interested. Furthermore, there was no indication of Edwards or his treatments in the metal building in the town center. Today, it’s a general store with handmade lovies crocheted by the shopkeeper’s granddaughter hanging next to bolts of fabric, herbal teas, and traditional Mennonite dresses.

The editor of the Seminole Sentinel, a long-running semiweekly newspaper, Rob Franklin, expressed relief over the May headline: No New Measles Cases in County.

According to Franklin, the locals had had enough of the outside attention. All they wanted to do was go on. He stated, “They grew weary of being presented as a problem.”.

Holbrooks is currently gathering information from alternative practitioners in an effort to fully document the outbreak’s impact. In response to an NBC News query, Edwards sent Holbrooks an email on Friday with a list of his measles patients: 261 cases, almost all of whom were children.

When asked what he had learned in the past few months in his office, Holbrooks paused.

He enumerated the people who had assisted him, including physicians, school administrators, epidemiologists, paramedics, and city judges. He also appeared to be sorry for the connections he had been unable to make.

“If I learned anything from it, it’s the importance of establishing relationships prior to an outbreak,” he said. Don’t hold off. “.”.

In 1982, a tornado struck Seminole before dawn, destroying some houses and businesses but sparing others, according to Holbrooks. According to one reporter, the city appeared to have survived a minor conflict. Holbrooks recalled how the town came together as a result of the recovery effort.

“You never know when you’ll need your neighbor.”. “.”.