Tag: RFK Jr.

“Make America sick again”

placebo testing

A December 9 article in MedWatch is titled How Measles, Whooping Cough, and Worse Could Roar Back on RFK Jr.’s Watch. The subtitle: Some experts fear he could “make America sick again.” Arthur Allen, KFF Health News, wrote it.

“Ater backlash against public health interventions culminated in President-elect Donald Trump’s nominating Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the country’s best-known anti-vaccine activist, as its top health official, infectious disease and public health experts and vaccine advocates say a confluence of factors could cause renewed, deadly epidemics of measles, whooping cough, and meningitis, or even polio…

“Even states that keep existing requirements will be vulnerable to decisions made by a Republican-controlled Congress as well as by Kennedy and former Republican Rep. Dave Weldon, MD, of Florida, should they be confirmed to lead HHS and the CDC, respectively.

“Both men — Kennedy as an activist, Weldon as a medical doctor and congressman from 1995 to 2009 — have endorsed debunked theories blaming vaccines for autism and other chronic diseases…  Both have accused the CDC of covering up evidence… despite dozens of reputable scientific studies to the contrary.”

Meanwhile, Vanity Fair’s December 13 article notes that RFK Jr.’s lawyer, who is helping staff HHS, has demanded the FDA’s revoke of the polio vaccine approval. The headline undersells the gravity of the issue.

Let’s bring back polio!

“That lawyer is Aaron Siri, whose polio petition was filed in 2022 and who does not discriminate when it comes to vaccines he’d like to take an axe to. According to the Times, Siri ‘has also filed a petition seeking to pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines…; sued federal agencies for the disclosure of records related to vaccine approvals; and subjected prominent vaccine scientists to grueling videotaped depositions.’… While Kennedy has claimed, not very convincingly, that he does not intend to take away access to vaccines, his persistent undermining of them and his relationship with Siri does not inspire much confidence.”  Vaccines for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, tetanus, and diphtheria could be on the chopping block. 

My friend Mary, who has a deep background in health issues, notes: “The basis for [Siri’s] request to revoke approval was the fact that when the polio vaccine was first being tested (about 70 years ago), they didn’t run randomized, double-blind studies against a placebo. The reason they didn’t was that, given the known risks of polio-causing paralysis that can seize major organs and kill people, such work is considered unethical.

“It was unethical to withhold the actual vaccine from some, substituting a theoretical risk from the vaccine for the actual risk of getting the disease. RFK and Siri want all polio vaccinations to stop until the placebo testing can happen, sacrificing a large cohort of children to the strong possibility that some of them will have extremely serious outcomes from not getting an actual vaccine that’s been in safe use for many decades.”
Although some of Kennedy’s comments about nutrition might make some sense, he is dangerous regarding vaccination. If his policies are implemented, they will gravely harm Americans for decades.

Hey, what a difference a month makes

Harris/Walz

What a difference a month makes. Like a lot of people, by the time the Republican National Convention was over, I was thoroughly depressed. When Joe Biden was running, he rightly pointed out the risk to democracy if his opponent were elected. Unfortunately, the Republicans said the same thing if the Democrats won.

Even as I heard the calls for Joe Biden to step aside, I couldn’t imagine how that would work out. Kamala Harris’ polling numbers weren’t much better than Joe’s. The pundits also noted that she never got any footing in the 2020 Democratic campaign season, which was true. 

Do you know who else ran not one but two dismal Presidential campaigns? Joe Biden, who dropped out of the 2008 campaign after faring poorly in Iowa. Of course, Barack Obama then picked him as his running mate.  

So, I am cautiously optimistic. In retrospect, I should have KNOWN that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz would be the Presidential/Veep candidates for the Democrats. I jest. But it feels so right. 

The Republicans are currently on the defensive.  A disoriented djt insists that the attendance at his “rally” on Jan. 6, 2021, before the storming of the Capitol, was larger than the quarter million on August 28, 1963, when MLK Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. He has fantasized that Joe Biden might somehow snatch back the nomination. People around him say he’s been knocked off his bearings.

Uh-uh

Harris/Walz has pivoted to We’re Not Going Back. Some have criticized it as unduly negative, but I think it’s wonderful. It’s oblique. Go back to what? The time before Roe v. Wade? Before Jan. 6? It’s a counterweight to Make America Great Again, Again.

Now, the GOP candidate is considered ‘Too Old’ by a majority. “Mental Fitness Increasingly Worry Voters.” Like Biden, he can’t pivot to become younger, and touting his alleged prowess in basic cognitive tests isn’t helping. I only wish the press had been harsher on djt earlier, because he’s been saying crazy stuff for quite a while.

Also, several pundits have noted that the “weird” labeling is particularly effective. If one attacks djt on policy, he’ll say his position was misrepresented. But if one points out his mixing up California politician  Willie Brown with another black man, and you say, “That’s weird,” you don’t have to ask if he’s losing it. After Hillary Clinton used “deplorable” to describe MAGA fans, they embraced it, but weird is a different thing.

I should write about tech bro JD Vance and how Silicon Valley owns him, but nah. 

DEI

When Harris got down to her Veep candidates, you knew there would be a white man. That DEI! If you’re gonna have a black South Asian woman, you gotta have a white guy. Walz seems to be the least likely candidate. Gov. Roy Cooper (NC) looks like how a president would have been portrayed in many 1980s disaster films. Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania, looks like a policy wonk. US Senator Mark Kelly (AZ) looks like, well, an astronaut. Then there were the forty-somethings, Gov.  Andy Beshear (KY) and US DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

MN governor Tim Walz is the least telegenic, but he has a Midwestern genuineness and a great biography, which people are attracted to. “He tossed off multiple zingers about how ‘creepy and weird as hell’ the Republican ticket. Coach Walz’s sudden rise in the Democratic Party was no accident. And according to the satirical Borowitz Report,  “in an extraordinary show of support from the furry mammals, America’s cats gave a full-throated endorsement to…Walz.”

Interestingly, according to an article published in the National Library of Medicine in 2023, “We vote for the person, not the policies: a systematic review on how personality traits influence voting behaviour.” The GOP candidates and most of their proxies are not very nice people. Their “stolen valor” attack on Walz is overblown, e.g., and is funny coming from the campaign of Captain Bone Spurs.  

RFK, Jr.

When Biden was still poised to be the Democratic candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. seemed to have the chance to be at least a spoiler. His stock is down now, and John Oliver’s skewering on Last Week Tonight didn’t help. 

Worse, from Behan Communications: “Since ‘weird’ seems to be the word of the moment, we thought we’d hop right in with some news about… [the] presidential candidate of the Comic Relief Party.

“Where to begin? With his admission that he dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park 10 years ago? Or that he once had a freezer full of roadkill meat? Or that doctors told him he has a dead worm in his brain? Or that he somehow believes, according to testimony he gave this week in an Albany, N.Y., courtroom, that an intent to move somewhere is ‘the only requirement for residency?'” He has been “disqualified from the New York ballot over his false residence claim.” It’s likely to affect other states where he used that bogus address.

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