https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/25/opinion/rfk-jr-vaccines-samoa-measles.html
What are the qualifications to be in Trump's cabinet? TOTAL LOYALTY to the criminal in chief.
Copy pasted:
In November 2019, when an epidemic of measles was killing children and babies in Samoa, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who in recent days became Donald Trump’s pick to lead the department of Health and Human Services — sent the prime minister of Samoa at the time a four-page letter. In it, he suggested the measles vaccine itself may have caused the outbreak.
He claimed that the vaccine might have “failed to produce antibodies” in vaccinated mothers sufficient to provide infants with immunity, that it perhaps provoked “the evolution of more virulent measles strains” and that children who received the vaccine may have inadvertently spread the virus to other children. “Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of any assistance,” he added, writing in his role as the chairman of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group.
At the time of his letter, 16 people, many of them younger than 2, were already reported dead. Measles, which is among the most contagious diseases, can sometimes lead to brain swelling, pneumonia and death. For months, families grieved over heartbreaking little coffins, until a door-to-door vaccination campaign brought the calamity to a close. The final number of fatalities topped 80.
I was in Samoa during that outbreak as part of my more than 16 years of reporting on the anti-vaccine movement. The cause of the outbreak was not the vaccine, but most likely an infected traveler who brought the virus from New Zealand, which that year had seen the biggest measles outbreaks in decades, especially among that country’s Indigenous and Pacific Islander communities. Migration and poverty were likely factors in a sudden spread of measles in Samoa and New Zealand. But, as an editorial in the New Zealand Medical Journal reported, so too was a factor that Mr. Kennedy specializes in: “Increasing circulation of misinformation leading to distrust and reduced vaccination uptake.” Samoa’s vaccination rates had fallen to less than a third of eligible 1-year-olds.
Vaccine skepticism has ballooned worldwide, and Mr. Kennedy and others who back him have encouraged it. Americans may be well aware that their possible future health leader holds dangerous beliefs about vaccines. The consequences of his views — and those of his orbit — are not merely absurd but tragic.
In my reporting, parents have mentioned fearing vaccines after watching “Vaxxed,” a 90-minute documentary, which had also toured countries such as New Zealand. The film, focused on unproven allegations, was released more than three years before the Samoa measles outbreak. Among much else, it claimed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had committed fraud.
Two of the filmmakers — Del Bigtree and Andrew Wakefield — are buddies of Mr. Kennedy. The director, Mr. Wakefield, is a former doctor whose medical license was revoked in his native Britain in 2010 amid charges of ethical violations. One of the producers, Mr. Bigtree, became Mr. Kennedy’s presidential campaign communications chief.
In the years before the documentary was released, I revealed, in a series of articles, evidence that Mr. Wakefield’s research in the 1990s had been rigged at a London hospital to make it look as if the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine was linked to autism. This research was retracted in 2010. Mr. Kennedy certainly didn’t seem fazed by Mr. Wakefield’s professional downfall. “In any just society, we would be building statues to Andy Wakefield,” he yelled, for instance, from a platform he and Mr. Wakefield shared at an event in Washington, D.C., a few days before he sent his letter to Samoa.
Reports say Mr. Kennedy is reviewing résumés for his possible Health and Human Services empire. He’s reportedly eyeing Joseph Ladapo, a Florida health official who has questioned the safety of Covid vaccines. I’d say Mr. Bigtree may get a role; Mr. Wakefield is trickier, given how discredited he is, even in the United States. But there are plenty of others in Mr. Kennedy’s circle whose claims ought to concern everyone.
Consider Sherri Tenpenny, a doctor who has been declared by Mr. Kennedy as “one of the great leaders” of the anti-vaccine movement. She has falsely claimed that a “metal” attached to a protein in the Covid shots was making their recipients magnetic. “They can put a key on their forehead and it sticks,” she told Ohio state lawmakers in June 2021. “They can put spoons and forks all over them and they can stick.” I could pluck plenty more outrageous characters from Mr. Kennedy’s circle over the years, including veteran AIDS denialists.
In recent days, Mr. Kennedy appears to have tried to change the conversation around his vaccine views to focus on America’s junk food diets. But his views on vaccines shouldn’t be forgotten. In January 2021, speaking to a gathering of loyalists in Ohio, he outlined a three-point checklist that had to be met for him to consider a Covid vaccine. First, he said, “you take one shot, you get lifetime immunity.” Second, side effects are only “one in a million.” Third, “herd immunity” is achieved at 70 percent public uptake — after which, he stipulated, “nobody in this society” ever gets the disease again.
“If they came up with that product,” he said, “I’d be happy to look at it.”
His audience laughed. But it’s not funny.
Thanks, joj!
Kennedy is an anti science nut case on this topic.
CW If the following is his true position then it is good;
"You know, all I have said about vaccines [is] we should have good science. We should have the same kind of testing, placebo-controlled trials.
"Vaccines are exempt from placebo-controlled trials. There's no way that anybody can tell the risk by all those products or the relative benefits of all those products before they are mandated, and we should have that kind of testing."
CW I assume he means without the testing?
As reported in a 2023 debunk of Kennedy's Watters interview by The Dispatch, placebo trials are a standard feature of the third phase of clinical trials for new vaccines. While some previously authorized vaccines do not undergo placebo trials, this does not mean vaccines are exempt, as Kennedy claimed.
CW The above makes no sense to me.
Thanks, cutworm!
the bottom line is that vaccines have an extremely long history of being safe and saving 100s of millions,of lives and Kennedy has a long history of anti science alarmism, in his manufacturing of unsubstantiated, widespread harm that he claims vaccines cause.
I will post the massive evidence when I get the chance but am busy with dad’s eulogy and chess starting at 5 schools.
Kennedy has morphed his position and backed away from his previous extreme views, apparently because he knows nobody would appoint him to anything unless he backed off on what the science world knows has been complete nonsense.
no doubt there were discussions about his roles in the Trump administration and very smart people told him the new RFK had to distance himself from the extreme old RFK on his completely wacko anti vax stuff.
He is blatantly lying when he now claims he was never anti vax.
I can find a dozen articles/documents to prove it when back in my office.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/21/politics/fact-check-rfk-not-anti-vax/index.html
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed at a congressional hearing Thursday that he has never urged the public to avoid vaccination – but he said less than two years ago that he had approached strangers in public places to tell them not to get their children vaccinated.
As he has before, Kennedy also declared Thursday that he is not “anti-vaccine” at all, merely a proponent of vaccine safety. In reality, Kennedy is one of the country’s most prominent anti-vaccine activists. He has for years used false and misleading claims to undermine public confidence in vaccines that are indeed safe.
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https://apnews.com/article/robert-f-kennedy-vaccines-trump-rfkjr-7f8dcb25de76a5a70710d22bbc63f6fa
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https://www.factcheck.org/2023/08/scicheck-factchecking-robert-f-kennedy-jr/
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is no stranger to FactCheck.org. He is a prominent anti-vaccine advocate who has been on our radar for years, primarily as the founder of Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit that spreads anti-vaccine misinformation.
We’ve written numerous stories about his claims and those made in posts appearing on his nonprofit’s website. In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate named Kennedy and CHD one of the “Disinformation Dozen,” or top 12 spreaders of misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines online.
In April, Kennedy — the son of a former attorney general and presidential candidate, and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, both of whom were assassinated in the 1960s — officially entered politics for the first time, announcing his bid for the presidency as a Democrat challenging President Joe Biden. He has virtually no chance of nabbing the nomination, but he has received more media attention in the following months that has allowed him to spread false and misleading health claims.
Many of these are about vaccines. Kennedy, who is also an environmental activist and lawyer, has been opposed to vaccines since at least 2005, when he published an error-laden story in Rolling Stone and Salon that pushed the false notion that certain vaccine ingredients cause autism. The publications later retracted or withdrew the story.
In many ways, Kennedy has not moved on. Today, he still refers to things he wrote in the article to bolster his bogus arguments against vaccines, even though he was wrong then and nearly two decades of additional research has continued to bear that out. Kennedy insists he’s not “anti-vaccine,” but many of his debunked arguments are straight from the anti-vaccine playbook, which he and his nonprofit have helped write.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s battle against vaccines — and against the institutions that promote them — goes back to at least the mid-2000s, as we explain in the first article of this series. But the arrival of COVID-19 gave the environmental attorney fresh grounds to intensify his attacks and a timely platform to gain new followers and revenue.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. makes a variety of incorrect or misleading claims about vaccines, COVID-19 and other health-related topics. But his views on vaccines rose to prominence when he began to advance the thoroughly debunked idea that they cause autism.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine advocate, is running for president as a Democrat. Our SciCheck team has combed through his recent interviews to identify and correct some of his most common health claims in a three-part series. In this first installment, we address several of his talking points about vaccines.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7090020/
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra2200583
I spent many hundreds of hours researching the authentic science(as an independent, objective scientist myself), with many hundreds of posts responding to people here with an anti COVID vaccination belief system:
COVID vaxx DISinformation/information compilation
Started by metmike - July 23, 2022, 5:07 p.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/87451/
My point was that more testing and research is a good thing.
My point was that more testing and research is a good thing.
cutworm,
This is a wonderful point but how many times does 2+2=4 need to be tested before it's accepted?
You oversimplify (2+2=4) that, something with as many moving parts as vaccines and how they and the body work together. There are long term unknowns. That kind of evidence needs to be studied. That does not mean that vaccinees are bad.
It is totally possible that RFK is totally wrong, but having more studies may solve this.
Near as I can tell RFK suggests antidotal evidence without knowing the mechanism. Without knowing the mechanism antidotal evidence is not good enough to draw a conclusion of cause.
.
Thanks, cutworm!
Yes, intentional oversimplification to make a point.
Vaccines have been around for many decades with billions of people vaccinated with nearly a trillion doses and over a hundred million lives have been saved, while proven safe.
If that's not enough for you, then nothing will ever be enough.
What exactly is it that you are looking for to meet your criteria for proof?
A quadrillion doses?
The science is ROCK SOLID, INDISPUTABLY SETTLED for people that are objective, open minded and informed.
There's just no other way to put it.
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I've found that showing a Mt. Everest pile of proof of this(which I did for 2 years here) to people that think otherwise makes no difference in their belief. Once a person believes strongly in something they process new information to REJECT things that contradict what they want to believe.
Human cognitive bias!
I'm not assuming anything in your case, cutworm just stating that anti vax people will always be anti vax people no matter how much overwhelming proof there is that they are dead wrong.
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A closer look at the social, cultural and political issues influencing immunization
https://www.scientificamerican.com/custom-media/whats-behind-the-fear-of-vaccines/
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In sum, cognitive biases can undermine how the general public makes sense of scientific data and present potential barriers to optimal decision-making. No human population is immune to cognitive biases. These biases may be intensified by the current climate of uncertainty and public mistrust.
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Some people feel that its a way to keep others from telling them what to do with their body and they justify it with vaccine safety concern nonsense.
This is retarded, man. What sense does it make to intentionally, seriously elevate/increase risks to your health based on manufactured bs to prove that you have the right to mess your body up?
I can get up right now and bang my head real hard against the wall until I'm unconscious to prove my independence by intentionally doing something that can be harmful to me. But who intentionally does things that carry potentially high risks to their bodies to avoid something with almost no risk and potentially great, sometimes life saving benefits?
Answer: Anti vaccine people!
In hundreds of discussions with anti vaxxers in the past, there is a reoccurring theme regarding their mentality.
They are often convinced that they have a right to their opinion and I'm disrespecting it as if there is great uncertainty about vaccines.
Let me clear this up(repeat this again).
Opinions:
1. The chances for rain tomorrow
2. The price of soybeans next week
3. Who will win an election BEFORE the votes are counted.
NOT opinions:
1. Yesterday's accurately recorded weather
2. The price of soybeans LAST week
3. Who won the 2020 election
4. The law of gravity
5. The earth revolves around the sun
6. Humans inhale O2 and exhale CO2
7. Vaccine safety and effectiveness.
Posters are welcome to bring this up for the gazillionth time here but every single time, with no exception they will get obliterated with the authentic truth and science.
When they spin or twist it to create uncertainty or try to debunk the authentic truth and science.........they just make themselves look silly.
Maybe at other places(anti vax echo chambers) that might be a good idea.
So the choices are:
1. Try to learn something
2. Look silly
3. Avoid #1 and #2
