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Too Little, Too Late: RFK Jr. Suddenly Is Promoting Measles Vaccination

In the wake of the growing measles outbreak in Texas, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. published an op-ed on Fox News’ website over the weekend, urging Americans to … get vaccinated.

With the subhead “MMR vaccine is crucial to avoiding potentially deadly disease,” the infamous anti-vaxxer wrote, “Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons.”

Texas Health and Human Services first reported the outbreak in mid-January. The disease rapidly spread, reaching nearly 150 confirmed cases. The majority (if not almost all) of those cases are among children who have not received the MMR vaccine. Texas officials say the outbreak is the worst in almost three decades.

Last week, during Donald Trump’s bizarre Cabinet meeting, Kennedy glibly dismissed a measles-related death of a school-aged child as “not unusual.” It was the first measles fatality recorded in the U.S. in over a decade.

Kennedy has spent much of his career promoting anti-vaccine misinformation, notably amplifying debunked bad science connecting the MMR vaccine to autism rates in children. Kennedy, along with others in the anti-vaxx movement have contributed to declining vaccination rates, resulting in outbreaks like the one in Texas.

The Texas outbreak, which began in Gaines County and has now spread to eight more counties, had alarmingly low vaccination rates among its cases of school-aged children. This is not just by chance; It has been fomented by Mr. Measles and his anti-science allies for decades.

At the same time, the Children's Health Defense, the organization Kennedy founded and previously chaired, continues to promote false information about the Texas outbreak. On February 20, its official social media account blamed the outbreak on the MMR vaccine itself. Their claims have the same amount of evidence they have always had—zero.

Kennedy can write as many toothless op-eds as he likes, but as cases pile up Kennedy’s first order of business at the HHS was to gut the agency tasked with educating the public and preventing outbreaks like this one. Kennedy even abruptly canceled the FDA’s planned meeting for next flu season and paused multimillion-dollar efforts to develop a new COVID-19 vaccine to deal with new strains.

With the Trump administration’s history of mismanaging public health, and Elon Musk’s focus on destroying our government agencies, the future is only going to get more dangerous for Americans.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

With Trump And RFK Jr., America Faces A Deadly Outbreak Of Disease And Lies

In case you wondered about those empty desks around you at work or why your regular checkout person at the supermarket is missing, we're going through the worst flu season in 15 years, according to the Associated Press, NPR, the National Geographic, and NBC News. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) -- yes, amazingly, their doors are still open -- estimates that as many as 19,000 have died from the flu this season, with 86 of that number being children. There have been at least 900,000 hospitalizations from the flu. Both flu figures have been worse than COVID over this winter.

With flu hospitalizations and deaths at record numbers, it's reasonable to ask what's being done about it other than checking people into emergency rooms and preparing bodies for burial. You could find your answer yesterday in the White House, where Donald “I like my numbers low” Trump held his first cabinet meeting. Remember that one from the early days of COVID?

A few cases had been logged on the West Coast, most of them coming in on flights from China, when it was reported that the deadly virus had broken out on a cruise ship. The number of cases that had been listed so far was something like 15, so Trump ordered the cruise ship to be held at the dock with nobody allowed to debark. “I like my numbers low,” Trump announced, as if keeping people from crossing a gangplank meant that they didn't have to be counted.

A reporter asked the new Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., about the outbreak of measles in western Texas, entirely among unvaccinated children and adults. Kennedy proceeded to tell a string of lies about the number of cases, explaining away hospitalizations for reasons of quarantine, and telling an outright lie about the number who have been hospitalized.

The question could have been about the recent outbreak in severe flu cases, and similar lies would have fallen out of Kennedy's mouth. He lied to the Senate when he was up for confirmation, telling them that he would abide by CDC vaccination guidelines. Two days after he took office, Kennedy ordered that the guidelines be “investigated.”

On Thursday, Kennedy ordered the cancellation of an FDA meeting of a vaccine advisory panel, without explanation. The panel meets every January or February to recommend the flu strains that will be covered by next year's shot. Without the panel's recommendation, drug manufacturers can't start making the flu vaccine. Litjen Tan, co-chair of the flu shot advocacy group the National Adult and Influenza Immunization Summit, told NBC News that manufacturers can wait until late March for the FDA to pick the flu strain for next year, but no longer. Delaying the meeting of the vaccine advisory panel pretty much ensures that the flu vaccine for next fall’s season will not be ready by July or August as it usually is.

Convincing people to get vaccinated is always a struggle, especially after the entirely ginned-up controversy over the COVID vaccine that has infected our politics for the last four years. The number of people vaccinated for the flu this season is seven percent lower than last year, reflecting the vaccine hesitancy that has grown recently. About 45 percent of Americans received the vaccine this season.

Tracy and I were two of them, and glad I was when I was taken to the emergency room in early January suffering the worst symptoms I had ever experienced. Lying in bed at home that night, I couldn't move my arms or legs and thought that I had suffered a stroke or even something worse. It wasn't until the EMT's got here and checked me that a stroke was ruled out. I was astonished when I was got to the emergency room and had a blood test to learn that I had this year's virulent strain of the flu. During my five day stay in the hospital, I learned that people my age with pre-existing conditions were much more likely to die when they hadn't been vaccinated.

More than a hundred deaths from measles, a disease that had been all but eradicated before the anti-vaxxers started spreading their lies about the MMR vaccine. RFK Jr. and his misleadingly-named Children's Defense Fund were among the chief spreaders of the lies about the vaccine that had made measles a thing of the past until they came along. Now Kennedy has predictably started in on the flu vaccine, an entirely non-controversial yearly step taken by many to protect themselves from a seemingly ordinary disease that can kill adults and maim children with brain conditions like encephalitis.

We should have learned last time around what happens when you allow prevaricators and profiteers anywhere near the health of Americans. Remember when Trump put his nephew Jared Kushner in charge of the distribution of hospital scrubs, surgical masks, and even ventilators, and we learned that they were basically auctioning off lifesaving equipment to the highest bidder? Remember when Trump got behind Ivermectin, a veterinary heartworm drug, as a cure for COVID? Just wait. The next thing we're going to be hearing is that the CDC has ordered a study of Ivermectin to test its efficacy as a cure for measles and the flu.

People were dying in the flu ward in the hospital where I was being treated. I would say that I was lucky I wasn't one of them, but luck had nothing to do with it. I got vaccinated, and Tracy didn't listen to me when I told her that calling 911 wasn’t necessary. I spent five days in the hospital and the rest of the month of January recovering from the worst illness I've contracted since I had pneumonia at age 18. I had never been hospitalized for anything other than surgery or a lesser invasive procedure like a stent since the two weeks I spent hospitalized with pneumonia more than five decades ago.

The one good thing that came out of Elon Musk bouncing around the White House cabinet room like a crazed Muppet and RFK Jr. being hit with a question about measles is that their lies were well covered. The news was packed with stories about Kennedy’s measles lies and Musk’s lies about the firings of USAID experts on Ebola during an ongoing outbreak in Africa. It's the one advantage to rule by knaves and buffoons: They're bound to take out their dicks and stomp on them often enough that their lies get noticed.

In the meantime, people will die, just as they did when Trump was driving this country into the ditch during COVID, and now he’s got help from the odious RFK Jr.

Here we go again.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com -- from which this is reprinted with permission -- and follow him on Bluesky @lktiv.bsky.social and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV. Please consider subscribing to his Substack.

Bobby Lied: Violating Senate Commitments, RFK Jr. Seeks To Thwart Vaccines

One week after being sworn into office, President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is reportedly preparing to make significant changes to the vaccine approval process—actions that critics say violate the “commitment” he made to several Republican senators. These assurances, senators claim, were key conditions for their votes to confirm the Kennedy, an attorney known for his “role in legitimizing anti-vaccine activism.”

Secretary Kennedy “is preparing to remove members of the outside committees that advise the federal government on vaccine approvals and other key public health decisions, according to two people familiar with the planning,” Politico reported Thursday. “Kennedy plans to replace members who he perceives to have conflicts of interest, as part of a widespread effort to minimize what he’s criticized as undue industry influence over the nation’s health agencies.”

The apparent most likely target is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which “plays a key role in setting vaccine policy. Kennedy and his top aides are also scrutinizing a host of other outside panels, including those that advise the Food and Drug Administration,” according to Politico.

In anticipation of this possibility, before leaving office, President Joe Biden and his HHS Secretary, Xavier Becerra, “approved the appointments of eight new candidates” to ACIP, STAT News reported in January. The medical news outlet called it “a burst of activity within a matter of a few months that could, in theory, make it more difficult for the Trump administration to shape the panel with its own appointees.”

But experts believe that “any attempt to protect the status quo at the ACIP will prove to have been futile. People who sit on this committee have at-will appointments,” they noted.

Multiple news outlets on Thursday reported that ACIP’s first scheduled meeting of the year, slated for next week, has now been postposed, a development raising concerns.

Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a noted virologist, responded on social media to the rescheduling, remarking: “This is how RFK Jr will administratively destroy vaccination programs.”

U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy is a Louisiana Republican and a medical doctor who “co-founded the Greater Baton Rouge Community Clinic, a clinic providing free dental and health care to the working uninsured,” his Senate bio reads. “Bill also created a private-public partnership to vaccinate 36,000 greater Baton Rouge area children against Hepatitis B at no cost to the schools or parents. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Bill led a group of health care volunteers to convert an abandoned K-Mart building into an emergency health care facility, providing basic health care to hurricane evacuees.”

Politico reports that the assurances RFK Jr. “provided helped clinch his confirmation, after Senate HELP Committee Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said he received commitments that changes would not be made to the CDC’s vaccine committee.”

On February 4, standing on the floor of the Senate, Dr. Cassidy delivered a speech detailing those commitments.

“After seeing patients die from vaccine preventable diseases, I dedicated much of my time to vaccine research and immunization programs. Personally witnessing the safety monitoring, and the effectiveness of immunization. But simply, vaccines save lives,” Cassidy said (archived).

“This is the context that informed me when considering Robert F. Kennedy Jr as the nominee to be Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services,” Cassidy continued, explaining why he was choosing to vote to confirm RFK Jr. “Regarding vaccines, Mr. Kennedy has been insistent that he just wants good science and to ensure safety. But on this topic, the science is good, the science is credible. Vaccines save lives. They are safe. They do not cause autism. There are multiple studies that show this. They are a crucial part of our nation’s public health response.”

Crucially, Senator Cassidy said that Kennedy “committed that he would work within the current vaccine approval and safety monitoring systems, and not establish parallel systems. If confirmed, he will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices [ACIP] without changes.”

Cassidy was not the only Republican who voted to confirm Kennedy based on commitments he personally made to them.

Defending her vote to confirm Kennedy, widely recognized as one of the least qualified among all of President Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees, U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) issued a lengthy statement repeatedly explaining that RFK Jr. had made “commitments” to her, personally, that were sufficiently satisfying to earn her vote — despite his lengthy reported history of anti-vaccine activism, his statement that, in his opinion, “There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective,” and what has been recorded as his documented history of promoting conspiracy theories.

— (@)

“I continue to have concerns about Mr. Kennedy’s views on vaccines and his selective interpretation of scientific studies, which initially caused my misgivings about his nomination,” declared Senator Murkowski. “Vaccines have saved millions of lives, and I sought assurance that, as HHS Secretary, he would do nothing to make it difficult for people to take vaccines or discourage vaccination efforts. He has made numerous commitments to me and my colleagues, promising to work with Congress to ensure public access to information and to base vaccine recommendations on data-driven, evidence-based, and medically sound research. These commitments are important to me and, on balance, provide assurance for my vote.”

One week ago CNN’s Manu Raju reported, “Asked Lisa Murkowski if she trusts RFK Jr on vaccines, and she said: ‘We are going to hold him accountable and that’s how we will get the trust.'”

Thursday afternoon, the nonprofit Protect Our Care, issued a statement strongly criticizing Senator Cassidy.

“Just one week in, RFK Jr. has already begun enacting some of the most radical parts of his conspiracy theory-filled agenda, breaking promises he made to on-the-fence Senators during his confirmation process. Coverage confirms that RFK Jr. will be removing members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee after canceling a critical meeting on vaccine approvals,” the group charged.

“RFK Jr. played Bill Cassidy like a fiddle,” the group’s president, Brad Woodhouse, added. “It hasn’t even been a week and he is already breaking his promises. After saying anything to on-the-fence senators to get confirmed, RFK Jr. is now showing his true colors as the anti-science, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist he always has been. The consequences of RFK Jr.’s broken promises, which were always bull—, will be more sick and dead Americans, including children, and Senator Cassidy and his colleagues who bought what Kennedy was selling will bear responsibility.”

Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported on another commitment RFK Jr. made to Senator Cassidy, one he appears to be preparing to rescind.

“To earn the vote he needed to become the nation’s top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a special promise to a U.S. senator: He would not change the nation’s current vaccination schedule,” the AP reported. “But on Tuesday, speaking for the first time to thousands of U.S. Health and Human Services agency employees, he vowed to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule that prevents measles, polio and other dangerous diseases.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

When Will Anti-Vaxxers Face The Consequences Of Their Lies?

"Medical Freedom" crusaders are trying to end vaccination requirements for schoolchildren. Places where they succeed, epidemiologists warn, will, for starters, become overrun with measles, a disease that was virtually eliminated thanks to vaccines.

Measles used to kill up to 500 people a year, while polio left more than 15,000 paralyzed. Parts of America that stop requiring vaccinations will be turning their clocks back to an unhappy past. And as it happens, those parts tend to be right-wing Republican.

No major religion objects to vaccines, but anti-vax activists summon religious objections to them nonetheless. Or they jump on a useful anecdote here or there.

One letter writer to The Wall Street Journal complained that months after getting a Covid booster, "I contracted Covid."

You don't say. So did I. But neither of us ended up in a hospital or the morgue. The shots make the disease less deadly.

A study by top epidemiologists estimates that nearly a quarter-million Americans who died of Covid would have survived had they received the Covid vaccine.

The letter writer was giving a thumbs up to Journal columnist Allysia Finley, who has turned casting aspersions on the Covid vaccines into a second career.

One of her columns, titled "Why Vaccine Skepticism is Growing on the Right" blames the medical establishment for many conservatives' refusal to get shots.

Perhaps ignorance, stupidity and laziness are to blame. Just a suggestion.

Anyhow, Finley writes, "Authorities no doubt worry that alerting the public to potential safety risks could discourage vaccination, but their lack of transparency and dismissal of critics fuels the distrust in vaccines."

Oh, so it's the authorities' fault that they didn't alert the public to safety risks that political wingnuts make up or highly exaggerate.

You know what political ballpark you're playing in when a writer accuses "the self-professed expert class" of "sneering" at anti-vaxxers.

I don't know about you, but experts, self-professed or quietly acknowledged, are the ones I follow. That's not to say that horoscopes don't give you a good idea of the future.

Do the experts really "sneer" at the anti-vaxxers, as Finley charges? If so, let me join them.

In January, Finley's column asked "Are Vaccines Fueling New Covid Variants?" Note the weasel use of a question mark to cover the writer's rear end from a ridiculous contention.

And it is ridiculous. As Dr. David Wohl, an infectious disease specialist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine told CBS, "The virus is evolving because we keep transmitting it to each other."

In other words, "Vaccines don't fuel those variants; unvaccinated people do."

If right wingers choose to not protect their health or even their lives by refusing to get some simple shots, there will be fewer right wingers. A respected study found that early in the pandemic, deaths from Covid were about the same for Democrats and Republicans. Once the vaccine came out, though, excess deaths for Republicans were almost double those for Democrats. Perhaps it's in the right's interest to keep its voters alive.

Vaccine mandates are good in that they create a herd immunity that slows the spread of disease. Even though younger people infected with these viruses are at less risk of dying, they can pass them onto grandparents. That said, between 2021 and 2022, over 1,300 American children did die from Covid. And 20% of them had been healthy beforehand.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is now suing Pfizer over "misleading" claims about the efficacy of its Covid vaccine. He accused the drugmaker of intimidating critics by issuing social media posts that call out vaccine misinformation.

Imagine calling out vaccine misinformation. What terrible thing will those experts do next?

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

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Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

Too Little, Too Late: RFK Jr. Suddenly Is Promoting Measles Vaccination

With Trump And RFK Jr., America Faces A Deadly Outbreak Of Disease And Lies

Bobby Lied: Violating Senate Commitments, RFK Jr. Seeks To Thwart Vaccines

When Will Anti-Vaxxers Face The Consequences Of Their Lies?

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