RFK Jr. and the great discrediting of HHS
Anti-vax nonsense is the new official line.
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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. routinely vows to “Make America Healthy Again.” But that talking point is aging about as poorly as his boss’s promises to lower prices and end the war in Ukraine.
A measles outbreak is spreading in Texas, with more than 540 active cases reported across 22 counties. Two children have died, and both were unvaccinated. That’s apparently what it took for RFK Jr. to finally encourage vaccination — sort of.
"The federal government's position, my position, is that people should get the measles vaccine," he said last week during a CBS News interview. But he then immediately undercut himself by adding, "the government should not be mandating those."
RFK Jr.’s self-defeating rhetoric about vaccines was also on display on Fox News last Friday, when he said “we need to do better at treating kids who have the disease, and not just saying the only answer is vaccination.”
Vaccine mandates are a critical public health tool, perhaps the most effective method to ensure herd immunity. But when enough people refuse vaccination for a disease, that lessens a community’s overall immunity and makes it easier for it to spread. That’s especially dangerous with respect to measles, a highly contagious airborne illness that a single person can spread to almost 10 people who are nearby and unprotected.
Under RFK Jr.’s leadership, the National Institutes of Health has terminated grants that would study and ideally overcome vaccine hesitancy. Most alarmingly, NIH cancelled programs to research new vaccines and treatments ahead of future pandemics.
This is the global health equivalent to George W. Bush shutting down any serious counterterrorism measures just a few years after 9/11. Far from making the country “healthy again,” RFK Jr. is sabotaging the very infrastructure that keeps Americans safe from preventable illness and prepares us for new diseases. It’s not hyperbole to state that millions of people could die as a result.
Science doesn’t work like this
As the measles outbreak grew in Texas, RFK Jr. announced during a cabinet meeting last Thursday that HHS would conduct a "massive testing and research effort" and “by September we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we will be able to eliminate those exposures.”
Trump responded by saying, “There’s got to be something artificial out there that’s doing this. If you can come up with that answer, where you stop taking something, eating something, or maybe it’s a shot. But something’s causing it.”
It’s not hard to see where this is headed.
RFK Jr. and Trump have both claimed without a shred of real evidence that vaccines cause autism, cases of which have risen in recent years due to increased awareness and improvements in diagnosis. Nonsense once promoted by B-list celebrities like Jenny McCarthy is now seriously discussed by the HHS secretary and US president. Idiocracy was not supposed to be a documentary.
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Decades of research has shown no link between vaccines, particularly for measles, and autism, a developmental disorder. Studies have shown that genes play a major role in autism but no single environmental factor is responsible. RFK Jr., however, claims the exact opposite.
RFK Jr. announced at the cabinet meeting that HHS will release the “cause” for autism by September, like a new Marvel movie or iPhone. This makes a mockery of how credible science actually works. Like any zealot, he’s not interested in facts, research, or data at tension with his dogmatic beliefs. Instead, he proceeds from those beliefs and will elevate any quack studies or garbage science that “proves” what he already considers true.
Although a lifelong Democrat until 2023, Kennedy has long been an anti-science crank steeped in a conspiratorial worldview. He’s endorsed unproven claims about fluoride causing ADHD, hypothyroidism, and lowering IQ. He just ordered the CDC to end its fluoridation recommendation for drinking water. He wants to roll back regulations on raw milk, even though its consumption is far riskier than water with trace amounts of fluoride.
Kennedy ran for president as a Democrat before launching an independent campaign when it became clear he couldn’t win the primary. His August endorsement of Trump — timed just after Kamala Harris officially became the Democratic nominee — might’ve shocked some Democrats, but his unhinged public health views have long been on the same page as Trump’s.
Even prior to running for president, Trump promoted the debunked conspiracy theory linking vaccination with autism. He posted on Twitter in March 2014, “Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn’t feel good and changes — AUTISM. Many such cases.”
Six years later, the New York Times spun Trump as a changed man in an article headlined, “President Trump on Vaccines: From Skeptic to Cheerleader.” But “skeptic” was far too generous. Whatever interest Trump had in promoting covid vaccines ended as soon as he left office and developed a political interest in immiserating America.
Hucksterism as policy
As RFK Jr. turns HHS into a vehicle to spread deadly misinformation, it’s worth remembering that Republicans own this. He was confirmed in a party-line vote, with no support from members of his former party, and just one Republican voting no — Mitch McConnell, a polio survivor who said “I will not condone the re-litigation of proven cures, and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles.”
Republicans Thom Tillis, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and actual doctor Bill Cassidy could have joined McConnell and blocked RFK Jr.’s confirmation, but they all caved. Cassidy justified his cowardice with a self-serving speech on the Senate floor where he said, “Vaccines save lives. They are safe. They do not cause autism” — true but meaningless drivel given the circumstances.
What happens when America faces another public health threat like covid? Though Trump himself was a leading purveyor of misinformation during the pandemic, he was helped along by government experts and serious medical professionals who mostly managed to inform the public in spite of him.
Now, Trump’s anti-science hucksterism is policy. The constraints are gone, and more kids will die because of it.
That’s it for today
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As more and more cases of measles are confirmed, the reality that this extremely contagious disease, once effectively managed with vaccinations, could well become wide spread because of the increasing numbers of vaccine deniers is a travesty that will be owned by those individuals who spew misinformation while having no knowledge or background to support their claims. Neither RFK nor Trump are scientists or doctors, have no education in this field, and not only refuse to listen to the qualified experts but have gutted the agency that protected us. They own this disaster and the deaths it is causing.
Since the Republicans own disinformation, living in a lawless land with a lawless president who is using our tax dollars to pay for concentration camps in El Salvador which he is not only putting legal immigrants into, but wants to put US citizens into as well. Death camps. So, given this, perhaps some of our protests should be against the Republicans in Congress who enable Trump, Musk and all of the other madmen and madwomen surrounding Madman Trump to do what they are doing.
Parents should consider moving with their children of vaccine needing age to other countries to raise while Trump is in power, or anyone like him. Or parens should have a plan of where to get them vaccinated outside of the USA.
I realize that it is difficult to find jobs, but not impossible. In countries that have health insurance for everyone, one does not need to get a job with health insurance, and can free lance. If you are a female of child bearing years you are in danger in the US, as the Christian National theocratic walls are starting to close in. Other vulnerable groups should consider this too.
Foreign students should be transferring out.
https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/foreign-students-at-a-us-university?r=f0qfn
I am a mom whose daughter is attending a university abroad. Here is some of what we learned from the process. My daughter is studying in Germany, which is tuition free for anyone who can get in.
https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/study-abroad?r=f0qfn
If you know any foreign graduate students, let them know the University of British Columbia is taking US graduate students who apply by April 18. This is them reopening their admissions for 4 days.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-university-us-applications-1.7508850
The moment I read the first chapter of Project 2025 that my book club read, which was the Dept. of Education, I realized it was a formula for turning the US into a third world country. I taught in a third world country, at an international school, so I have a good idea of what that looks like. All of the immigrants that came to the US to get away from third world countries, would do well to start looking elsewhere.
https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/a-plan-b-for-catastrophe?r=f0qfn