Public Disapproves Of Kennedy's Job Performance And Don't Trust Him About Vaccines

 

The charts above are from the Kaiser Family Foundation survey -- done between September 23rd and 29th of a nationwide sample of 1,334 adults, with a 3 point margin of error.

Six Former Surgeons Generals Say Kennedy Is A Danger To The U.S. Public

The following is part of an article in The Washington Post by Jerome Adams, Richard Carmona, Joycelyn Elders, Vivek Murthy, Antonia Novello, and David Satcher:

As former U.S. surgeons general appointed by every Republican and Democratic president since George H.W. Bush, we have collectively spent decades in service as the Nation’s Doctor. We took two sacred oaths in our lifetimes: first, as physicians who swore to care for our patients and, second, as public servants who committed to protecting the health of all Americans.

Today, in keeping with those oaths, we are compelled to speak with one voice to say that the actions of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are endangering the health of the nation. Never before have we issued a joint public warning like this. But the profound, immediate and unprecedented threat that Kennedy’s policies and positions pose to the nation’s health cannot be ignored.

Despite differences in perspectives, we have always been united in an unwavering commitment to science and evidence-based public health. It is that shared principle that led us to this moment.

Over recent months, we have watched with increasing alarm as the foundations of our nation’s public health system have been undermined. Science and expertise have taken a back seat to ideology and misinformation. Morale has plummeted in our health agencies, and talent is fleeing at a time when we face rising threats — from resurgent infectious diseases to worsening chronic illnesses.

Repairing this damage requires a leader who respects scientific integrity and transparency, listens to experts and can restore trust to the federal health apparatus. Instead, Kennedy has become a driving force behind this crisis.

HHS is the one of the largest civilian agencies in the federal government, with a nearly $2 trillion budget and oversight of programs and agencies that touch every American family and business: Medicare, Medicaid, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and more. It requires steady, ethical leadership grounded in science.

By contrast, Kennedy has spent decades advancing dangerous and discredited claims about vaccines — most notoriously, the thoroughly discredited theory that childhood vaccines cause autism. He has promoted misinformation about the HPV vaccine, which protects against cervical cancer, and he has repeatedly misrepresented the risks of mRNA technology and coronavirus vaccines, despite their lifesaving impact during the pandemic.

This year, as the United States faced its worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years, Kennedy de-emphasized vaccination and directed agency resources toward unproven vitamin therapies. The result: months-long outbreak, three preventable deaths and the first measles-related child death in the U.S. in over two decades.

More recently, Kennedy removed every member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing its scientific experts with individuals who often lacked basic qualifications, some of whom are vaccine conspiracy theorists. The new committee has already begun casting doubt on the hepatitis B vaccine for newborns, despite decades of data affirming its effectiveness and strong safety profile.

Discrediting vaccines undermines one of the most important public health tools in American history. Thanks to widespread immunization, we eradicated smallpox, eliminated polio in the U.S. and prevented an estimated 1.1 million deaths and 508 million infections among children born between 1994 and 2023. Operation Warp Speed, initiated under President Donald Trump, brought lifesaving mRNA vaccines to the world in record time.

Yet Kennedy continues to ignore science and the public’s wishes. Most recently, HHS proposed new warning labels on products containing acetaminophen (Tylenol), citing a supposed link between prenatal use and autism. This move has been widely condemned by the scientific and medical communities, who have pointed out that the available research is inconclusive and insufficient to justify such a warning. In an extraordinary and unprecedented response, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other leading health organizations issued public guidance urging physicians and patients to disregard HHS’s recommendation. Instead of helping pregnant women make informed decisions during a critical period in their lives, Kennedy’s decisions risk causing confusion, fear and harm. . . .

America’s public health systems are essential to the well-being of the nation. We are clear-eyed about the fact that these systems need to be improved, including paying more attention to areas such as disease prevention, mental health and chronic illness. But reform must be grounded in truth, transparency and scientific evidence. Without this foundation, we risk not only halting progress but reversing it — costing lives in the process.

Secretary Kennedy is entitled to his views. But he is not entitled to put people’s health at risk. He has rejected science, misled the public and compromised the health of Americans. The nation deserves a health and human services secretary who is committed to scientific integrity and can restore morale and trust in our public health agencies. Having served at senior levels in government, we know that politics are complicated. But this is bigger than politics. It’s about putting the health of Americans first.

Voters Are Not Happy With RFK,Jr As Head Of HHS

 

The charts above reflect the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between August 29th and September 2nd of a nationwide sample of 1,549 registered voters, with a 3 point margin of error.

77 Nobel Laureates Ask Senators To Vote Against Confirmation For RFK,Jr

 

From The New York Times

Trump Is Giving His Middle Finger To America

From Robert Reich on the nomination of RFK, Jr to head the Department of Health and Human Services:

Nominating conspiracist and fabulist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the nation’s leading health job — overseeing the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Institutes of Health, among other sensitive positions — is an act of utter hubris. 

At a time when the truth is a precious common good, and the public’s health is already precarious, RFK Junior has made a name for himself spreading dangerous health lies.

He claimed that COVID-19 was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people” and that “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” And that “the Chinese are spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing ethnic bioweapons and we are developing ethnic bioweapons. They’re collecting Russian DNA. They’re collecting Chinese DNA so we can target people by race.”

He has promoted the baseless claim linking vaccines to autism. He’s been a leading proponent of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, erroneously suggesting the vaccine has killed more people than it has saved.

In his 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, he alleged, without plausible evidence, that Dr. Fauci performed “genocidal experiments, sabotaged treatments for AIDS, and conspired with Bill Gates to suppress information about COVID-19.” 

All nonsense. 

Friends, I knew Robert F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy Junior is no Robert F. Kennedy. If not for his lustrous name, RFK Junior would be just another crackpot in the ever-growing pool of bottom-feeding fringe characters encircling Trump like ravenous slugs. 

So why nominate this collection of bozos?

 

If Trump wants to smoke out the Senate Republicans who aren’t fully behind him, he has easier ways of doing so than putting an entire Star Wars cantina of idiots up for Senate confirmation.

 

I can see why Trump might want total loyalists in key positions that would enable him to turn America into a police state — more on this tomorrow — but why nominate a nut job to run America’s health system?

 

What possible point is there to subjecting Americans to poisonous food or drugs? Why undermine the Centers for Disease Control when Americans and their children need the protections vaccines provide?

 

Or is all this just another manifestation of Trump becoming deranged?

HHS Is Now The Department Of Disease Efficiency

Alexandria Petri (The Washington Post) satirizes Kennedy's pick to head HHS: 

Well, President-elect Donald Trump has picked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the new head of the Department of Health and Human Services. “He wants to do some things and we’re going to let him go to it,” Trump said. “Go have a good time, Bobby.”

Everyone who is an HHS employee and is not the measles virus: You are on notice! We’re taking this department in a new direction! Measles, stand back and stand by. It’s about to be your time.

We’re doing our best to give the people what they want. For many years we thought what they wanted was clean drinking water, safe and tested vaccines to drive down deaths from childhood diseases, and food that is produced in sanitary conditions so the people who eat it don’t get sick. But we were wrong, and the change starts now.

Similarly, we mistakenly thought that finding a dead mouse in your frozen ravioli dinner was a shock. Now, we know better. It’s a surprise! People love surprises. People love danger! Our ancestors didn’t stare down death every time they went out to hunt and eat food that had not been subject to Food and Drug Administration inspection so we wouldn’t have to stare down death every day as we went out to buy food that has not been subject to FDA inspection. You want to consume a can of beans and live? TOUGH LUCK! THIS IS DONALD TRUMP’S AMERICA!

In light of this, and of the nomination of RFK Jr. as our leader, we at the Department of Health and Human Services are announcing a rebrand as the Department of Disease Efficiency. Given our new mandate to root out expertise wherever it might lurk and replace it with Something That Came To RFK Jr. In A Dream Once, we felt it was proper to release “Health” and “Human Services” back into the wild, where maybe RFK Jr. can hunt them down with his falcon and eat them before they have undergone an FDA inspection.

Look, most Americans are not equipped to test food safety or vaccine safety on their own. And that’s because, unwisely, we have delegated these tasks to the FDA. It’s time we gave them back to the people. Every citizen should learn to inspect his own meat, like the Founders did. George Washington (who apparently only had one real tooth left at the end of his life) did not drink fluoridated water. Abraham Lincoln (one of whose children actually made it to adulthood!) never gave his children safe, routine childhood vaccinations. Franklin D. Roosevelt (who had polio) had polio. It’s time we went back to that.

Now is not the time to rest on our laurels. Now is the time to throw our laurels away. We’re going to think outside the box. For too long, our ideas have been limited to “things medical professionals recommend” and we have mistakenly viewed each death as a disgrace and failure. Now, it’s time to abandon that hidebound, old-fashioned thinking. Maybe disease is an ally, not an enemy! Maybe we can attract a new consumer, someone who is as excited as RFK Jr. is to wonder if water is turning children gay.

Gone are the days when we saw tainted food as something to be eradicated and roadkill as something to be driven past and not consumed. No longer! We are EATING roadkill. If anyone gets a brain parasite, we are CELEBRATING them, not shaming them. Who is to say it is better or worse to have more functional brain and less disease? The point is, there are no bad ideas in this new department. We can’t wait to hit the ground running, like that cockroach in your pasta sauce.

For too long, American citizens have been complacent, having fewer and fewer children, under the misapprehension that if you like your child, you should get to keep your child. And what’s to blame for that? Safe, accessible vaccines that mean nobody gets measles. What better way to drive up birth rates (don’t interrupt me, JD Vance) than to increase the rates of childhood deaths? Also, maybe we can stop approving birth control! None of it seems safe. We’re going to get to the bottom of this, using science — or something that is just as good as science: nothing.

Every time you get to do something as simple as sit down with your healthy family and eat food from a grocery store, it is the result of a cavalcade of miracles. Each health and safety regulation that made your food safe to eat, each childhood vaccine that means you are at the table with Tiny Tim and not his Sad, Empty Chair and Abandoned Crutch, is the product of decades — no, centuries! — of painstaking effort. And these efforts came from all kinds of people: brilliant, dedicated medical minds, crusaders who were sick of finding dead mice in their lunch meat and just ordinary families who were willing to do whatever they could not to lose their loved ones. Well, we’re going to take those decades of painstaking, breathtaking achievement and treat them as RFK Jr. treats a bear carcass: dump it somewhere, for no reason, after it has been struck by a car.

Finally, we can declare victory in the long, bitter war against lifesaving human innovations like pasteurization and the polio vaccine! I don’t know why we want to declare victory in this war, but I guess it’s what we’re doing.

Brain Worm Denies Responsibility For RFKJ's Stunt (SATIRE)

In a great bit of satire in The Washington Post, Alexandra Petri says the brain worm is denying responsibility for RFKJ's putting a dead bear in Central Park:

Hello again. I had been hoping to continue my peaceful existence, far from the news cycle. But I have heard my name invoked and I simply must set the record straight. I would not rest well knowing that people thought I was implicated in the episode that recently came to lightinvolving Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s disposal of a dead bear cub. That was all my host. I, the brain worm that died inside his skull in 2010, had no part in it.

“Isn’t picking up a dead bear cub and bringing it along in your car, ‘Weekend at Bearnie’s’-style, for an afternoon of outdoor activity and dinner at Peter Luger Steak House, then ditching it in Central Park along with a bicycle in an attempt to implicate cyclists in its demise the kind of suggestion that a brain worm would make?” First of all, rude. Second of all, no. What self-respecting parasite would say, “Yes, let us spend more time with meat that has been improperly handled? I want maximum competition for my spot within my host’s brain!” There is no logic in it.

Worse yet, there is an image circulating of my erstwhile host posing with the dead bear cub that he drove around for that memorable afternoon in 2014; he suggests that perhaps taking this photo was when he picked up his brain worm. This is slander, and my legal team will be in contact with his. I died in 2010 and was not involved in the bear incident.

Candidly, no part of the story makes any sense to me. I have watched the video in which my former host attempts to explain the situation to Roseanne Barr, whose presence is, improbably, the most normal part of the video. My host’s explanation, as far as I can understand it, is that he was on his way to do falconry (no, this is still not the strangest part of the story! If I lose you now you are lost forever), saw an unknown driver hit a bear and then he put the dead cub in his van because he was going to eat the meat.

I had thought that we parted on bad terms and he would not want a repeat brain-worm visitor, but the decision to eat roadkill bear meat, especially roadkill bear meat that had sat in his car all day while he did falconry, leads me to wonder if perhaps he missed me, or if I had left an emptiness in him that he wished to fill with another guest. But I can only speculate.

He had such a good day of falconry that he forgot all about the bear carcass in his van. (I am just a simple brain worm. Is this a normal sentence that human beings say all the time?) And then he had to go to dinner at a famous steakhouse and then realized he had to go to the airport and couldn’t just leave the bear carcass in his car at the airport. The part about not leaving a bear carcass in your car at an airport makes sense to me, once you have reached the point where you have a bear carcass in your car. It is that first part, though, that continues to baffle me.

And then his friends, who had been drinking (when you are a human being and your drunk friends all say, “This sounds like a good idea!” is this how you know that you have hold of a good idea?) signed off on his plan for disposing of the bear, which was as follows: There had been a lot of bike accidents, and he had an old bike in his car that someone had asked him to get rid of (okay!), so why not drive the bear to Central Park and stage the bike to make it appear that the bear had perished in one such accident? Just as a treat for the people who would find the bear. (Is this what you would consider a treat? I don’t know! I am just a brain worm, asking questions. I do not have a brain, except a little bit of it which I enjoyed consuming very much.)

Anyway, I had no part in any of this. And for the record, the talks about taking a Cabinet position in a second Trump administration weren’t my idea, either. 

Robert Kennedy, Jr Is Not Qualified To Be President

Michael A. Cohen (MSNBC) doesn't think Robert Kennedy, Jr is qualified to serve as president of the United States. Here's part of what he writes: 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has all the trappings of a legitimate third-party presidential candidate. He’s raised more than $70 million, he’s named a running mate, and his supporters are working to get him on the ballot in all 50 states.

But there’s one major aspect lacking from Kennedy’s presidential campaign — any rational reason as to why he should be president of the United States.

It’s not just that Kennedy has never held elected office and has none of the experience necessary to steward a nation of 330 million people. It’s not just that his campaign has stepped on a disproportionate number of rakes — most recently firing a staffer who said defeating President Joe Biden was her “No. 1 priority.”

I’m not even talking about his devotion to tin foil-hatted conspiracy theories, including claims that vaccines cause autism, that Covid was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people,” that China is developing bioweapons “to attack people of certain racial types” or that 5G wireless technology is part of a government plot to “to harvest our data and control our behavior.”

It’s that in intellect and demeanor, he’s remarkably unqualified for the job he is seeking. It would be bad enough if Kennedy were running for the House or Senate, but there’s only so much harm he could do in Congress. But unfit presidents can do real and enduring damage.

What defines Kennedy’s views on practically every public policy issue is a childlike aversion to generally accepted truths. If the world zigs, then Kennedy must zag. . . .

Some will argue that he is an iconoclastic thinker willing to challenge conventional wisdom. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with challenging authority and accepted truths. It can often be a laudable pursuit. But as is the case with another know-nothing presidential candidate, in Kennedy’s hands, it’s little more than oppositional hardheadedness with which the parents of young children are all too familiar.

Kennedy’s worldview — and that of those who embrace his campaign for president — is emblematic of a strain of pseudointellectualism that confuses a refusal to accept facts with intellectual courage. In reality, moronic conspiracy theories are often just that: moronic conspiracy theories. 

But it’s also a byproduct of extreme privilege and arrogance. Being the son of Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy has gifted him a platform, resources and prominence. If his last name were Johnson or Smith, he’d just be another crank with a dozen followers on Twitter and a YouTube channel that nobody watches. . . .

Unfortunately, because Kennedy is getting a not-insubstantial share of the vote in presidential polls, we have to pay attention to him. Fortunately, like all third-party candidates, it’s likely that these numbers will drop as we get closer to the November election.

But make no mistake, Kennedy is completely out of his depth in running for president and has neither the smarts nor the temperament to do the job. The only thing more embarrassing than his bid for the White House is that so many of his fellow citizens are willing to embrace it.

RFK,Jr Candidacy Hurts Trump More Than Biden

 The chart above is from the NPR / PBS NewsHour / Marist Poll -- done on October 11th of a nationwide sample of 1,218 registered voters, with a 3.9 point margin of error.

RFK, Jr. Is A Tool Of The Right-Wing Haters

Robert Reich, who worked for Robert F. Kennedy in 1967, says RFK, Jr. is a disgrace:

At a time when the truth is a precious common good, RFK Jr. has been trading on his famous name to spread dangerous lies.

 

A few months ago, he claimed that COVID-19 was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people,” and that “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” And that “the Chinese are spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing ethnic bioweapons and we are developing ethnic bioweapons. They’re collecting Russian DNA. They’re collecting Chinese DNA so we can target people by race.”

I knew Robert F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is no Robert F. Kennedy.

I worked in Robert F. Kennedy’s Senate office in 1967. It wasn’t a glamorous job. I ran the signature machine. But I did have a chance to get to see Bobby Kennedy close up. I watched him stand up for economic and social justice. I witnessed him bringing together people of every race and ethnicity — to demand equal rights and an end to the Vietnam War.

Robert F. Kennedy would never have suggested or even thought that a deadly virus was targeted at certain races. He wouldn’t have repeated the trope, dating at least to the Middle Ages, that Jews unleashed a plague on non-Jews.

Junior has promoted the baseless claim linking vaccines to autism. He’s been a leading proponent of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, suggesting the vaccine has killed more people than it has saved.

In his 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, he alleged, without plausible evidence, that Dr. Fauci performed “genocidal experiments, sabotaged treatments for AIDS, and conspired with Bill Gates to suppress information about COVID-19.” This is libelous nonsense. 

RFK Jr.’s misinformation about vaccines continues to endanger public health. 

Another contrast with his father and his uncle: In 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed the Vaccination Assistance Act in order to, in the words of a CDC report, “achieve as quickly as possible the protection of the population, especially of all preschool children ... through intensive immunization activity.”)

RFK Jr. is not an independent. He is a right-wing tool being used to help elect Trump. His candidacy has been backed by a PAC that also funds Marjorie Taylor Greene and George Santos. 

If not for his name, RFK Jr. would be just another crackpot in the growing pool of bottom-feeding right-wing fringe politicians seeking office. But the Kennedy brand is political gold, and it could pull away just enough unwitting Democratic voters to tip the race to Trump.

 

Democracy won by a whisker in 2020. Just 44,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin decided the outcome. If RFK Jr, or any third-party candidate, peels off just a fraction of the vote from Biden, while Trump’s base stays with him, they will deliver a victory to Trump. 

That Robert F. Kennedy’s good name is being used in a way that increases the risk of a Trump victory next year is shameful. If Junior had any respect for the principles his father fought for, and ultimately died for, he would withdraw his candidacy immediately.