Megan Redshaw is back.
If you don’t know Megan, she is an anti-vaccine influencer who is a lawyer and became a Naturopath and certified Natural Health Educator.
And technically she is not back.
Why You Shouldn’t Listen to Megan Redshaw
She never really left.
In 2014, she posted a very similar article with the title, “This Mama Isn’t Scared of the Shmeasle Measles.” And yes, that was a big year for measles, the most since 1994, at least until we passed it in 2019. And it was soon followed by a measles death, a woman in Washington.
And she seems to have just been moving around since then, finding a new home with many other anti-vaccine influencers on Substack.
But her MO is the same as she is still peddling propaganda about vaccines and trying to minimize the dangers of vaccine preventable diseases.
Don’t believe me?
Let’s take a look at one of her recent posts, “Why You Shouldn’t Be Scared of Measles.”
A post that starts out claiming that mainstream media “has been heavily funded by the government through USAID.”
Why?
To “peddle propaganda” about vaccines so that Pharma can make money, of course!
Her source?
A tweet about USAID giving money to the Internews, a media support nonprofit whose projects have included:
- providing health information after a hurricane swept through Haiti to help prevent a cholera epidemic
- journalist training in Kenya to help them report on maternal health and the wellbeing of babies
- journalist training in Myanmar to help reduce HIV stigma
Internews also helped with projects in Moldova, Liberia, Kyrgyzstan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, and the Maldives.
They do not work with the mainstream media!
Megan Redshaw on Unknown Vaccination Status
What else does Megan Redshaw get wrong?
She claims that there is a “false narrative that outbreaks are driven solely by the unvaccinated!”
This is despite the easy to discover fact that in measles outbreaks from January 1, 2020 to March 28, 2024 in the United States:
- 68% of patients were unvaccinated
- only 9% had received one or more MMR vaccines
- during the central Ohio outbreak in 2022: 94% of measles patients were unvaccinated
- “most imported measles cases occurred among unvaccinated U.S. residents”
So just like in previous years, measles outbreaks are indeed driven by the unvaccinated!
What about the group of folks with an unknown vaccination status? Just know that it doesn’t mean that they were vaccinated!
“Regarding vaccination status, most of the observed measles cases (1828, 81.1%) were unvaccinated. Only 9.8% (220 cases) had received one measles vaccine dose prior to the outbreak, and 3.9% (89 cases) have received two prior measles vaccine doses. In 117 cases (5.2%), vaccination status could not be validated against a vaccination record or via the national immunization registry.”
Case Ascertainment of Measles during a Large Outbreak—Laboratory Compared to Epidemiological Confirmation
In fact, if you look at large outbreaks in countries with a national immunization registry, we find that very few of the cases are fully vaccinated.
Megan Redshaw on Measles Hospitalizations
Next, Megan Redshaw starts talking about patients who were hospitalized with measles.
She makes a bold claim that of 16 patients in the Texas outbreak, “nearly half were fully vaccinated.”
Of course, that’s not true. All of the people who required hospitalization were unvaccinated, as was the child who died.
What about their underlying health conditions?
This is where you start to see anti-vaccine influencers pivot!
They want you to think that measles is mild, which is hard to do when you know kids are getting hospitalized and dying. So what do they do? They try and make you believe that the only reason these kids are getting hospitalized and dying is because they have some kind of serious underlying health condition.
Don’t believe them!
While measles is certainly even more deadly if you have any type of chronic disease, especially if you are immunosuppressed, most folks who end up with serious complications or die are otherwise healthy.
Megan Redshaw on Measles Alarmism
And you certainly shouldn’t believe what Megan Redhsaw has to say about the timing of “measles alarmism.”
Why is everyone talking about measles?
Texas is in the middle of their largest measles outbreak in over thirty years!
An outbreak in which an unvaccinated child has died!
An outbreak that accompanies a rise is vaccine hesitancy and a rise in global measles rates.
All of which is accompanied by a take over of our public health agencies by folks who are clearly anti-vaccine.
We are also being hit with a rise in popularity of anti-vaccine influencers who push misinformation and propaganda that scare parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids.
Vaccine Strains of Measles
Just like this misinformation about vaccine-derived strains and vaccine-induced measles!
In addition to being wrong about the source of the Texas outbreak, let’s talk about another inconvenient little detail. When folks get a fever and rash after their dose of MMR, which is not rare, it does not mean that they have measles and they are not contagious. This is not vaccine-induced measles! It is simply a delayed immune response to the vaccine.
Shedding
So why do they find shedding of vaccine virus in children after they get the vaccine? It is a live virus vaccine! That doesn’t mean that anyone is going to get measles because of this type of shedding, after all, the virus is attentuated or weakened. Think about it, if the folks who get the vaccine don’t get measles, why would you get measles from shedding! And why do we see more measles as vaccination rates drop? If vaccine-induced measles was really a thing, wouldn’t we see more measles when more people were getting vaccinated?
“Measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination is a critical component of measles outbreak responses. But since this vaccine contains live, weakened viruses, viral genetic material (RNA) can be “shed” into the body, making case classification difficult. Recently immunized individuals may have side effects from the vaccine that look like symptoms of wild-type infection, as well as detectable levels of measles vaccine RNA. It may be especially challenging to differentiate true measles cases from cases of recent vaccination in individuals with overlapping respiratory symptoms from another viral illness.”
Differentiating True Measles Cases From Vaccine Shedding
Megan Redshaw actually links to the above article, but conveniently leaves out all of the parts that describe how they are not talking about vaccine induced measles!
And next, when describing an outbreak in a “highly vaccinated population,” she conveniently leaves out that the study was from 1987, before we routinely gave a second dose of MMR.
But even considering that none of the students were fully vaccinated by today’s standards, with two doses of MMR, in that outbreak, the study found that “persons who were unimmunized or immunized at less than 12 months of age had substantially higher attack rates compared to those immunized on or after 12 months of age.”
Megan Redshaw on Mild Measles
After debunking each and every one of her claims about the MMR vaccine, let’s move on to what Megan Redshaw has to say about measles itself.
Let’s see what Megan Redshaw is not telling you about measles.
Kids and adults with measles often have:
- high fever, to 105 degrees, which is hard to control
- malaise
- decreased appetite
- irritability
- red, watery eyes with photophobia (dislike of bright light)
- cough, runny nose, and sore throat
- a rash
And these symptoms are rarely mild!
Megan Redshaw is also conveniently leaving out the complications of measles, which can include pneumonia, seizures, myocarditis, encephalitis, SSPE, and death!
After having measles, folks also have lower immunity to most other infections!
Is Megan Redshaw going to update her post now that a child has died in the Texas measles outbreak?
And how about this analogy about falls and stairs…
Does she always avoid using hand rails because she isn’t concerned about falling on the stairs?
What about the idea that measles is only deadly if you are severely malnourished or vitamin A deficient?
That’s one of those things that has a kernel of truth in it.
Measles is even deadlier if you are severely malnourished or are vitamin A deficient! In fact, in some outbreaks, up to 18% of those who get sick die! That’s not the case in developed countries though, where we don’t see kids who are severely malnourished or vitamin A deficient, and deaths approach the more routine 1 to 3 in 1,000 cases.
Measles vs the MMR Vaccine
Next, Megan Redshaw moves on to the risks of measles vs the risks of the MMR vaccine. But she starts by completely mischaracterizing the benefits of the MMR vaccine – long term protection against measles, mumps, and rubella.
What about the idea that having measles is good for your immune system?
“Measles virus is especially dangerous because it has the ability to destroy what’s been earned: immune memory from previous infections.”
Measles and Immune Amnesia
Not only is having measles not good for your immune system, it can actually cause something called immune amnesia! After having measles, your immune system forgets what it learned from fighting previous infections, so is once again susceptible to those bacteria and viruses.
Or the idea that having measles can protect you from cancer?
“As mentioned in both articles, the researchers were not infecting people with the naturally occurring measles virus to fight cancer. They were using a modified virus that is weakened, and similar to the measles vaccine virus. In other words, they weren’t injecting patients with the measles; they were giving them a big dose of the vaccine.”
Darla Shine’s Measles Misinformation
That’s not true either.
Megan Redshaw ends her post by talking about the risks of the MMR vaccine, which she greatly overstates, mostly pushing statistics from VAERS, and a discussion of MMR vaccine ingredients.
“You’re literally injecting the DNA of an aborted baby into yourself or your child.”
Why You Shouldn’t Be Scared of Measles – Megan Redshaw
Literally? This is not even true in a figurative sense.
While it is true that the MMR vaccine is made with fetal embryo fibroblast cells from cell lines that were derived (they can replicate infinitely) from an electively terminated pregnancy (abortions) in the 1960s, that doesn’t mean that you are injecting DNA into yourself or your child when you get a vaccine. For one thing, the cells used today are descendant cells, not the original cells. Plus, they are removed from the final vaccine!
I think she hit just about every anti-vaccine talking point in her post, didn’t she?
What’s the real truth?
Measles doesn’t have to be a death sentence.
Get vaccinated and protected and stop listening to and spreading this kind of anti-vaccine propaganda.
More on Megan Redshaw
- Measles Myths We Are Seeing in the Texas Outbreak
- Do More Vaccinated or Unvaccinated Kids Get Sick in Outbreaks?
- Remembering the Measles Epidemics of the 1990s
- Vaccinated vs Unvaccinated – Measles Outbreak Edition
- Minimizing the Death of a Child With Measles
- This Papa is not scared of the measles vaccine
- How “they” view “us”: A woman dies of measles, and antivaccinationists think it’s a conspiracy
- Immune amnesia: Another reason why measles is a serious illness
- Measles and Immune Amnesia
- Internews Annual Report & Consolidated Financial Statements
- MMWR – Measles — United States, January 1, 2020–March 28, 2024
- Case Ascertainment of Measles during a Large Outbreak—Laboratory Compared to Epidemiological Confirmation
- Child in West Texas is first US measles death in a decade
- Shedding of measles vaccine RNA in children after receiving measles, mumps and rubella vaccination
- Measles outbreak in a vaccinated school population: epidemiology, chains of transmission and the role of vaccine failures.
- Epidemiology of measles in Southwest Nigeria: an analysis of measles case-based surveillance data from 2007 to 2012
- Preventing deaths isn’t the sole benefit of COVID-19 vaccination, contrary to Epoch Times article
Last Updated on March 3, 2025
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