ANTI-VACCINE THREAT Anti-Vaccine Advocates Battle Over Narrative in West Texas, Downplaying Role of Measles in Deaths
After Daisy Hildebrand died of measles, her death was made public first by Dr. Robert Malone, a vaccine skeptic who blamed the hospital for fumbling her care. Daisy’s father told The Texas Tribune he never to spoke to Malone.
When Daisy Hildebrand became the second Texas child to die of measles on April 3, her physicians reported – per the state health code – the 8-year-old’s death to local officials in Lubbock where she died and in tiny Gaines County where the girl lived.
In deference to the girl’s family, who planned to bury her the following Sunday, officials determined that sharing the news with the public could wait until the following week. “There’s a protocol that is generally followed,” said Zach Holbrooks, the executive director of the South Plains Public Health District, which covers four counties, including Gaines. “We put information out in a measured, careful manner.”
But Holbrooks’ plans were dashed when the day before Daisy’s funeral, communication of her death was leaked by private channels and commandeered by a vocal, growing movement critical of vaccines. Instead of a clinical state or hospital press release, news of Daisy’s death came from the highly-charged writings of vaccine critic Dr. Robert Malone, a physician once labeled by The New York Times as a “Covid misinformation star.”
“Breaking news: Another Texas child dies a tragic death after recovering from measles,” Malone wrote in a Saturday evening post on X. The Virginia doctor directed his 1.3 million followers to a 930-word substack essay where he accuses the University Medical Center in Lubbock of mismanaging Daisy’s case and purports that she died not from measles, but from sepsis after having been ill from mononucleosis and tonsillitis. She had already recovered from measles, Malone wrote.
That announcement — and the flurry of media inquiries that came next — perplexed community health leaders who spent the weekend stumbling through a communications plan, in which they reiterated that the child had died of measles pulmonary failure.
More importantly, the revelation circumvented the wishes of the people most important in the case, Daisy’s family. Peter Hildebrand, Daisy’s father, told The Texas Tribune on Tuesday he did not know how his daughter’s death information was made public.
“I have never even heard that name before,” Hildebrand said, referring to Malone. “So he’s the reason I was sitting there [at my daughter’s funeral], having to fight media off of the church?”
