Hear me out: stop sanewashing RFK immediately
By Why does virtually every major media outlet feel compelled to publish one of these monuments to credulous idiocy:
The “the party that has provided healthcare to tens of millions of people and the party that wants to take healthcare away from tens of millions of people to pay for an upper-class tax cut are the same on healthcare” is a perfect touch. But Jesus Christ enough. Anti-vaxx conspiracy theorists generally couch their deadly claims in anodyne-sounding complaints about the healthcare system, Big Pharma, etc. It means less than nothing. “He’s anti-vaxx, but…” no stop right there.
Let’s be completely clear about the loathsome crackpot all these pundits are apologizing for:
Vaccines are the most rigorously studied health interventions in the history of the world. Over the past 50 years, 13 childhood vaccines have together saved 154 million lives. One hundred and fifty-four million! Vaccines eliminated smallpox. Smallpox killed 500 million people!
The most dangerous thing Donald Trump is poised to do in his second administration—unless he barges into a nuclear war, which there is a nonzero chance of him doing—is elevate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a messianic, conspiracy-theorist, anti-vaccine menace to society. If Kennedy stands for confirmation as secretary of Health and Human Services, as Trump has announced, we should all march on the Capitol with tetanus-tipped pitchforks (metaphorically, of course) to protect global health and prevent us from going back a hundred years in health time.
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There are plenty of anti-vaccine grifters out there, people who make a lot of money selling books or vitamins, but nobody has spread misinformation more effectively than Kennedy, because people take his name seriously. He gets invited to give lectures. He has always gotten much more media coverage than a crank should. The majority of anti-vaccine ads on Facebook a few years ago (before the platform changed its ad policy) were paid for by an organization Kennedy ran and one other anti-vax group. So-called vaccine skepticism isn’t a grassroots movement of concerned parents who just want to do right by their kids. It’s a well-funded conspiracy theory.
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He pulled out of the race, endorsed Trump, and as spoils for that endorsement is now nominated to oversee HHS, which includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, Medicare, Medicaid, and basically all federal health infrastructure and medical research funding. It’s a fucking catastrophe.
Kennedy can’t ban vaccines, but he can make it harder to get them. Even if you and yours are vaccinated, most vaccines don’t provide perfect immunity, so you are at risk as diseases circulate among unvaccinated people. (This would be a good time to get boosters for measles and pertussis.) He has spoken out against fluoride, and for unpasteurized milk. Congratulations—thanks to advancements in milk hygiene, you have not died from salmonella. And, again, while he can’t ban pasteurization, he can potentially weaken FDA oversight of raw milk, make it easier for people to buy it and serve it to their children, and interfere with the agency’s messaging about whether it’s safe to drink (it’s not).
It’s bad! But it could get even worse. The H5N1 bird flu is now circulating in poultry, cows, and pigs. It has infected people. There is no better place for a virus to mix-and-match and become more virulent than in a pig farm. Pigs are considered “mixing vessels” for pathogens, and it’s possible that the last horrible pandemic—the 1918 flu—passed through pigs on the way to people. That pandemic killed 50 million people. If H5N1 starts spreading easily among people, we’re going to need a lot of vaccines, clear public health messages, and federal experts who aren’t being contradicted, let alone actively hamstrung at their place of employment, by an anti-scientific crank.
Nothing good will come from this. Advocating for an HHS appointment who has gotten people killed and would be in a position to get countless more people killed if he gets confirmed because you’re still in thrall to the Kennedy name in 2024 is pathetic and disgraceful, and that goes for the editors who publish these too.
Meanwhile, in less than a year of being full MAGA Bill Ackman’s mind has continued to turn into rancid butterscotch pudding:
Bill Ackman says, "I don't believe RFK Jr is an antivaxxer," then quotes RFK Jr. saying vaccines cause ADHD, asthma, and diabetes. pic.twitter.com/vMoJvnUTTj— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) November 23, 2024