It is bad when reality does not validate my personal biases · ↗ www.ctvnews.ca

World Health Organization data show that Canada had about four times as many reported measles cases per capita as the United States in 2026 through July 18.

This is particularly annoying because American federal health policy is currently being run by the world’s most prominent antivaxxer, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

There are many reasons not to read too much into this unfavourable comparison. Canada’s major measles outbreak began in October 2024, predating Kennedy’s tenure, measles outbreaks are highly clustered, and cases are concentrated in communities that have long been undervaccinated. In short, there’s a lot of (bad) luck involved. None of this lets Canada off the hook for what is obviously a very serious public health failure.

One might try to explain this disparity by pointing toward differences in case ascertainment between the two countries. But this would largely be cope in a world where frontline American health providers and public health officials more or less continue to do their jobs, whichever way the federal policy winds are blowing.

Still, if the numbers were reversed, I’d probably count this comparison against Kennedy. So I suppose I have to admit that, for now, the comparison cuts in his favour. But let me be clear: you do not, under any circumstances, “gotta hand it to RFK Jr.”

As an aside, the abysmal title of the original Canadian Press article was “Canada has half as many measles cases as U.S.: WHO data”; CTV News wisely chose to change it to something less immediately misleading.