Heart disease, step aside. There's a new number-one health hazard to Americans.
That would be Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The vacuous anti-vaxxer has proven just as dangerous as his own family members warned the United States Senate he would be. That was in late January after he was nominated as Secretary of Health and Human Services by President Donald Trump. He was confirmed, shamefully.
Kennedy squeaked through by placating Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy with the brazen lie that he wouldn’t dismantle the nation's vaccine safety systems or take down government vaccine guidance. And I do mean brazen: Kennedy specifically promised to respect the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, only to fire all 17 of its members.
Perhaps for not wearing tinfoil hats.
This week, things took a sharp turn for the worse. We got the answer to that age-old question, “What would happen if a deranged imbecile controlled America’s public health system?”
Kennedy canceled $500 million in contracts for projects to develop vaccines using mRNA technology. The medical community — not to be confused with Kennedy’s crackpot community — considers the emerging technology to be critical to the nation’s health and security.
It prompted a firestorm of uncommonly strident protests from some of the nation’s leading medical experts, as reported at NPR.
"This may be the most dangerous public health judgment that I've seen in my 50 years in this business," says Michael Osterholm, who runs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
"It is baseless, and we will pay a tremendous price in terms of illnesses and deaths. I'm extremely worried about it."
Dr. Peter Hotez, who runs the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, described mRNA as “a proven technology for emerging respiratory viruses or respiratory virus pandemics. It is extremely safe and has been incredibly effective."
And there was this from Jennifer Nuzzo, Director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University.
"This is a profoundly disappointing development. When there's the next pandemic, we're going to be caught flat-footed. It absolutely leaves the country vulnerable."
Speaking of pandemics, the one person most undermined by Kennedy was Trump, who either didn’t care to comment or was too cognitively declined to notice. It turns out that the attack on mRNA technology doubled as a kneecapping of the one (1) good thing Trump did in his first term.
Here’s how AP reported that:
“Trump once hailed mRNA vaccines as a ‘medical miracle.’ Now, his health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is halting the vaccine technology's advancement.”
This marks a sharp policy reversal — mRNA vaccines, developed under Operation Warp Speed during the Trump era, were lauded for saving millions and fast-tracking pandemic recovery by delivering safe and highly effective COVID-19 vaccines in record time.
Now, it would be a miracle if someone could determine why Trump has unleashed this charlatan on the world. Most of the president’s appointees can be understood in the context of the administration’s known priorities.
You know, like ending American democracy, enriching the Trump family and repaying unspecified debts to Vladimir Putin. But what’s in it for Trump by destroying the nation’s health and security to appease Kennedy?
The most widespread theory is that Trump made a deal with Kennedy to plague the nation with this guy as HHS secretary — and maybe start a plague in the process. But, Mr. President, why does this have to be the first time in 79 years that you’ve kept your word about anything?
It’s hard to understand Trump’s ulterior motive here. And that’s the only kind he has.
The Washington Post noticed the contradiction inherent in Kennedy’s treachery:
Kennedy’s resistance against mRNA vaccines is without evidence. In fact, the technology — which instructs the body’s cells to produce a harmless bit of virus that is then used to train the immune system, as opposed to using weakened or dead versions of a virus — delivered arguably the most important achievement of Trump’s first term: the production of effective vaccines against the novel coronavirus within the span of a few months.
Such speed was practically unheard-of in biomedical research. Thanks to the urgency created by Operation Warp Speed, the federal government was able to mount an impressive vaccination rollout that boosted the population’s immunity to the coronavirus just when it was needed.
Now, if we could only find some way to boost the population’s immunity to RFK, Jr.