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Roald Dahl’s letter about his 7-yr-old dying from measles is a must read for our time

The children’s book author doesn’t mince words.

Carl Van Vechten/Public Domain (left), Photo credit: Canva (right)

Roald Dahl's daughter contracted measles the year before the vaccine was invented.

On February 26, 2025, officials announced that a child in Texas had died of measles, becoming the first death from the disease in the U.S. in a decade. A local outbreak among unvaccinated people highlights the dangers of anti-vaccine sentiment that has affected vaccine rates and opened the door to a highly infectious disease that was considered eliminated in the U.S. in 2000.

A century ago, before the measles vaccine was developed and distributed, measles was a common childhood disease that nearly everyone caught at some point. But it wasn't harmless. Of the 3 to 4 million cases per year, 48,000 people were hospitalized and 400 to 500 people died. According to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the disease itself is dangerous and can also lead to pneumonia, encephalitis, brain damage, and other health problems.

Children's author Roald Dahl lost his 7-year-old daughter Olivia to measles-induced encephalitis in 1962, the year before the measles vaccine was invented. Over two decades later, he wrote a heart wrenching letter about her death, encouraging people to vaccinate their children to avoid that now-preventable tragedy.

roald dahlAuthor Roald Dahl in 1954, before his daughter Olivia was born.Carl Van Vechten/Public Domain

He wrote:

"My eldest daughter caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.

'Are you feeling all right?' I asked her. 'I feel all sleepy,' she said.

In an hour, she was unconscious. In 12 hours she was dead.

The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was 24 years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her.


measles rashMeasles often causes a skin rash in addition to flu-like symptoms.Photo credit: Canva

On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunised against measles. I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is to ask your doctor to administer it.

It is not yet generally accepted that measles can be a dangerous illness.

Believe me, it is. In my opinion, parents who now refuse to have their children immunised are putting the lives of those children at risk…It really is almost a crime to allow your child to go unimmunised."

one of Roald Dahl's drawings of the Big Friendly Giant holding a little girl. Tech, Science, & Innovationwww.facebook.com

Dahl wrote his letter to parents in the United Kingdom in 1988, but it's just as relevant today. While some parents worry about the side effects of vaccines and rumors about the MMR (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) vaccine being linked to autism, studies have shown that there is no evidence that the MMR vaccine causes autism and according to Johns Hopkins, "Measles is a dangerous disease and the vaccine is very safe. The risks of severe illness, death, or lifelong complications from measles infection far outweigh the generally mild side effects some people experience following vaccination. Serious reactions to the MMR vaccine are rare." There is still no cure for measles or measles encephalitis.

Dahl dedicated two of his books to Olivia: James and the Giant Peach when she was still alive and The BFG after her death. Though his books have long been controversial and his legacy has been marred by antisemitism and racism that his family felt the need to formally apologize for, Dahl was right about vaccines. His experience losing his daughter serves as a cautionary tale for those who may be tempted to take the drastic reduction in infectious diseases due to vaccines for granted.

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Most COVID vaccine disinformation can be traced to just 12 people on social media

Canva

As millions of Americans have raced to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, millions of others have held back. Vaccine hesitancy is nothing new, of course, especially with new vaccines, but the information people use to weigh their decisions matters greatly. When choices based on flat-out wrong information can literally kill people, it's vital that we fight disinformation every which way we can.

Researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a not-for-profit non-governmental organization dedicated to disrupting online hate and misinformation, and the group Anti-Vax Watch performed an analysis of social media posts that included false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines between February 1 and March 16, 2021. Of the disinformation content posted or shared more than 800,000 times, nearly two-thirds could be traced back to just 12 individuals. On Facebook alone, 73% of the false vaccine claims originated from those 12 people.

Dubbed the "Disinformation Dozen," these 12 anti-vaxxers have an outsized influence on social media. According to the CCDH, anti-vaccine accounts have a reach of more than 59 million people. And most of them have been spreading disinformation with impunity.

"Despite repeatedly violating Facebook, Instagram and Twitter's terms of service agreements, nine of the Disinformation Dozen remain on all three platforms, while just three have been comprehensively removed from just one platform," the report states. It also says platforms fail to act on 95% of the COVID and vaccine misinformation that is reported to them.

NPR has reported that Facebook has taken down more of the accounts following the publishing of its article on the CCDH analysis.

Despite many people's understandable resistance to censorship, health disinformation carries a great deal of weight—and consequence. As the CCDH writes, "The public cannot make informed decisions about their health when they are constantly inundated by disinformation and false content. By removing the source of disinformation, social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter can enable individuals to make a truly informed choice about vaccines."

So who are these 12 individuals? The report names them and provides some basic info about them starting on page 12 of the report (which you can read here). They are:

1. Joseph Mercola

2. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

3. Ty and Charlene Bollinger

4. Sherri Tenpenny

5. Rizza Islam

6. Rashid Buttar

7. Erin Elizabeth

8. Sayer Ji

9. Kelly Brogan

10. Christiane Northrup

11. Ben Tapper

12. Kevin Jenkins

Several of these folks are physicians, which ups their credibility in the eyes of their followers. But as vaccine skeptics themselves say, "Follow the money." These anti-vaxxer influencers rake in the dough by preying on people's paranoia with monetized websites and social media posts, as well as by selling books and supplements.

Some of them may be "true believer" conspiracy theorists and some of them may be opportunistic grifters, but they all benefit from misinformation mongering.

In addition to these individuals, the report names organizations linked to them, including:

- Children's Health Defense (Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.)

- Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) (Del Bigtree)

- National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) (Barbara Loe Fisher, Joseph Mercola)

- Organic Consumers Association (OCA) (Joseph Mercola)

- Millions Against Medical Mandates

Don't the names chosen for these organizations sound like things many people would support? Who isn't in favor of defending children's health or informed consent? The "National Vaccine Information Center" sounds downright official, right? Organic consumers? That's me. How would people know whether or not these organizations were trustworthy sources of information, especially if people they know and love are sharing posts from them?

They wouldn't. That's the entire problem.

The report offers suggestions for how to handle misinformation pushers, starting with deplatforming.

"The most effective and efficient way to stop the dissemination of harmful information is to deplatform the most highly visible repeat offenders, who we term the Disinformation Dozen. This should also include the organisations these individuals control or fund, as well as any backup accounts they have established to evade removal."

The CCDH also recommends platforms "establish a clear threshold for enforcement action" that serve as a warning before removing someone and present warning screens and effective correction to users when a link they attempt to click leads to a source known to promote anti-vaccine misinformation. In addition, the report recommends that Facebook not allow private and secret anti-vaccine Groups "where dangerous anti-vaccine disinformation can be spread with impunity."

Finally, the CCDH recommends instituting an Accountability API "to allow experts on sensitive and high-importance topics to perform the human analysis that will ultimately make Facebook's AI more effective."

The information age is also the misinformation and disinformation age, unfortunately. When it's people pushing that the moon landing was a hoax, it's annoying, but when it's people pushing falsehoods about a deadly pandemic and the life-saving vaccines that can end it, we can't just brush it off with an eye roll. Disinformation is dangerous, figuring out how to stop it is tricky, but at least knowing where most of it comes from might give us a chance to limit its spread.


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Why the pause of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is actually a good thing

Steven Cornfield on Unsplash

Americans woke up this morning to the news that the FDA and the CDC have recommended a pause on the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine out of "an abundance of caution" while they review 6 incidences of rare blood clotting issues out of the 6.8 million J & J vaccines administered in the U.S.

Let's be super clear about the numbers here. Six out of 6.8 million. That means, of the people who have received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine since its February 27th emergency use authorization, 0.000088% of recipients have reported encountering this rare blood clotting issue. Literally less than one in a million.

On the flip side, some people are trying to compare these rare clots with the increased risk of blood clots in pregnancy and for those taking birth control pills, but this particular combination of clots and low platelets can't be treated the way clots normally are treated, which the CDC and FDA say is part of the reason for the pause—to alert doctors to treat any of these rare issues properly.

Getting technical:

"In these cases, a type of blood clot called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) was seen in combination with low levels of blood platelets (thrombocytopenia)," said a statement from Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the CDC, and Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. "All six cases occurred among women between the ages of 18 and 48, and symptoms occurred 6 to 13 days after vaccination."

"Right now, these adverse events appear to be extremely rare," the statement added.

The problem, of course, with this responsible pause for review is that people who were already unsure about the vaccines may become even more hesitant. "See? We were right to wait! The vaccine isn't safe!" However, there are two big reasons why that's the wrong reaction.

1. Even assuming these clotting issues are truly caused by the vaccine and are wrapped into the numbers, the vaccine is still a far, far safer bet than taking your chances with COVID.

The math bears this out clearly. More Americans have received a COVID vaccine shot than have been diagnosed with COVID, with no pattern of deaths following vaccinations that would indicate a safety issue. Meanwhile, we have 562,000+ deaths from COVID. Even if you believe the COVID mortality numbers to be overcounted in some way (despite experts believing the count is likely an undercount), you would have to have practically zero COVID deaths to make the vaccines riskier.

But risk isn't just about death, right? What about side effects and long-term health effects of both? According to the WHO, approximately 10-15% of people who get COVID will develop severe illness, and about 5% will become critically ill. No one knows the long-term impact of COVID infection yet, but a WHO survey found that even among people ages 18 to 34 years in good health, 20% (1 in 5) of reported "prolonged symptoms." People with mild illness have reported months-long health issues, and we don't know yet if, when, or how people will recover fully. Meanwhile, immune system responses to the COVID vaccines can make people feel ill for a short time, and a very small number of people have experienced allergic reactions to the mRNA shots, but researchers have identified no patterns of long-term health issues with the vaccines at this point, which leads us to the second point.

2. This pause means that safety monitoring is working exactly like it's supposed to.

The FDA and CDC had to weigh the risk that pausing the J & J vaccine may cause vaccine hesitancy, but went with the pause recommendation anyway. Some people have expressed frustration with this choice, as the miniscule risk of blood clotting issue does not mathematically outweigh the risk of people not getting vaccinated, but ultimately people need to be confident that the process is thorough and transparent.

This is exactly what the safety monitoring of the vaccine rollouts is supposed to do—identify any potential risks and review them as they come up. These blood clot issues are so rare that there was no way for them to have shown up in the clinical trials, as that would have required a sample size of millions of people.

Messaging here is vital, of course. People need to know that the issues FDA and CDC are reviewing are extremely rare, that a pause is not a permanent halt, and that the reason they are pausing is because of the 6.8 million doses administered so far, these 6 very specific, very rare blood clot incidences are the only potential red flags they've seen.

That is impressive. And as far as hesitancy about vaccines goes, people also need to know that the J & J vaccine is a different kind of vaccine than the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. The J & J pause has zero bearing on the other two.

In addition, a pause on the J & J vaccine is not going to have a humongous impact on our country's vaccination numbers, since it only makes up about 5% of our total vaccine shot numbers. More than 100 million doses of Modern and Pfizer have been administered, with only a minuscule number of severe allergy reactions.

Statistically, the vaccines—even the J & J, despite the pause for review—are on very solid safety ground. The problem is how humans process and calculate statistical risk. (Basically, we're really bad at it.)

For some people, the idea of putting something into our bodies on purpose (a vaccine) feels riskier than taking a chance with getting the virus and the chance of having problems with it. But that's risk assessment based on feeling, not fact. People make most of their decisions based on emotion over reason, even if they think they don't.

So even though the J & J pause is actually a good thing, as it shows that the people in charge are monitoring things closely and taking any potential risks seriously no matter how small, there's a good chance that this news will lower people's confidence in the vaccines.

The key thing to remember is that nothing is 100% safe. But there is zero doubt that, overall, the vaccines are a far safer bet than COVID.

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Hundreds of doctors have asked the FDA not to rush—or politicize—a coronavirus vaccine

Photo by CDC on Unsplash, Andy Slavitt/Twitter

"There's only one thing more dangerous than a bad virus, and that's a bad vaccine," Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO's health emergencies programme, said in March. "We have to be very, very, very careful in developing any product that we're going to inject into potentially most of the world population."

Since the beginning of the pandemic, experts have said that developing a vaccine and getting it through the necessary safety and efficacy protocols would take, at minimum, 12 to 18 months. Yet here we are, 7 months in, and Vladimir Putin has just announced that Russia has already approved a vaccine for the coronavirus.

According to the BBC, there are more than 100 vaccines in various stages of development and testing. Six of those have reached phase 3 trials, involving more widespread testing in humans. Russia's vaccine is not among those six.

Meanwhile, hundreds of U.S. doctors have signed a letter urging the FDA not to rush or politicize vaccine trials.

"We are experts in virology, epidemiology, vaccinology, infectious disease, clinical care and public health," the letter opens, before declaring the "urgent" need for a COVID-19 vaccine. "We are committed to promoting the broad uptake of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines. The need is urgent but all vaccines must be rigorously studied to determine whether their benefits exceed their risks."

The letter expresses concern that public confidence in a vaccine will be greatly undermined by rushing the process, and that thorough safety trials must be followed through in order for doctors themselves to confidently recommend and administer one.

For those reasons, the doctors urged transparency in the process of trialing and documenting any potential vaccines:

"The foundation of public confidence in vaccine safety has long been, and must remain, the well-established and trusted FDA approval procedures. The public is typically and rightly able to comment on vaccine approval. It is important that investigators share Phase 3 trial design details. For example, Data Safety Monitoring Boards apply predetermined 'stopping rules' to decide whether a study should be terminated early based on the detection of early benefits, the likelihood of no benefit, or the emergence of serious safety problems. These stopping rules should be publicly available. There must also be continuous monitoring for unexpected severe side effects that might only become apparent after large numbers of people are vaccinated."

Finally, they drove home the point that doctors can only recommend a vaccine if they believe it is safe, and that evaluating safety can only be done with a transparent process unmarred by politics.

"We can only perform as advocates if we ourselves are persuaded that the vaccine(s) truly is safe and effective. We must be able to explain to the public what we know and what we don't know about these vaccines. For that to happen, we must be able to witness a transparent and rigorous FDA approval process that is devoid of political considerations."

Russia's announcement could very well push vaccine makers and the government to rush the development and trialing process, which would be a mistake. Vaccine development usually takes years, not months, and skipping safety steps in the name of competition or expediency could make public health problems worse, not better.

As always, government needs to listen to the health experts on this front. We need a vaccine as soon as possible, but we also need to make sure we utilize the knowledge and processes that will ensure any vaccine will be safe to administer, no matter which company or country gets there first.

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