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RFK Jr.: HHS moves to restore public trust in vaccines
See also:
Kennedy guts CDC's vaccine panel of independent experts https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/kennedy-guts-acip-cdc-vaccine-panel-rcna211935 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/kennedy-guts-acip...
RFK Jr. ousts entire CDC vaccine advisory committee - https://apnews.com/article/kennedy-cdc-acip-vaccines-3790c89f45b6314c5c7b686db0e3a8f9 https://apnews.com/article/kennedy-cdc-acip-vaccines-3790c89...
- java-man 1y agoThis is a part of the coordinated attack on the United States.
- ahns 1y agoIt's honestly impressive how efficiently and smoothly things are regressing.
- voidfunc 1y agoTotal apathy.
- phatfish 1y agoIt is easier to destroy than to create.
- jp_nc 1y agoAlso, the decadence of the American people is contributing a lot. Tough to find time to care when the average person is spending 2-4 hours staring at 10-30 second bursts of entertainment. It’s depressing…
- jaennaet 1y agoThat "decadence" isn't the cause of the problems, but a symptom.
- seattle_spring 1y agoNot really a uniquely American thing. Not even a uniquely Western, nor uniquely "first world" activity.
- CuriouslyC 1y ago[flagged]
- subjectsigma 1y agoI did not use to believe this but every passing day it seems like there’s more and more evidence that the Trump admin is acting with intention and malice to hurt the US
- jaennaet 1y agoThere's a reason why so many activists call what conservatives around the world are doing "autogenocide." None of what the US regime is doing seems to make much sense, apart from being designed to quite literally kill people in some way
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoRight wing leaders seem to gravitate towards becoming death cults.
- ActorNightly 1y agoIts probably somewhat having to do with being a narcissist and getting "payback" for 2020, but ironically, being a conservative means you simply don't have the mental capacity for any real coordination. Because to be a good planner you have to have a good grip on reality, which conservatives certainly do not. If you are a conservative who is reading this, give me any conservative viewpoint and Ill show you that it either doesn't make sense in reality, or is already supported by Democrats.
- subjectsigma 1y agoThis is not only off-topic but completely ridiculous. Being anti-Trump doesn’t mean you should hold bigoted opinions.
- ActorNightly 1y agoIts not a bigoted opinion, its based on reality. Im not saying my side is better. Im simply making the claim that conservative views are not representative of how the real world works, and I can demonstrate it real time. You can flag my comment if you want, but Im past the point of caring about optics when it comes to conservatives as they are functionally destroying my country.
- 827a 1y agoActually the scariest part is, its probably not even coordinated, at least in any traditional meaning of the word. The left believes the aggressors are the Trump administration. The right believes its the left and the Biden admin. The real aggressor is the division itself; upstream from both these administrations. Those sad quirks of human nature, tribalism and division, which the algorithms picked up on, which feeds back into content creators biasing toward serving those algorithmic niches, which feeds the cycle further. Russia probably disinfo'd a bit in there, but honestly, they don't even need to; human nature does it itself. Social media and AI-accelerated tribal bubble reinforcement is going to destroy the world. If you work in social media: Your work is destroying the world. You need to stop. The only way to save modern society is to turn off social media.
- duxup 1y ago> Kennedy announced the change in an editorial in The Wall Street Journal, claiming that the “committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.” Presumably to be replaced with political appointees / friends?
- ebiester 1y agoTo be replaced with people who will not approve vaccines regardless of safety, reducing our total health. I can't wait to travel to Mexico or Canada to get a vaccine!
- tandr 1y ago> I can't wait to travel to Mexico or Canada to get a vaccine! But... how? I do remember times during COVID when you couldn't even get on the plane without proof of vaccine.
- cosmicgadget 1y agoI thought it was vaccine or a negative test within the past x days. In any event, Mexico and Canada are special in that they share a terrestrial border with most of the United States.
- tredre3 1y agoI don't know about Mexico but Canada enforced vax requirements for anyone crossing by land, with the exception of truckers.
- cosmicgadget 1y agoFor covid. Presumably ebiester is interested in being vaccinated against other diseases.
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- JohnTHaller 1y agoDirect link in case the anti-science flagging brigade takes this down: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/kennedy-guts-acip-cdc-vaccine-panel-rcna211935 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/kennedy-guts-acip...
- bstsb 1y agoclinical science tends to have a leftist bias towards... being accurate? proven? safe?
- consumer451 1y agoI know that many might read the parent comment as flippant, or politically biased, but we are witnessing the insane reversion of scientific advancement. This is not a new trend: > There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti‑intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’ - “A Cult of Ignorance” by Isaac Asimov, published on January 21, 1980 in Newsweek
- giardini 1y ago[flagged]
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- consumer451 1y agoGot me. I wrote a giant semi-polarized screed to reply, then I got the joke. Comedy is legal again! (Use your context tool, an agentic LLM could do better! Click on profile and then comments before you judge someone so quickly!)
- refurb 1y ago
- fabian2k 1y agoAll the conflict of interest stuff is just a giant smokescreen. Kennedy is anti-Vaccine, he might sometimes pretend to not be againt vaccines but that is just misdirection. He's going to sow doubt about vaccines, he already removed vaccines from recommendations against all scientific evidence and will make new vaccines (and even adapted versions of existing vaccines) much harder if not impossible to approve.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoSomeone should ask him which vaccines he thinks are safe and effective. I'm guessing he won't be able to name one.
- ceejayoz 1y agoHe has at times claimed there are no safe and effective vaccines. https://www.factcheck.org/2023/11/scicheck-rfk-jr-incorrectly-denies-past-remarks-on-vaccine-safety-and-effectiveness/ https://www.factcheck.org/2023/11/scicheck-rfk-jr-incorrectl...
- adrr 1y agoIts fine to swim in a creek polluted with sewage though.
- barbazoo 1y ago[flagged]
- dekhn 1y agoWell, I think that's basically RFK's fundamental belief: people who have certain lifestyles are significantly more immune to a wide range of diseases, and that we should focus resources on improving lifestyle rather than investing it in expensive medical treatments. For all we know, RFK and his kids got sick but just didn't tell anybody.
- nitwit005 1y ago
- mullingitover 1y ago> “committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.” Packing the committee with a diverse group of cranks and cronies will surely restore confidence in the health care system.
- pixxel 1y ago[dead]
- canadiantim 1y ago[flagged]
- jibal 1y agoThey don't suggest that to any honest or informed person.
- ethbr1 1y ago>> Members of the ACIP are appointed to four-year terms, and many were slated to serve on the committee for another three years. Kennedy wrote Monday that “without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028.” So, another lawsuit against illegal executive branch dismissal of federal workers, then?
- pixelatedindex 1y agoIndeed, but sadly I’m sure the Supreme Court is more than happy to step in on Trump’s behalf and hand waive any issues away.
- GenerocUsername 1y agoIllegal? The committee is under the control of HHS Secretary... JFK. He literally has the authority to do what he did. Changing a plan you inherited but now own is not illegal.
- NewJazz 1y agoI'm not sure how this committee is structured and the rules around appointments, but members of many committees and boards that are part of the executive cannot be removed without cause.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- johnnyanmac 1y agoIANAL but executive retainers do tend to have some protections precisely for thus reason. You don't want a shift in presidency and then for them to hollow out 4+ years of tenure to advance their agenda. There needs to be some non-partisanship so the sceicne isn't bogged down by beuracracy. At the bare minumum, most government workers get due notice of their termination. The federal government is for the most part not at-will.
- dacox 1y agoWas this a new committee? there is a quote about this being a coup, but it is also noted that the previous administration selected the entire existing committee
- m-watson 1y agoFrom the way it is written it feels more like "Under Biden enough openings occurred that he selected the entire existing committee," where as under Trump they are being pushed out "“Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028,” Kennedy wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece. “A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science. ”"
- dacox 1y agoyeah, I see that. Apparently ACIP is very much not new. I am curious to the specifics of the prevous mass appointment, however.
- miltonlost 1y ago[flagged]
- dacox 1y agoI think it should fairly clear why I'm curious, as the article mentions > Although it’s typically not viewed as a partisan board, the Biden administration had installed the entire committee. After some degree of googling the history of ACIP I had not found any explanation and thought maybe someone here(who is actually American and maybe follows this kind of thing more closely?) would just know Looks like there are actually some comments now that are more clarifying. > Are you just asking questions to smokescreen for this executive power grab? I’m just trying to understand the background. I get that this is a sensitive topic, but I’d ask that we keep things civil and give people the benefit of the doubt when they’re asking honest questions.
- cosmicgadget 1y agoI'm sure Kennedy would like to eliminate vaccinations but this is probably just another purge of independent/nonpartisan/democrat elements of the government. Trump wants only loyalists so he can have total control over the function of the government. More likely we'll see vaccine policy be horsetraded for monetary contributions and pledges to root out DEI.
- leptons 1y agoAnd he wants to root out DEI so it will cause protests and then riots, so that he can declare martial law. They said they would do this, and we see it coming true now. I don't recognize the country I grew up in under this administration.
- giardini 1y ago[flagged]
- deepsun 1y agoThat's how dictatorship started in Belarus: a democratically elected president started violating the Constitution, and parlamentaries (aka congressmen) prepared the impeachment. Most active ones suddenly disappeared, those who protested got thrown out of the congress hall by guards by the order of president. Others got the message.
- ActorNightly 1y agoYep. And basically, as soon as that happens in US (which is a matter of when, not if, because Trump is for sure not going to let Dems win who will start prosecuting him and his cronies for all the blatantly illegal shit he has done), its time to leave the country.
- AlecSchueler 1y agoWouldn't now be the time to leave? A lot of people normally get stuck behind.
- josu 1y ago"Although it’s typically not viewed as a partisan board, the Biden administration had installed the entire committee."
- mudetroit 1y agoThey typically serve four year terms. When any president begins their term the entire board will have been appointed by the previous administration. Now if games were played to make most of the terms expire at the end of the term that's also not okay under any means.
- Qem 1y ago> Now if games were played to make most of the terms expire at the end of the term that's also not okay under any means. I think terms in boards like this should be filled under a different periodicity from the presidential term, preferentially with a period coprime to it, just like cicadas do. This way it would be harder to pull the trick of letting both cycles sync.
- m101 1y ago[flagged]
- solace_silence 1y agoHerd immunity?
- lucas_membrane 1y agoThat is an essential concept. Consider the Salk polio vaccine: before the results of the conclusive trials were announced, it was speculated that if the vaccine was 25% effective, everyone would want to have their kids vaccinated. The results came back at around 85%, and the acceptance of the vaccine was high and, because of herd immunity, it reduced the incidence of polio by approximately 99.9%. Further techniques, such as switching back and forth between live virus and dead virus vaccines at multi-year intervals, boosted the effectiveness to observationally 100% when compliance was very high.
- const_cast 1y agoVaccine mandates didn't make people like RFK anti-vax, they were already anti-vax because it's an ideology for them.
- cosmicgadget 1y agoI doubt he believes it. Rather, it is a platform he adopted for political power/relevance. After hearing his explanation of Russia invading Ukraine to "defend itself", I don't believe he is participating honestly.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- techpineapple 1y agoI sort of love the idea you present that maybe some conservative moderate pro-vaccine people are going to get screwed and maybe die of contagious diseases, and it’s somehow the fault of a bunch of people on the left. That this is a binary zero-sum game where either everyone gets forced to take a bunch of dangerous vaccines or no one gets any vaccines, and that the moral imperative is to promote an extreme ideology that is a reaction to an imagined majority that hold on opposing extreme ideology.
- gregwebs 1y ago[flagged]
- durkie 1y agoFrom the way you described it, it sounds like there were openings and Biden appointed folks to fill those openings. How is this different from any president filling any vacancy? By nature of the vacancy being filled, a future president won’t be able to fill it.
- helf 1y ago[dead]
- wat10000 1y agoAnd if they can be removed at will, as link 2 says, why does it matter?
- timewizard 1y agoIs it usual for 12 spots to be open simultaneously?
- chris_wot 1y agoNothing was normal under the first Trump presidency.
- normalaccess 1y agoVery fuzzy memory but I believe in the past it was common to leave these things for the incoming president (think Clinton era). Could be wrong.
- malfist 1y agoYeah, like SCOTUS vacancies
- Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
- JoeDohn 1y ago[flagged]
- archagon 1y agoThis shouldn't be flagged, it's literally HN CEO Garry Tan's favorite social media turn of phrase these days. Aren't we supposed to be following in the footsteps of our glorious thought leaders?
- hn-shithole 1y agoWe need to ostracize low-quality people like Garry Tan and Paul Graham.
- km144 1y agoGarry Tan is inexplicably cringe and annoying
- sys13 1y agoThis is a step back for science in the service of public health - I'm sad for the many children that will die needless deaths
- normalaccess 1y ago[flagged]
- rblatz 1y agoIt's amazing that within a single person's lifetime we can completely as a society forget how horrible these diseases were, and why vaccination was so popular and transformative around the world. Truly a victim of their own success.
- calgaryeng 1y agoYou are apt to be wrong.
- flanked-evergl 1y ago[flagged]
- drekk 1y agoThe pharmaceutical industry cannot make money off of you if you die of measles as an infant.
- flanked-evergl 1y ago[flagged]
- thatfrenchguy 1y agoThey absolutely will given how much an hospital stay costs.
- dh2022 1y ago
- _elf 1y agoEveryone in the VC community who helped elect President Trump is partially responsible for each child that suffers and dies from a vaccine-preventable disease due to this action.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoYou need to frame this in terms of quantifiable material loss to them in order for there to be a chance that they'd care.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- brianbest101 1y ago[dead]
- lbrito 1y agoThat won't help much because the quantifiable material loss in that scenario wouldn't be much.
- normalaccess 1y agoAnd if he is right the gain will far outweigh the loss.
- magicalist 1y ago> And if he is right the gain will far outweigh the loss So is your suggestion that medical policy based on balancing humours is actually effective altruism?
- normalaccess 1y agoBalancing humors? Odd way to phrase that. I am saying that if you save 1 kid in an extreme situation but injured 1000 to do it you are causing more harm than good. Our current policies favor fearmongering and cherry-picking to influence people to seek medical treatment that they don't need and come with side effects. The fact that Doctors get paid a kickback for high child VAX percentages alone is enough to make me toss out the whole idea.
- sergers 1y agoi am not a skeptic, but with covid19 vax i first hand witnessed completely irregular menstrual cycles, and nerve issues/trigeminal neuralgia that doctors have been unable to "explain" only occuring after my first jab and continue for years. i took 2 jabs at that start of covid vaxinations, fcked my life up to be honest. only now doctors they are saying may be related after years of inconclusive reports.. we jumped the gun on covid19 vax, i am fine with anything being out many many years. we wouldnt dare give it to our children. BUT we are upto date and will continue to be upto date on immunizations as required by local health and schools (covid is not one of them). so we arent anti-vax. we anti-letting us and our kids be the test bed.
- wizzwizz4 1y ago> i first hand witnessed completely irregular menstrual cycles, and nerve issues/trigeminal neuralgia that doctors have been unable to "explain" Sounds like perimenopause. Irregular menstrual cycles, and "doctors are clueless", are both symptoms of perimenopause; and trigeminal neuralgia is associated with menopause (see e.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3401754/#sec2-4 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3401754/#sec2-4 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4247552/#sec2-8 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4247552/#sec2-8). I'd recommend getting your bloods done, and then (if you are experiencing perimenopause) try taking enough œstradiol to get your levels back up: that might reduce the pressure on your trigeminal nerve, if the two things are related. (This of course increases your cancer risk, but for most women it's worth it.)
- sergers 1y agoI have seen 8 specialists in padt 1.5 years. And 15+ bloodtests as recent as 2 days ago. They reviewing my case for a case study at ubc med Anyone else feel free to armchair opinion and be skeptical. Did the vax cause the issues directly? Probably not. Did it trigger somehting dormant already in a cascading affect? Possibly... Keep down voting i guess if doesnt match your personal experience or u think ita just menopause
- ashdksnndck 1y ago
- andreygrehov 1y ago[flagged]
- simonw 1y agoExplain Samoa. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/rfk-jr-samoa-measles-vaccine-crisis-rcna187787 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/rfk-jr-samoa-measles-va...
- andreygrehov 1y agoSure. Years before Kennedy trained his focus on vaccine issues in Samoa, the small Pacific island nation had been experiencing low vaccination rates. Medical professionals attributed this to a shortage of doctors and nurses as well as demographic shifts, with more people moving to cities and away from social structures that helped promote childhood vaccinations. By 2017, only about half of 1-year-old Samoan children were fully vaccinated — far below the 95% coverage needed to prevent community spread and a steep drop from earlier rates that had reportedly reached 90%. The situation took a tragic turn in July 2018 when two nurses mistakenly combined an expired muscle relaxant with MMR vaccine doses instead of sterile water, leading to the deaths of two children. The nurses were charged with manslaughter, and the government responded by suspending the national vaccination program for 10 months. Vaccination rates for children dropped to 31%. […] In interviews, Samoan health officials told CBS News they believe Kennedy's actions were unlikely to have directly influenced what occurred. "It is well documented that RFK Jnr's visit to Samoa in 2019 coincided with increased anti-vaccine sentiment, particularly among certain groups," Samoa's Ministry of Health said in a statement. "However, there is no conclusive evidence that his visit directly contributed to the decline in vaccination rates or the subsequent measles outbreak."
- healsdata 1y ago"There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective." -- RFK Jr. How is that not anti-vaccine activism? You can watch the clip here: https://x.com/cwebbonline/status/1770188599096639573 https://x.com/cwebbonline/status/1770188599096639573
- tracerbulletx 1y agoThere is not a single ideologically valid defense for being anti-vaccine. It's just anti humanity, anti science, and anti life.
- jbritton 1y ago[flagged]
- WD-42 1y agoHow do these people even find HN.
- bdangubic 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- JCattheATM 1y agoHN has just become reddit for tech, and as tech became more accessible, the conservation population of tech workers and hobbyists did too. The other part of the answer is compartmentalization, I guess.
- Krssst 1y agoHN is very American, and somewhat half of America is pro-Trump (which often comes with being anti vaccine to some extent though they don't necessarily see it like this), is how I see it. I was quite surprised at first too. Large cities are much more on the Democrat side and developers tend to live in those so the number of Trump supporters is still on the lower end.
- WD-42 1y agoIt’s not about being American, it’s that having a brain so cooked as to believe in total conspiracy theories AND being a HN regular/developer used to be mutually exclusive.
- consumer451 1y agoIt was the politicization of vaccines during the latter stages of the COVID pandemic that finally broke my hopes for a positive future in the near term. I thought that something like a pandemic would have brought us all together around a base truth. However, politics + social media was stronger than R₀, this time.
- morkalork 1y agoWhen deaths lagged infections by weeks it was all over. Just seeing the tsunami of people dividing today's deaths by today's infections and loudly proclaiming it was no worse than the flu was just wow. People are that dumb aren't they. After that, there was no hope for any related topics more complicated or nuanced.
- const_cast 1y agoIt really proved to me that fear is the mind killer. When fearful, people will truly believe anything. Delusions go from something that only applies to the psychotic to something you see in every person.
- cryptoegorophy 1y ago[flagged]
- ghushn3 1y agoYou can make this point without the slur.
- breakyerself 1y agoAs much as I hate the slur I think it carries an irony in this context that couldn't be achieved otherwise.
- mindslight 1y ago[flagged]
- neonate 1y agohttps://archive.md/IuJ4r https://archive.md/IuJ4r
- hackernoops 1y ago[dead]
- fsckboy 1y agothere is an old principle of debate, that first you should be able to state your opponent's argument in a way that your opponent will not disagree with, and then you argue against what you just stated. Start now, I want to hear that you understand what RFK thinks. Go.
- mrtksn 1y agoI like the suggestion, but this is not a debate really, this is action. Kennedy isn’t debating anyone.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- somenameforme 1y agoHis decisions are not arbitrary. He lays out his logic, rationale, and evidence, but people seemingly are either unaware or uninterested in such, instead preferring to create strawmen to fight against. For instance another post here claims he doesn't "believe" in germ theory. That should immediately be a red flag of something taken out of context or misrepresented, and indeed it was. Here [1] is a blog which is highly critical of RFK's view on germ theory yet, unlike most media sources, it also lays out what he said in a vaguely reasonable way. He obviously does not reject germ theory in the least, but believes that having an overall healthier lifestyle and avoiding environmental toxins is a more effective means of ensuring your body can fight off infection than by focusing solely on specific germs. The article offers a quote that seems reasonable: "When a starving African child succumbs to measles, the miasmist attributes the death to malnutrition; germ theory proponents (a.k.a. virologists) blame the virus. The miasmist approach to public health is to boost individual immune response." Of course one can engage with modern medicine and live a healthy life, but I think his entire schtick is that the whole live a healthy life aspect of healthcare has been largely neglected over the past half century. Just reducing the obesity rate, for instance, would probably have a dramatically greater impact on health outcomes than any new medical discovery over the next 50 years - as we seem to have entered well into the domain of diminishing returns. But yet there will be many trillions of dollars pumped into those discoveries, with little to no meaningful effort made to curb obesity, unless it can be done with a drug - because that's where the $$$ is. [1] - https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-a-new-form-of-germ-theory https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-a...
- Moto7451 1y agoMy wife was born in the USSR and this year ended up coming down with HIB (a bacteria initially thought to be the cause of the flu) because it was not part of the inoculation schedule for the USSR and is not universally done. As a woman in her thirties she was sick and mostly bed ridden for two months and has vocal cord damage that may or may not be healed with physical therapy. The whole family picked it up from my son’s preschool where HIB is essentially harmlessly endemic due to inoculations. As a young child or infant, catching a particularly bad HIB strain can cause an infection of the brain and potential death. Meanwhile my son and I (both inoculated in our first months of life) had a very light cold, essentially unnoticeable on my part, and were ok in a couple days. Because we inoculate children against HIB no doctors sees serious cases like this in otherwise healthy adults and it took many rounds of seeing multiple doctors before they tried looking for HIB. The bacteria is very very common but only the immunocompromised are checked with any regularity. Incidents like this will become more common if these antivax anti science schemes are in effect for long enough. HIB is not a big flashy name because we have solved this problem. You get a “cold”, are told to rest, and you never remember it happening as time passes. My wife is not going to forget the part of her vocal range that does not work. She has had to stop her singing classes, something she loves. “You died of dysentery” is a meme in the US because the only people we collectively know who have had dysentery are the characters we played in the Oregon Trail as kids in school. As someone who has had Dysentery care of an outbreak in the Caribbean, I feel like we’re seeing the result of the tremendous success of our health programs allowing completely stupid thinking to gain power. What really pains me through all this is that the absence of disease does not mean that vaccines do not work! One would think the latest pointless measles outbreak would have been proof to convince people that the antivax rhetoric is all bunk, yet here we are. I don’t understand how we have gotten here beyond people simply not seeing up close what has been prevented by decades of programs. My parents are old enough to have grown up with people who were irreparably harmed by Polio. The only ones I know of are aging senators or when the odd documentary on iron lungs. The vaccine development for Polio is the example that people like RFK use against all other vaccines, as if they’re all made the same way and as if we had not learned from the experience. Regulations are often written in blood and it’s simply disgraceful that they are throwing away what has been codified so they can smugly sell onesies with “I didn’t get a vaccine” on it. Meanwhile RFK’s kids are vaccinated. Charlatan. If someone thinks they’ve actually been harmed by a vaccine, there’s a part of the government that would like to talk to you. Better do that fast before that gets torn down too.
- jimbob45 1y agoI’m not a fan of newspapers allowing their platforms to be used by federal officeholders for announcements. RFKJr has a much larger and better platform for this as a high-ranking member of the federal government. There’s no reason for him not to issue a release through the WH for this. Doing it through a paper just feels like the press is in bed with the government (ironically, given the content of this article). I’m okay with federal officeholders selling ideas in newspapers like Obama did with Obamacare. He didn’t receive special treatment - just another voice in the marketplace of ideas. It’s just the announcement exclusives that feel wrong.
- fuckyah 1y ago[dead]
- bediger4000 1y agoI believe that he promised not to do this during his confirmation hearing. He lied under oath, it would seem. One way or another, RFKJ has a truthfulness problem. You can try to excuse this with "politicians all lie". But that doesn't make him less a liar. Why should we now believe a single thing he says?
- drevil-v2 1y agoThis is a recording of an ACIP meeting to approve the Hep B vaccine in 2018... say whatever you want but this is not "Science" https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=tegyXGiQjsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=tegyXGiQjsc
- CBMPET2001 1y agoNot sure that such a heavily edited two-minute clip is fully representative of the over hour and a half-long meeting (which also includes a presentation detailing the years worth of science done in the leadup to that meeting)[0] [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAWGpASZexI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAWGpASZexI
- unsnap_biceps 1y agoI'm not sure what point you are trying to make here. That's a video of them voting for if a recommendation is adopted or not. The science was all done before the recommendation was put together.
- zymhan 1y agoWhy not?
- vlz 1y agoBecause they take a vote? I am not sure what you are hinting at here. I see some people who take a unanimous vote. They seem to be in agreement about an issue, maybe it was uncontroversial and they wanted to move on? What should we see here instead in your opinion?
- throwaway984393 1y ago[dead]
- tim333 1y agoJust to play devil's advocate, RFK says he's doing this because the past lot were corrupt and he wants to ensure "unbiased science guides the recommendations". You never know?
- defrost 1y agoThis seems like a real Laibach Sympathy for the Devil moment ...
- thomasingalls 1y agoWhat is this? "Disease is health" nonsense
- pkphilip 1y agoAbout time
- pkphilip 1y agoI can see that the downvote army has arrived.
- insane_dreamer 1y agoOne thing I don't quite understand is how vaccines have become such a left-right political issue. Is this because of the COVID vaccine mandate? But that was started under Trump and continued under Biden, so really both parties were involved in that. What did I miss? I also find it odd that in their reporting the media lumps all vaccines together, as either "safe" or "unsafe". I would trust a vaccine that's been around for decades giving us time to evaluate any long term effects, such as MMR for example, over a newly created one, about which we can only speculate as to the long-term effects.
- larrled 1y agoThe administration tears down another Chesterton fence. Herein lies the rub: nobody thinks they are rubber stamping. Finding people who are less likely to approve vaccines because they lack experience in pharma is just another way to be what his critics accuse him of, an antivax simpleton. It’s not necessarily neutral or pro-science to approve less. You might approve bad ones, and not approve good ones. You need people who are experts. You know who are probably the experts in pharmaceutical risk management? Pharma companies.
- allturtles 1y agoBeing anti-vax is a luxury position for people living in a place full of vaccinated people who want to signal that they are non-conformist and don't kowtow to the elites. Holding this position has zero cost as long as everyone else around you gets vaccinated (in fact, it's net positive, since you save the bother of actually getting vaccines). The cost/benefit analysis will change once enough people adopt this position and herd immunity dissipates. How many dead/mutilated children it will take to reverse course is unclear.
- TurkishPoptart 1y ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 1y agoAt no point did the Federal government institute a vaccination requirement for the general public, let alone for "healthy children". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccination_mandates_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccination_mandates_... Even if you weren't lying about that bit, non-mRNA vaccines exist and were approved in the US right alongside the mRNA vaccines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janssen_COVID-19_vaccine#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janssen_COVID-19_vaccine#Unite... Same for the elderly; largely, no requirement. Workers in nursing homes and other healthcare facilities were sometimes subject to requirements; many similarly have required flu shots for decades.
- ndjeosibfb 1y agokeep rewriting history and moving goal posts many states and municipalities had vaccine requirements to keep your job or go in public many universities required healthy teenagers to get covid vaccine to go to the school additionally there was a vaccine requirement for all employees of companies that did business with the federal government, i was ready to lose my job over it but they rolled it back at the last minute
- ceejayoz 1y ago"many states and municipalities..." is the exact goalpost move you decry. The parent post stated "previous administration overplayed its hand by requiring mRNA shots for healthy children, teens, and adolescents". That is a falsehood.
- DaSHacka 1y ago> Even if you weren't lying about that bit, non-mRNA vaccines exist and were approved in the US right alongside the mRNA vaccines. From your own source: > In April 2021, the CDC and the FDA issued a joint statement recommending that use of the Janssen vaccine be suspended, due to reports of six cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis—a "rare and severe" blood clot—in combination with low levels of blood platelets (thrombocytopenia), in six women between the ages of 18 and 48 who had received the vaccine. The symptoms occurred 6–13 days after they had received the vaccination, and it was reported that one woman had died and a second woman had been hospitalized in critical condition. Not exactly a great "alternative".
- ndjeosibfb 1y ago[flagged]
- feoren 1y agoBecause the prevailing narrative (by which I assume you mean "vaccines work and RFK Jr. is a crackpot") is completely obviously true to everyone with a shred of education on the subject, and disagreeing with it is dangerous and stupid? Sometimes true things are just true. There's also a prevailing narrative that "we should not wantonly kill and eat other humans on the street", and disagreeing with that would get flagged too. Censorship!!
- stouset 1y agoBecause it's not the "prevailing narrative". It's science and evidence-based medicine. Vaccines have saved well over a hundred million lives globally.
- therealpygon 1y agoRestore the trust he helped erode? After having stated repeatedly that he wouldn’t to congress? Sure…