After the pandemic, PBS Newshour had this to say about RFK Jr.:

“Post-pandemic, Kennedy has continued to criticize the recommended vaccine schedule for children that is put out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as adult COVID and flu vaccines.”

At the same time he vociferously denied he was anti-vax when he was trying to get approved by the Senate for the position of Secretary of Health, arguably the most important position in government in relation to public health.

 Here is Kennedy’s exact statement which was shown on PBS News Hour:

Question:

 

Can you name any vaccines that you think are good?

 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Health and Human Services Secretary Nominee:

 

I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably solve — averting more problems than they’re causing. There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.

Kennedy has claimed he is not anti-vax but that seems about as clearly anti-vax as you can get. And Trump appointed him to be his Secretary of Health, nonetheless.

Dr. Michael Osterholm put it very clearly:

“Let’s be really clear about the fact he is an anti-vaccine messenger, and he has continued to be, and we have many, many examples of that.

The second thing is, is that, in this country, and, for that matter, throughout the world, when vaccines are licensed and approved, all the safety data that goes into licensing that vaccine is made public, nothing hidden in a vault somewhere that, if it were just opened up, the public would now have sunshine on a vaccine issue they didn’t have before.

Dr. Osterholm also warned that by appointing R.F.K. to such a prestigious position, it will inevitably weaken the vaccine policy of the government and limit uptake of vaccines across the country,

“by lending a veneer of legitimacy to his many disproven claims, allowing him to influence the licensing of new vaccines, and by firing many of the public health experts at HHS.”

And as we have seen by the Measles outbreaks in the US and Canada, this is exactly what happened. Unfortunately, Dr. Osterholm was proven right. He then ominously concluded,

“As we have more and more infections occur as a result of fewer and fewer people being vaccinated, within literally a few years, we could be back into a period not that dissimilar to what we had happening in the early 1900s, before vaccines. That’s hard for people to imagine.”

It may be hard to imagine, but that is precisely where we now are. Thanks to Trump and Kennedy and others, we have regressed more than 100 years.

Recently, Kennedy fired all 17 physicians on his Vaccine Advisory Panel. He didn’t like the advice he got from any of them!  Some of the physicians he has replaced them with have been far from conventional.  Does Kennedy know what he is doing? There is no evidence that he does.  Frankly, to me, the fact that he was appointed by Trump makes me think he does not. It would be an unusual Trump appointment if he did. I hope I am wrong. These positions are two important to get it wrong.