It’s not too late for Senate Republicans to begin correcting the worst mistake they’ve made this year: confirming Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services.

In just a few months, Kennedy has helped bring a pox upon the country — and until Republicans get serious about holding him accountable, more Americans will die, and the president’s legacy on health and safety will be badly tarnished.

Kennedy, who has no training in medicine or health, has long been the nation’s foremost peddler of junk science and the crackpot conspiracy theories that flow from it. The greatest danger in elevating him to HHS secretary was always that he would use his position to undermine public confidence in vaccines, which would lead to needless suffering and even death. And so it has come to pass.

In 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared that measles had been effectively eliminated in the U.S., thanks to vaccine rates that hovered around 95%, the level needed for herd immunity. Now, in no small part because of the doubt Kennedy has been sowing about the safety of vaccines, the U.S. is in the midst of what is shaping up to be the worst measles outbreak since the early 1990s.

Before this year, no one in the U.S. had died from measles in a decade. This year, three people have died, two of them children. Yet Kennedy downplayed the outbreak, saying it was “not unusual.”

In the aftermath of the deaths, he did not use his position to urge parents to vaccinate their children, or warn of the dangers of failing to do so, or declare vaccines safe, or allay misplaced concerns about them. Instead, he did what he has been doing for decades: He presented the safety and efficacy of vaccines as an open question for individuals to decide. Not surprisingly, the outbreak continued — and has worsened.

Some 1,300 cases of measles have now been reported this year, with children accounting for two-thirds of them. More than 160 people have been hospitalized — and survival does not guarantee a full recovery. Measles can lead to pneumonia and worse, including brain swelling and permanent disability.

Measles is hardly the only infectious disease that could make a comeback under Kennedy, and his assault on lifesaving vaccines has stretched well beyond his use of the bully pulpit. In addition to firing scientists and cutting research across a variety of agencies, he recently fired all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, which recommends the vaccines Americans should get. In their place, he appointed a variety of people without significant expertise in immunology, including those in the anti-vaccine movement — which promises to make the unfolding disaster even worse.

The chair of the Senate health committee, Bill Cassidy, voted to confirm Kennedy at least in part because Kennedy committed himself — or so Cassidy thought — to maintaining the vaccination panel “without changes.” So much for that.

Cassidy might have a right to feel burned if he hadn’t been so myopic. During the confirmation hearing, he asked a question that summed up the situation clearly. “Does a 70-year-old man,” Cassidy said, “who has spent decades criticizing vaccines, and who’s financially vested in finding fault with vaccines — can he change his attitudes and approach now that he’ll have the most important position influencing vaccine policy in the United States?”

The answer was always obvious. Kennedy never gave any indication that he would be changing his stripes, but Cassidy and his colleagues deceived themselves into thinking otherwise — or, worse, they knew better and simply buckled to political pressure, placing their own political careers above the lives of their constituents. Only one Republican, Mitch McConnell, voted against confirmation. McConnell, who contracted polio as a child before the vaccine was discovered, understood what a dangerous game his colleagues were playing.

Senate Republicans have made this mess, and they need to clean it up. They have a constitutional responsibility to conduct oversight of Kennedy, and they have a moral responsibility to do everything possible to constrain Kennedy’s deadly actions — or force him out. That should include demanding that the White House pressure Kennedy to start promoting faith in vaccines, including by appointing more qualified people to the vaccine panel — or fire him.

If they won’t do it to save lives, they should do it to save their own skin. Democrats could hardly dream up a better line of attack than the one Kennedy is giving them, by turning the GOP into the party of measles — the Grand Old Pestilence. That’s not going to play well with parents.

Making America healthy again starts with bringing Kennedy to heel — or sending him packing. Until Senate Republicans summon the courage to do that, more Americans will get severely sick and die — and Republicans will suffer the backlash at the polls.

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Michael R. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, and the founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies.

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