Way back in 2018, a series of events in Samoa brought about the country’s worst measles outbreak in years. It started in July of that year when two 1-year old children who were given a measles vaccine subsequently died. While anti-vaxxers around the world gleefully jumped into action to blame the vaccine for those deaths, it turns out that the vaccine didn’t kill the children at all. Instead, medical professionals had accidentally mixed the vaccine with a muscle relaxer solution instead of sterilized water like they were supposed to. Despite that fact, the anti-vaxxers sowed all kinds of fear and disinformation throughout the country, whipping up negativity around measles vaccines. As a result of that, the government put a 10 months ban in place on the vaccine.
In June of 2019, RFK Jr. visited Samoa. He met with anti-vaxxer crusaders and government officials. Despite that, he has said publicly and in testimony before Congress that his trip there had nothing to do with vaccines and was instead about a medical records and tracking system the country was interested in. You can see an example of that claim in his own confirmation hearing.
Lots of people questioned that claim. And rightly so. The people he was meeting with, the timing in conjunction with the vaccination ban, it all lined up to yet another anti-vaxxer visiting the country to push their anti-vaxxer message.
Two months later, Samoa experienced a massive measles outbreak.
An outbreak began in October 2019 and continued for four months. Before seeking proper medical treatment, some parents first took their children to ‘traditional healers’ who used machines purchased that claimed to produce “immune-protective” water.
As of 22 December, there were 79 deaths. This was 0.4 deaths per 1,000 people, based on a population of 200,874, an infection fatality rate of 1.43%. There were 5,520 cases, representing 2.75% of the population.61 of the first 70 deaths were aged four and under. All but seven of the deaths were from people aged under 15.
At least 20% of babies aged six to 11 months contracted measles. One in 150 babies died.
This past week, documents and emails obtained by The Guardian and The AP show that everyone on the Samoan government’s side of the house understood Kennedy’s visit to be explicitly about vaccines, contrary to his statements, including statements before Congress. He was sworn in for that confirmation hearing, to be clear.
Documents obtained by The Guardian and The Associated Press undermine that testimony. Emails sent by staffers at the U.S. Embassy and the United Nations provide, for the first time, an inside look at how Kennedy’s trip came about and include contemporaneous accounts suggesting his concerns about vaccine safety motivated the visit.
The documents have prompted concerns from at least one U.S. senator that the lawyer and activist now leading America’s health policy lied to Congress over the visit. Samoan officials later said Kennedy’s trip bolstered the credibility of anti-vaccine activists ahead of the measles outbreak, which sickened thousands of people and killed 83, mostly children under age 5.
The AP post has a ton of details further down the article, but here is an example of the content.
Embassy staffers got a tip about Harding’s involvement in the trip from Sheldon Yett, then the representative for Pacific island countries at UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.
“We now understand that the Prime Minister has invited Robert Kennedy and his team to come to Samoa to investigate the safety of the vaccine,” Yett wrote in a May 22, 2019, email to an embassy staffer based in New Zealand. “The staff member in question seems to have had a role in facilitating this.”
Two days later, a top embassy staff member in Apia wrote to Scott Brown, then the Republican U.S. president’s ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, alerting him to Kennedy’s trip and Harding’s involvement.
“The real reason Kennedy is coming is to raise awareness about vaccinations, more specifically some of the health concerns associated with vaccinating (from his point of view),” the embassy official, Antone Greubel, wrote. “It turns out our very own Benjamin Harding played some role in a personal capacity to bring him here.” Greubel wrote that he told Harding to “cease and desist from any further involvement with this travel,” though the rest of the sentence is redacted.
Now, I have zero problem believing that Kennedy is lying about all of this. Lying is just what he does. And regularly. I also put the blood of all those dead children, and any long term health issues in the thousands of others, partially on Kennedy’s ledger. This is all simply common sense.
But the real travesty is something quite similar is happening right here, right now. The measles outbreak in America is speeding up, not slowing down. Kennedy, as with Samoa, is taking zero responsibility for it. If he’s taking any real concrete actions to combat it, I don’t know what those would be, nor would I understand why they’ve been hidden so completely from public visibility. Kennedy once opined that maybe it would be better if everyone just got measles.
If that is his real goal, it appears we’re on our way. But somebody besides a couple of press outlets should be investigating Kennedy for lying to Congress, at a minimum. And perhaps having a hand in the deaths of children, as well.
Echo chambers are generally bad. Any group making important decisions should have a certain level of diversity of thought to avoid groupthink. But I would argue that there are some stances that are so fundamental that it’s good when everyone is on the same page about them. Vaccines, for instance. It would be just the best if everyone in the agencies that manage American health, all the way up to the top, believed in the power and benefit of vaccines. Sadly, that isn’t the case.
RFK Jr. has fired many people for not agreeing with his stance that vaccines make people autistic, kill them, are bad because too many undesirables poison the gene pool, or whatever other crap he’s spewing these days. He fired Susan Monarez after only weeks on the job, reportedly for not agreeing to rubber stamp changes to vaccine schedules he wanted to make. He fired literally everyone on the CDC’s ACIP panel, the group that advises the CDC on those very same changes to vaccine schedules. There’s probably been more, as well.
We’ll have to see if NIH boss Jay Bhattacharya just started the countdown to his own termination, now that he has publicly broken with Kennedy on vaccines. In a Senate Committee hearing, Bhattacharya was grilled by Bernie Sanders.
NIH director Jay Bhattacharya, 58, faced the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on Tuesday. There, ranking member Bernie Sanders asked him point-blank, “Do vaccines cause autism? Tell that to the American people: Yes or no?”
After trying to hedge and say he did not believe the measles vaccine causes autism, he finally admitted, “I have not seen a study that suggests any single vaccine causes autism.”
Asked specifically about what his approach would be to the current measles outbreak in America, Bhattacharya was even more forceful.
Unlike his boss, Bhattacharya was vocally pro-vaccine during Tuesday’s hearing. Discussing the measles outbreak in the United States, he said, “I am absolutely convinced that the measles epidemic that we are seeing currently is best solved by parents vaccinating their children for measles.”
Reluctantly stated or not, those are sane comments that are completely at odds with Kennedy. Now, so there is no misunderstanding, Bhattacharya is still terrible. He made his name railing against COVID-19 policies and vaccine schedules. He’s also engaged in some politically targeted attacks on elite universities when it comes to grant money and the like.
But on this, he’s right. And that potentially puts his job at risk. RFK Jr. doesn’t like dissenting opinions. He tends to avoid them through firings. On the other hand, I don’t know if he can afford more chaos at HHS and its child agencies.
But when it comes to placing bets, betting against RFK Jr.’s ego is rarely a winner.
In any war, information is power. Be it kinetic wars, cyberwarfare, or information wars, data is everything. And since RFK Jr. has clearly declared war on vaccines in America, it’s not a huge surprise that he is looking to control information about vaccines. Or, as it turns out, simply sweep that information away.
Nearly half of the databases that public health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were updating on a monthly basis have been frozen without notice or explanation, according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The study—led by Janet Freilich, a law expert at Boston University, and Jeremy Jacobs, a medical professor at Vanderbilt University—examined the status of all CDC databases, finding a total of 82 that had, as of early 2025, been receiving updates at least monthly. But, of those 82, only 44 were still being regularly updated as of October 2025, with 38 (46 percent) having their updates paused without public notice or explanation.
Examining the databases’ content, it appeared that vaccination data was most affected by the stealth data freezes. Of the 38 outdated databases, 33 (87 percent) included data related to vaccination. In contrast, none of the 44 still-updated databases relate to vaccination. Other frozen databases included data on infectious disease burden, such as data on hospitalizations from respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
The following are points that should be as uncontroversial as they are plain and clear. Medical and health professionals cannot operate without data and information. Government agencies and professionals cannot make good public health decisions without good and current data and information. Operating in a vacuum could mean a death sentence for some, or mere horrific health outcomes for others.
Whatever Kennedy is aiming at when it comes to American health, it clearly isn’t for the sort of positive health outcomes mentioned above. If it were, this obviously coordinated attack on information about vaccinations and the diseases they combat in these databases wouldn’t be carried out.
“Given the vaccine skepticism of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, it is concerning that nearly 90 percent of the paused databases related to vaccination surveillance, with additional gaps in respiratory disease monitoring,” Freilich, Jacobs, and their co-authors write in the study.
These databases and the information within them are used to identify under-vaccinated populations relating to specific diseases so that public health officials can coordinate on responses to outbreaks of those diseases. Responses that typically involve vaccination campaigns to protect a population that hitherto has failed to protect themselves.
But it’s clear this iteration of government isn’t interested in those kinds of responses. You can see it plain as day in the reaction, or rather inaction, concerning the country’s current measles outbreak. Ostriches don’t actually stick their heads in the sand when in danger, but it appears RFK Jr. does. Or perhaps this isn’t being done out of fear. Perhaps this is all part of a coordinated plan.
In an accompanying editorial, Jeanne Marrazzo, CEO of the Infectious Disease Society of America and former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, stated the concern in starker terms, writing: “The evidence is damning: The administration’s anti-vaccine stance has interrupted the reliable flow of the data we need to keep Americans safe from preventable infections. The consequences will be dire.”
Marrazzo emphasizes that the lack of current data not only hampers outbreak response efforts but also helps the health secretary realize his vision for the CDC, writing: Kennedy, “who has stated baldly that the CDC failed to protect Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, is now enacting a self-fulfilling prophecy. The CDC as it currently exists is no longer the stalwart, reliable source of public health data that for decades has set the global bar for rigorous public health practice.”
This is dangerous. I would love to hear a single, coherent explanation why it would be a good thing for this data to no longer be available to public health professionals. Other than Kennedy wanting to play hide and seek due to his anti-vaxxer stances, of course. What good comes of us being more ignorant?
There is no answer, of course. There is only agenda. Facts inconvenient to that agenda will be disappeared.
The travesty that is RFK Jr. in charge of American health and what he’s done to the CDC’s ACIP committee for vaccines continues to be visited upon all of us. It’s really important to keep in mind that during his confirmation hearings, Kennedy lied repeatedly about his stance on vaccines. Supposedly serious senators, like Bill Cassidy, claimed they extracted promises from Kennedy that he wouldn’t screw with vaccination programs and the like. These were all lies, designed to get him past those hearings and into the post, where the GOP would close ranks and refuse to do anything so crazy like impeach a charlatan from a cabinet position.
This iteration of ACIP is a disaster. It is full of anti-vaxxers who have already altered the guidance on vaccines for COVID, Hep B, and childhood vaccines more generally. And this is all happening in the context of a measles outbreak that is now in month 13 and getting worse, despite that disease having been officially declared eliminated over two decades ago.
Well, as you know, retro and nostalgia are all the rage these days, so I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that ACIP is pining for other eliminated diseases to come back. In this case we have the chair of ACIP wondering out loud on a podcast whether we should be vaccinating for polio any longer.
The conversation started off with this absolute banger.
Early into the discussion, Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist, declared, “I don’t like established science,” and that “science is what I observe.” He lambasted the evidence-based methodology that previous ACIP panels used to carefully and transparently craft vaccine policy.
I barely know what to say. “I don’t like established science” is the kind of quote I would expect in The Onion, not on Ars Technica. As for the follow up line of “Science is what I observe,” that is a gross misrepresentation of the scientific process. Observation is certainly a part of the method. But you have to couple that observation with tedious and silly things like generating a hypothesis based on those observations, and then testing that hypothesis through rigorous and skeptical methodologies, typically experimentation.
To instead state his stance as he did on this podcast is lunacy. Milhoan went on to claim that vaccines had caused all kinds poor health outcomes, such as asthma, eczema, and deaths. Going even further, he claimed that measles and polio vaccines didn’t actually curtail the spread of those diseases, which flatly flies in the face of basic statistical analysis, before making the following jaw-dropping statement.
“I think also as you look at polio, we need to not be afraid to consider that we are in a different time now than we were then,” he said, referring to the time before the first polio vaccines were developed in the 1950s. “Our sanitation is different. Our risk of disease is different. And so those all play into the evaluation of whether this is worthwhile of taking a risk for a vaccine or not.”
Polio is no joke. While a large percentage of infections will present with little to no symptoms, it is an incredibly infectious virus. 6% of cases have more severe symptoms, including aseptic meningitis and paralysis. Infants infected can get encephalitis. It can result in horrific body deformations as well. The disease is so horrible that international health organizations created the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in the 80s.
And this assclown, hand-picked by RFK Jr., wants to use his position on ACIP to question the need to vaccinate against it?
In a statement, AMA Trustee Sandra Adamson Fryhofer blasted the question. “This is not a theoretical debate—it is a dangerous step backward,” she said. “Vaccines have saved millions of lives and virtually eliminated devastating diseases like polio in the United States. There is no cure for polio. When vaccination rates fall, paralysis, lifelong disability, and death return. The science on this is settled.”
Fryhofer also took aim at Milhoan’s repeated argument that the focus of vaccination policy should move from population-level health to individual autonomy. Moving away from routine immunizations, which include discussions between clinicians and patients, “does not increase freedom—it increases suffering,” she said, adding that the weakening of recommendations “will cost lives.”
Yes it will. Milhoan may not like established science, but that science is established for a reason. It’s also trivially easy to go look up case rates for polio and measles before and after mass vaccination programs were put in place and see the results.
Moving to curtail vaccinations of polio should be as clear a line in the sand as could possibly exist for those overseeing this fiasco in Congress. The anti-vaxxer stuff thus far has been bad enough to warrant impeachment hearings for Kennedy. This would be something completely different.
America is broken and it seems like nobody is bothering to try to repair it. That’s a general statement, to be sure, so if you need some marking point to serve as a specific example of our national malfunction, the return of measles to our country can fit the bill. It’s not quite as flashy as the secret police shooting citizens, of course. But I think that there is something about children with angry rashes across their necks sitting in hospital beds, or in body bags, that will have a way of clarifying the mind.
With a grifter like RFK Jr. at the helm of American health, having built a career based on anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories and health misinformation, our country became a fertile host once more to this horrific disease. Kennedy’s inability to properly communicate to the nation what needs to happen, which is another concentrated MMR vaccination effort, combined with his eugenics-lite belief system on matters of health, has all led to this. 2025 saw the highest number of Americans infected by measles in decades, 3 people died, we’re about to lose our elimination status for the disease, and an outbreak in South Carolina has us off to a rip roaring start to 2026.
While this is largely due to the unvaccinated population among us, allowing the disease to spread where it otherwise would not, we’ve seen enough breakthrough infections that even being one of the “responsible ones” won’t necessarily keep you safe any longer. And the South Carolina outbreak of measles is officially off the rails.
A week ago, ArsTechnica had an alarming post about how South Carolina saw well over a hundred new cases of measles and over 400 people quarantined in a handful of days.
Amid the outbreak, South Carolina health officials have been providing updates on cases every Tuesday and Friday. On Tuesday, state health officials reported 124 more cases since last Friday, which had 99 new cases since the previous Tuesday. On that day, January 6, officials noted a more modest increase of 26 cases, bringing the outbreak total at that point to 211 cases.
With the 3-month-old outbreak now doubled in just a week, health officials are renewing calls for people to get vaccinated against the highly infectious virus—an effort that has met with little success since October. Still, the health department is activating its mobile health unit to offer free measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccinations, as well as flu vaccinations at two locations today and Thursday in the Spartanburg area, the epicenter of the outbreak.
Those same officials had another dire warning: the outbreak had grown so big that they no longer had the ability to perform contact tracing. Where the disease would go next was anyone’s guess.
The outbreak is still growing to date. At least 88 more cases of measles were recorded in South Carolina in less than a week since the Ars post. Schools remain the most problematic vector, but it’s no longer just elementary and secondary schools that are in trouble. Colleges are now part of the party.
There are at least 15 schools — including elementary, middle and high schools — which currently have students in quarantine.
Health officials also warned of exposures at Clemson University and Anderson University, both located in northwestern South Carolina, which have a combined 88 students in quarantine.
While these numbers from South Carolina are publicly stated, the CDC site tallying measles infections apparently can’t keep up. The last time the numbers were updated there was January 14th, but even those numbers appear to be incorrectly low. The site also announces that it is moving its reporting schedule from every Wednesday to Fridays, which is your classic “bad news dumping ground” day.
Measles continue to spread in the Upstate but now, health leaders in Washington state say the outbreak here in South Carolina is connected to cases on the west coast. The Snohomish County Health Department confirmed three cases in children who were exposed to a contagious family visiting from South Carolina.
Previously, the Snohomish County Health Department and Public Health – Seattle & King County were notified that three members of a South Carolina family, one adult and two children, were infectious while visiting King and Snohomish counties from Dec. 27, 2025 through Jan. 1, 2026. The family visited multiple locations in Everett, Marysville and Mukilteo while contagious before being diagnosed. They also traveled through Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and visited a car rental facility near the airport.
In any sane administration, a measles task force would be mobilized to build out a strategy to contain these outbreaks, to communicate actions plans to the public, and to execute on actions designed to keep the public healthy. Trump, RFK Jr., and the health agencies they’re in charge of are barely talking about this. They are ignoring the problem and that will ensure that it becomes much, much worse.
Impeachments are what’s necessary here, starting with Kennedy, who is clearly asleep at the wheel. A feckless Congress unwilling to do its job should have members tossed out on their ass. Staff at HHS and its child agencies should be in full revolt, sounding the alarm.
Measles is no fucking joke, folks. But our government currently is.
Welcome to year two of the unmitigated disaster that is RFK Jr. being in charge of Health and Human Services and its child agencies. To call Kennedy an anti-vaxxer is not remotely controversial any longer, and probably never was. To state that he’s a corrupt peddler of misinformation from which he has, likely still is, and will in the future profit should be equally uncontroversial. And if there is a single health issue on which Kennedy has staked his dubious claims more than any other, it certainly must be autism spectrum disorder.
Kennedy, and Trump right alongside him, have been all over the map when it comes to his claims about autism. Kennedy was one of those leading the charge for decades in claiming that thimerosal in childhood vaccines was responsible for rising rates in autism diagnoses. When thimerosal was removed from most childhood vaccines over two decades ago and autism rates didn’t decrease, rather than admitting they were wrong, Kennedy and his cadre of hapless buffoons simply pivoted to another vaccine ingredient: aluminum. That ingredient has also been deemed safe by countless studies and experts. You know, people who actually know what the hell they’re talking about.
Since then, Kennedy has discovered all sorts of other causes of the disorder. Male circumcision? Autism! Make American girthy again, I suppose. Use of Tylenol by pregnant women and/or for young children? Autism! Fevers are super hot these days, y’all. And, of course, he is still claiming it might be vaccines too, because why the hell not? It’s not like measles is everywhere or anything.
Kennedy’s alteration of the CDC page on vaccines and autism to suggest that there just might be a link between the two is particularly appropriate, as the FDA just also disappeared a webpage informing the public on the various snake oil style scams that are out there purporting to treat autism as well.
…under anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who has numerous ties to the wellness industry—that FDA information webpage is now gone. It was quietly deleted at the end of last year, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed to Ars Technica.
The defunct webpage, titled “Be Aware of Potentially Dangerous Products and Therapies that Claim to Treat Autism,” provided parents and other consumers with an overview of the problem. It began with a short description of autism and some evidence-based, FDA-approved medications that can help manage autism symptoms. Then, the regulatory agency provided a list of some false claims and unproven, potentially dangerous treatments it had been working to combat. “Some of these so-called therapies carry significant health risks,” the FDA wrote.
The list included chelation and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, treatments that those in the anti-vaccine and wellness spheres have championed.
It should be obvious already that there is no evidence to suggest that these so-called autism therapies work in any way, shape, or form. That’s why the FDA had a page up warning against their use. In some cases, the danger in using them is no joke either.
Hyperbaric oxygen chamber use is probably the lesser of the two concerns. They won’t do anything for your autism, but they are typically found in facilities with staff who aren’t medical professionals and aren’t always trained well in their use generally. That’s how one five year old (!!!) that visited a wellness center that claimed to treat autism with hyperbaric chambers was incinerated inside it when a spark went off and all of that concentrated oxygen ignited. On the one hand, this person certainly doesn’t have autism any longer, though I don’t think that’s how the result is supposed to be achieved.
Then there’s chelation therapy, a process by which chemical injections into the body are performed, so that these chemicals can bind to metals within a person’s bloodstream, allowing them to be excreted through waste. Chelation actually does have legitimate uses, such as when someone has heavy metal poisoning, typically from mercury, lead, or arsenic. Using chelation therarpy to remove non-approved minerals, however, can have negative health outcomes, including death. And, of course, one of Kennedy’s minions is David Geier. Geier is an anti-vaxxer who joined HHS to “find” the cause of autism and has long been advocate for chelation therapy.
To address this nonexistent problem, anti-vaccine activists have touted chelation as a way to remove metals delivered via vaccines and treat autism. One of the most notorious of these activists is David Geier, whom Kennedy hired to the US health department last year to study the debunked connection between vaccines and autism. David Geier, along with his late father, Mark Geier, faced discipline from the Maryland State Board of Physicians in 2011 for, among other things, putting the health of autistic children at risk by treating them with unproven and dangerous hormone and chelation therapies. Mark Geier was stripped of his medical license. David Geier, who is not a scientist or doctor, was issued a civil fine for practicing medicine without a license.
So why is all of this being done? Money, of course! Kennedy has surrounded himself with these “health guru” snakeoil salesmen, both in government and out, and the lot of them have made buckets and buckets of money doing this sort of thing.
Generally, my experience is that people think RFK Jr. is one of two things. One common belief is that he’s a health savior, finally sticking it to a corrupt medical industry and telling the truth about the real causes of real disorders like autism. That’s incredibly wrong for a million different reasons. The other common belief is that Kennedy’s views on vaccines and health are super wrong, and that he’s very dumb, but also that he’s a true believer.
That’s wrong, too. This is a grift and always has been. A money-making scheme built on the backs of illness and death for those who listen to him, all while he collects a government paycheck. That he was confirmed as Secretary of HHS at all was profane. That our government has allowed all of his bullshit to go unchecked and unaddressed, however, is perverse.
Meet the new year, same as the old year, at least as far as America’s measles problem goes. We talked a lot about this disease last year, and for good reason. In RFK Jr.’s first year as Secretary of HHS, America managed to suffer its worst measles infection count since 1991. A direct product of the anti-vaxxer bullshit Kennedy and his followers have been pushing for years, America collected 2,144 confirmed cases of measles in 2025. That number is certainly an under-count, with who knows how many undiagnosed cases existing out there. Three people, including two otherwise healthy children, died. America is all but certain to have lost its elimination status of the disease. Of all the gravel-mouthed words that spilled out of Kennedy’s mouth in 2025, there were relatively few of them reserved for this highly contagious and deadly disease that is now circulating via various outbreaks in the country who’s health he’s in charge of managing.
The start of 2026 is likely to set us up for an even worse year for measles than the last. Over 5% of the total infections of measles in 2025 were reported in the last week of the year or so. It’s not slowing down. This disaster of a train may be still pulling out of the station, but it’s picking up speed. And while the CDC’s measles website, linked above, isn’t updated more than once a week at most, health officials are reporting a ton of infections in the ongoing South Carolina outbreak alone.
In a regularly scheduled update this afternoon, the health department said 99 cases were identified since Tuesday, bringing the outbreak total to 310 cases. There are currently 200 people in quarantine and nine in isolation. However, the outbreak is expanding so quickly and with so many exposure sites that health officials are struggling to trace cases and identify people at risk.
“An increasing number of public exposure sites are being identified with likely hundreds more people exposed who are not aware they should be in quarantine if they are not immune to measles,” Linda Bell, state epidemiologist and the health department’s incident commander for the measles outbreak, said in the announcement. “Previous measles transmission studies have shown that one measles case can result in up to 20 new infections among unvaccinated contacts.”
It’s not just the unvaccinated any longer. As 2025 went on, we began to see an uptick in what are called “breakthrough cases.” Health professionals who know what they’re talking about will tell you that 2 doses of the MMR vaccine are roughly 97% effective in preventing a measles infection. That leaves 3% of people exposed at a minimum and that’s before we get into the discussion of how that number is impacted the lower we get from the 95% immunization target to achieve true herd immunity. And if you followed the reported infection statistics throughout last year as I did, you saw the percentage of infections occurring among those that had gotten either 1 or 2 doses of the MMR vaccine increase.
At the end of the year, 3% of the infected had had one dose of the MMR vaccine, and 4% had two doses. Early in the year, those were hovering between 1% and 2% and then grew. Responsible people who protected not only themselves but their fellow citizens by doing the right thing and getting their shots were put at risk and infected by those who didn’t. This failure of civil responsibility once again went largely unchallenged by RFK Jr. because of some combination of lunacy and his own financial interests.
And the real fun hasn’t even begun yet. Measles is crazy infectious and likes to hide its contagious nature early in the infection, not to mention that the disease causes immunity amnesia for all kinds of other diseases, making those infected susceptible to all kinds of diseases despite inoculation, such as chickenpox and COVID19.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which only has data as of January 6, has tallied three confirmed cases for this year (two in South Carolina and one in North Carolina, linked to the South Carolina outbreak). Since then, South Carolina reported 26 cases on Tuesday and 99 today, totaling 125. North Carolina also reported three additional cases Tuesday, again linked to the South Carolina outbreak. In all, that brings the US tally to at least 131 just nine days into the year.
Do the math. Even if we pretend for a moment that infectious diseases like measles don’t work on an exponential schedule, we’re already on pace for well over 5,000 measles infections this year. Unless something is done, it will be many, many more cases than that. And a possible resurgence of COVID19, something to which I really did think Trump would be particularly allergic.
Unfortunately, rationality appears to have gone out of style. Replaced, I suppose, by a facial rash that then descends into further complications.
Rinse, lather, repeat. That is supposed to be the self-serving message on the back of a shampoo bottle, but it can easily be applied to Senator Bill Cassidy’s response to all the bullshit RFK Jr. continues to pull when it comes to vaccines.
The last time we saw this was back in October of last year. In the wake of an absolutely insane press conference in which Kennedy and Trump decided to point the finger at Tylenol, of all things, as a major cause of autism spectrum disorder, Cassidy bravely took to social media and the radio to criticize the HHS Secretary for essentially not having a single fucking idea about which he was speaking… and then he did absolutely fuck all about it. And now, days after Kennedy’s CDC altered the agency’s childhood vaccine schedule recommendations, he’s once more out in public spilling all kinds of words in response.
Cassidy, a physician and longtime proponent of vaccinations, said this move will “make America sicker.”
“As a doctor who treated patients for decades, my top priority is protecting children and families. Multiple children have died or were hospitalized from measles, and South Carolina continues to face a growing outbreak. Two children have died in my state from whooping cough. All of this was preventable with safe and effective vaccines,” Cassidy wrote on the social media platform X.
“The vaccine schedule IS NOT A MANDATE. It’s a recommendation giving parents the power. Changing the pediatric vaccine schedule based on no scientific input on safety risks and little transparency will cause unnecessary fear for patients and doctors, and will make America sicker,” he added.
Well, gosh golly gee, Senator, if only there was someone in some kind of position of power that could actually do something about it. Maybe a respected figure in the Republican majority, one who is a doctor by background and who cast and whipped up critical votes to confirm Kennedy’s appointment, who could do more than offer stern warnings about how horrible this is all going to be. I’d like to find someone like that and implore them to take action. Like… any action. Do literally anything other than flap their lips, as though that were accomplishing anything.
The incredible part of all of this is the context in which Kennedy’s betrayal of Cassidy has occurred. According to Cassidy, Kennedy committed to the following, either in confirmation hearings or to him personally:
Not changing vaccine review processes or slowing down vaccine approvals
Leave the CDC’s ACIP committee unchanged
Not changing the CDC website’s language debunking misinformation about vaccines and autism
Basing vaccine approvals and schedule recommendations on established and peer-reviewed science
Lie, lie, lie, and lie! It’s a superfecta of broken promises made to a sitting senator that has the stature, standing, and ability to do something about it. He could back the effort to impeach Kennedy, as he absolutely should. He could hit him in funding. He could haul him before Congress and demand answers, using his bully pulpit to expose the dangers further than some ExTwitter posts.
“Senator Cassidy put his personal political preservation above all by casting the deciding vote to confirm RFK Jr., even after raising many valid concerns over Kennedy’s pursuit of a dangerous anti-vaccine agenda,” said Kayla Hancock, Director of Public Health Watch, a project of Protect Our Care. “It is obvious that Kennedy was always hellbent on pushing vaccine misinformation to AmericansAmericans no matter how much the data and science show them to be safe and effective. And now, with each new baseless attack on vaccine safety and efficacy that Secretary Kennedy carries out — like gutting the child vaccine schedule — more American lives are needlessly put in jeopardy. Dr. Cassidy knows this better than anyone, and it’s time he backs up his empty words of ‘concern’ with serious action.”
Instead, we have Cassidy’s mere words. Inaction is tacit endorsement, as far as I’m concerned. And every day that goes by in which Cassidy continues to not lift a single finger to protect his own constituents at a minimum, and all Americans more generally, is another violation of the Hippocratic Oath he once took.
Dr. Kirk Moore had been on trial for five days, accused of falsifying COVID-19 vaccination cards and throwing away the government-supplied doses.
The Utah plastic surgeon faced up to 35 years in prison if the jury found him guilty on charges that included conspiracy to defraud the United States. Testimony had paused for the weekend when Moore’s lawyer called him early one Saturday this July with what felt to him like unbelievable news.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi had ordered Utah prosecutors to drop all charges, abruptly ending his two-and-a-half year court battle.
“I just literally collapsed to the floor, and tears rolling down my face,” Moore recalled in a recent interview.
Bondi’s announcement marked a striking reversal of how the federal government handled the prosecution of COVID-19-related fraud under President Joe Biden. It has since emboldened other medical professionals who were similarly charged to consider seeking reexaminations of their cases. And it signaled the increasing clout of doctors and politicians who champion what they call “medical freedom,” which rejects modern public health interventions such as vaccine requirements in favor of individual choice.
Dismissed by the medical establishment, this movement has nevertheless built momentum as distrust in government and medical systems grew after the coronavirus pandemic. It has also gained new influence in Washington, where longtime vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. oversees the nation’s health agencies. As President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, Kennedy has replaced members of a federal vaccine advisory panel with his own picks and pushed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to restrict access to some vaccines, including the coronavirus shot. The Trump administration’s evisceration of long-standing federal vaccine guidelines and rejection of scientific evidence have alarmed the American Medical Association and other professional medical groups.
Just days before Bondi’s decision, a federal prosecutor from her department had stood before the jury in Moore’s case and accused him of enrolling in the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution program in order to “sabotage” it, according to a court transcript. She had asked jurors to convict him and to “find that no one is above the law, not even a plastic surgeon.”
Moore said he’d signed up for the program in May 2021 to receive more than 2,000 free vaccine doses and accompanying proof-of-vaccination cards after some businesses, nursing homes and the military began requiring such proof for visitors and employees. He said his plan was always to give vaccine cards without providing the shots because he wanted to offer patients a choice to circumvent vaccine mandates.
Bondi explained her decision to dismiss the charges on X later that morning, writing that “Dr. Moore gave his patients a choice when the federal government refused to do so. He did not deserve the years in prison he was facing. It ends today.”
A spokesperson for Bondi declined to comment beyond what the attorney general posted on social media. The Utah federal attorney’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Moore was one of at least 12 health care professionals charged after giving or selling fraudulent COVID-19 vaccine cards since 2021, according to cases identified by The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica through government news releases and media clips. Those charged include midwives, nurses, pharmacists and another surgeon. Eight were charged in federal court by the Biden administration; prosecutors from California, New York and New Jersey brought state charges against four others.
Other than Moore, only one of these health care workers went to trial: a Chicago pharmacist whom a jury found guilty of selling on eBay blank vaccine cards that he had stolen from the Walgreens where he worked. The rest pleaded guilty and were sentenced to a mix of probation, home arrest and, in a few cases, prison. Many also were professionally disciplined with fines or suspension of their medical licenses.
Of those 11, the Chicago pharmacist appealed his conviction but the U.S. Supreme Court in November declined to hear his petition; his attorney told The Tribune and ProPublica that they are exploring a presidential pardon. One other health care worker said she, too, would like to be pardoned by Trump.
Some of these health care workers, along with those in other professions who were also convicted of vaccine card fraud, started a group called Covicted Patriot following the dismissal of Moore’s case.
“There are more of us than Dr. Moore,” they declared in July through an X account that bills itself as representing “Justified Felons & Persecuted Patriots who were victimized by a politically weaponized justice system for providing covid cards.”
“We celebrate his vindication as we pray for our own,” they wrote.
Moore said he supports their efforts: “I think anybody who took the same stance that I did, in large measures, should be pardoned.”
Brian Dean Abramson, an immunization law expert in Virginia who serves on the board of directors for the National Vaccine Law Conference, said that medical workers falsifying vaccination cards is “absolutely horrifying” from a public health perspective. Their actions, he said, fuel distrust of the medical profession and create blind spots in disease surveillance and response, increasing the likelihood and severity of outbreaks. (A simulation model published in JAMA in April predicts a reemergence of diseases that had been eliminated in the United States, such as measles, and accompanying deaths as a result of declining childhood vaccination.)
“This undermines every layer of the system that protects us from infectious disease,” Abramson said. “Vaccination policy relies on accurate records and honest medical participation.”
“Everybody Got What They Wanted”
Moore met with The Tribune and ProPublica in his clinic in the Salt Lake City suburb of Midvale. A neat row of clogs, his preferred footwear, lined one wall of his cluttered office. The 60-year-old physician wore black scrubs and a “Trump 2024” rubber bracelet stacked atop a gold chain.
Moore, a licensed physician in Utah since 2005, doesn’t deny the government’s claims: that he gave falsified vaccine cards to patients, that his staff threw away doses, and that, in some cases, he gave children saline shots instead of the COVID-19 vaccine at their parents’ request.
“All of that stuff is true,” he said.
In an interview that lasted nearly two hours, Moore said choosing whether to get vaccinated is deeply personal and the decision should be made between patients and their doctors — not mandated by government or businesses. The Trump administration has similarly framed vaccination as a personal choice in its dismissal of established public health guidance.
Moore referred to COVID-19 vaccines as “bioweapons” a dozen times and said he distrusts how quickly the government facilitated the vaccines’ rapid development and distribution. He said he concluded the vaccines were unsafe after conducting his own online research that he said cast doubt on the medical technology used in their development and the amount of testing before the first doses became available under emergency use authorization in December 2020.
The COVID-19 vaccine was developed in record time during Trump’s first term, less than a year after federal authorities declared a public health emergency — a feat Trump touted at the time as a “monumental national achievement.” This was made possible by a federal effort known as Operation Warp Speed that reduced bureaucracy and invested in clinical trials and manufacturing, according to a 2021 report by the Government Accountability Office — not due to any shortcuts in testing. The technological backbone of the vaccines, known as mRNA, has been in development for decades by scientists who won the 2023 Nobel Prize in medicine.
Moore said that the vaccines “failed in every animal test.” “All the animals died, and now all of a sudden, we’re going to use the human population as our guinea pigs,” he said. The Food and Drug Administration has previously told reporters that such claims, widely promoted among vaccine skeptics during the pandemic, are false.
The plastic surgeon said that he believes all vaccines are “poison” and that they have not been adequately tested — a view he says he has held for more than two decades.
Vaccines approved by the FDA and recommended by the CDC have been proven to protect public health by preventing disease, serious illness or death. Major health authorities like the World Health Organization have affirmed the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines, which researchers estimate prevented more than 14 million deaths worldwide in their first year.
Prior to signing up for the CDC’s vaccine distribution program, Moore did not provide vaccines in his business, the Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah. The “bread and butter” of his practice, he said, is a method of “rapid recovery” breast augmentations that he says he developed, which allows patients to return to their routines with little downtime.
“They were looking for anybody and everybody to get these bioweapons out,” he said about joining the government program, which was open to all health care providers who agreed to comply with the CDC processes, such as storing the vaccines at a certain temperature and recording who had been vaccinated. “And so, it was a pretty simple process.”
In December 2021, a husband-and-wife couple who Moore had met through a mutual acquaintance came to his home for dinner, according to a prosecution trial brief. “While they were there, Dr. Moore personally handed them both pre-completed CDC COVID-19 vaccination record cards with their names and birth dates on them, falsely purporting to show that the couple had received COVID-19 vaccines from the Plastic Surgery Institute,” the brief said. “Dr. Moore did so knowing that neither of them had been vaccinated for COVID-19, and without administering a COVID-19 vaccine to either of them.”
Within weeks, prosecutors said, Moore had started handing out fake vaccine cards in his medical office to anyone who was referred to his business by people who had already received a falsified card.
As word spread, Moore’s employees suggested patients who wanted a card could donate $50 via Venmo to a local health freedom advocacy group called the Health Independence Alliance, according to Moore. The husband of the couple to whom Moore first gave the fake vaccine cards testified at the Utah Legislature in January on behalf of the Health Independence Alliance on a vaccine-related bill. Moore says that he supports the group but does not run it; the Health Independence Alliance declined to comment in response to a request sent to the email listed on its website. The couple, who were not charged, declined to comment.
When sending their donation, patients were told to include an emoji of an orange in the Venmo subject line, according to federal prosecutors, and they were also instructed to bring an orange with them to the waiting room of the clinic. “At one point, there was a large basket full of oranges” at Moore’s clinic, prosecutors said in their trial brief.
Moore confirmed this system in his interview with The Tribune and ProPublica, saying the piece of fruit was a quiet signal to his busy staff that the patient was there for a falsified vaccine card.
He said during this time he maintained his plastic surgery practice while distributing fake vaccine cards and treating COVID-19 patients with ivermectin and other methods. Ivermectin has not been authorized by the FDA or recommended by the CDC to treat COVID-19.
An undercover state licensor called Moore’s office in March 2022 and asked to make a vaccine appointment during the criminal investigation after someone complained to the state health department, according to the prosecutors. At his clinic, the licensor, posing as a patient, received a vaccine card attesting to her vaccination without ever being offered a shot, prosecutors said.
Federal prosecutors alleged in their trial brief that a portion of the donations for the advocacy group paid a part-time worker at the plastic surgery clinic $18 an hour to give out falsified vaccine cards and administer saline shots to children. The worker, who could not be reached for comment, testified against Moore as part of an agreement with prosecutors to dismiss her charges after the trial, according to prosecutors’ trial brief.
Moore said during an interview that he didn’t make any money himself and never directly charged patients for these cards. He added that every adult patient who got a fake card had wanted one.
“Nobody in my practice was ever tricked. Nobody came to me expecting a vaccine and didn’t get it,” he said. “Everybody got what they wanted.”
But some children who received saline shots at their parents’ request falsely believed they were being vaccinated against COVID-19, according to court filings and Moore. This was a breach of medical ethics because doctors have a duty to build trust between their community and the health care system, said Wendy Parmet, director of Northeastern University’s Center for Health Policy and Law.
Moore said he gave kids the saline shots so they wouldn’t be bullied if their peers found out they got a vaccine card without getting a shot. “I did have some parents that didn’t want their kid to know that they were getting something fake,” he said.
He didn’t question the parents’ deception, Moore said, because he didn’t want to “intervene in their family dynamic.”
“You have to stand up for what you feel is right,” he said. “That’s the reason why I did what I did. I had no intention of defrauding the federal government.”
Emboldening a Movement
On the first day of Moore’s trial in July, about 60 supporters — including state lawmakers like House Speaker Mike Schultz — gathered on the stairs outside the federal courthouse in Salt Lake City. They waved American flags and held signs protesting Moore’s charges at a busy intersection. The doctor tearfully thanked the crowd before walking into the courthouse where a jury would soon be selected.
The rally increased public and social media attention on Moore’s case, eventually reaching Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. She sent a letter to Bondi, urging the U.S. attorney general to drop Moore’s charges.
“Dr. Michael Kirk Moore deserves to be celebrated, not prosecuted, for his bravery in standing up to a system that prioritized control over public health,” Greene wrote in her July 12 letter. Her office did not respond to requests for comment. (Greene, an early supporter of Trump’s, recently announced her resignation from Congress after falling out of the president’s favor.)
That same day, Bondi ordered the charges be dropped and thanked Greene and Utah Sen. Mike Lee in posts on X for bringing the case to her attention. Lee’s office did not respond to questions about his role in the dismissal of Moore’s case.
Utah prosecutors then dismissed the charges against Moore, his business and a neighbor who prosecutors alleged had organized the donations to the health freedom advocacy group. Prosecutors also dropped charges against his office manager — who had pleaded guilty — and the part-time worker. Both of these employees testified against Moore and his neighbor the day before Bondi’s announcement. Neither the neighbor nor the office manager responded to requests for comment.
Less than a week after his charges were dropped, Moore and his fiancée flew to Washington, D.C., at Bondi’s invitation to meet with her and Greene; Moore said he asked if Lee could join them. Moore said the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank founded by former Trump administration officials, paid for his travel. (The group did not respond to a request for comment.)
Moore described the meeting as low-key and genuine: “It was a handshake and a hug to both M.T.G. and Attorney General Bondi.”
Moore estimates that he lost about two-thirds of his plastic surgery business after his 2023 indictment because he had used his marketing budget to cover his legal expenses. As he’s tried rebuilding his practice in recent months, he rebranded as Freedom Surgical & Aesthetics. He said he started thinking about a new name during the 22 days he spent in jail in November 2024 after a judge determined he had violated pretrial rules by communicating with other co-defendants.
The new name “stands for freedom and for people’s ability to choose,” he said. Images of the American flag and bald eagles appear on his clinic’s new website among photos of svelte women.
Moore’s medical license is in good standing. A state licensing division spokesperson would not say whether the agency is considering taking action against his license.
The lack of consequences for medical workers who falsify records could encourage others to undermine public health guidance, said Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Offit, who served on the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel from 1998 to 2003 and has clashed with Kennedy over vaccine policy, was kicked off a vaccine advisory committee for the FDA in August.
“The first two years of the pandemic turbocharged the medical freedom movement, which is a euphemism for basically saying that I don’t need experts. I will do my own Google searches and decide what’s right and what’s not,” Offit said. “Even if it goes against what is standard medical practice or medical wisdom, I’m going to decide for myself — and my neighbor be damned, in the case of vaccines.”
As Moore vows to “do everything I can to get COVID shots off the market,” others who faced similar legal battles say his turn of fortune has inspired them to fight their convictions.
Julie DeVuono, a former nurse in Long Island who also distributed fake vaccine cards to her patients, said she and two others created the CovictedPatriot X account after others who gave out fake cards reached out to her in response to her social media post celebrating Moore’s vindication.
New York state prosecutors had charged DeVuono with forgery and money laundering for using the proceeds from the fake vaccine cards to pay her mortgage. She pleaded guilty in 2023 and was sentenced to community service and probation. Her home was also seized as part of a $1.2 million forfeiture, and she lost her nursing license.
“Is there any chance for us to get some kind of restored justice?” she said in an interview.
DeVuono, 53, said she feels she and others who were convicted of similar crimes were treated unfairly, but she can’t ask for a presidential pardon because her charges were filed in state court. Instead, she’s advocating on behalf of others who can beseech Trump, such as Kathleen Breault, a recently retired midwife and nurse in New York.
Breault faced a possible five-year prison sentence after she and a co-defendant were indicted in federal court in 2023 for destroying thousands of vaccines and issuing falsified vaccine cards.
“I was terrified,” Breault, 68, told The Tribune and ProPublica. “But I also felt defiant, because I felt like what I did was right.”
She said if she had gone to trial, her defense would have been civil disobedience. But Breault has health issues and cares for her grandchildren. She said her children urged her to do whatever she needed to in order to avoid a prison sentence.
So she pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the United States — a felony — and was sentenced last December to three years probation. (Her co-defendant, who died in March, had also pleaded guilty.)
Breault said she was buoyed by news over the summer that similar charges against Moore were dropped at the behest of the Trump administration. The outcome of Moore’s case has motivated her to begin the process of asking for a presidential pardon.
A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about whether Trump has received any pardon requests from health care workers indicted in connection with the pandemic or if he would pardon them. He has not pardoned anyone in that situation, according to a review of the clemency grants in his second term listed on the Department of Justice’s website.
Breault said she’d like to have her conviction erased so she’s not limited by her felon status. She’d like to own a gun again, but those with felony convictions are prohibited from possessing firearms in New York. She’d also like more freedom, including not having to report to her probation officer when she travels or how much is in her bank account.
“After seeing what happened with Kirk,” she said about Moore, “maybe if I didn’t take the plea, I wouldn’t have a felony conviction now.”
The Trump administration’s war on vaccines continues, it seems. We’ve already written extensively about all the bullshit RFK Jr. is pulling when it comes to public health around vaccines. From his dismantling the CDC’s ACIP committee and rebuilding it full of anti-vaxxer allies, pulling public funding for research on new and better RNA vaccines, to rescinding the recommendation for vaccine schedules for diseases such as COVID and hepatitis B, it’s an absolute nightmare. And what is particularly cruel about the nightmare is how it will be chiefly visited upon the most vulnerable possible population: children.
I can’t say for sure that Kennedy is purposefully endangering children, but it’s difficult to think of what he’d do differently if that were his intention. The latest example is the CDC changing the childhood vaccination schedule recommendations out of the blue to mimic Denmark’s, for some reason.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday announced an unprecedented overhaul of the childhood vaccine schedule that recommends fewer shots to all children.
Under the change — effective immediately — the vaccine schedule will more closely resemble Denmark’s, recommending all children get vaccines for 11 diseases, compared with the 18 previously on the schedule.
From all the reporting, this wasn’t something that came out of the current iteration of ACIP. There was no meeting between the CDC and FDA to discuss changes to the schedule. There were no public hearings in which experts could weigh in and the public could get a glimpse into any reasoning for the changes. Instead, there was just the announcement, as though Kennedy himself wrote up the press release after finishing off some half pullups in his Levi’s.
The changes are significant and may have a downstream impact on what is covered by insurance and what is not. Vaccines that used to be universally recommended for children, but which will now be recommended only for “high risk” individuals and/or be recommended based on “shared clinical decision-making” are extensive.
Vaccines recommended for high-risk groups are shots for RSV, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, dengue and two types of bacterial meningitis.
The vaccines that are recommended based on shared clinical decision-making are for rotavirus, the flu, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and bacterial meningitis. The Covid vaccine was moved to shared decision-making last year.
So what is the problem Kennedy is ostensibly trying to solve for by reducing the total number of childhood vaccinations? It’s nothing new, as it turns out. Instead, this is all about reducing exposure to aluminum, which is a common ingredient in vaccines used to produce a better immune response to the shots themselves, thereby increasing the protective response to the vaccines. Kennedy and other anti-vaxxers have long blamed aluminum in vaccines for all sorts of ailments, autism being but one of them.
Interestingly, a recent study out of Denmark itself indicated there was no risk from exposure to the aluminum in vaccines.
A major study from Denmark, published in July, found that aluminum exposure from vaccines isn’t harmful. Kennedy demanded the journal retract the study, calling it “a deceitful propaganda stunt by the pharmaceutical industry”; the journal didn’t issue a retraction.
As per usual, Kennedy is absolutely all over the place with this sort of thing.
There is something else that everyone should keep in mind when you hear that we are modeling the vaccination schedule after Denmark, which has admittedly good health outcomes generally for its population: America isn’t Denmark. And while that may sound flippant, it isn’t and it really, really matters.
Anders Peter Hviid, the senior author of the Danish study on aluminum in vaccines and a professor in the department of epidemiology research at Statens Serum Institut in Denmark — that country’s equivalent of the CDC — wrote in an email in December that Denmark has a more homogeneous population than the U.S., with greater trust in public health institutions, universal and free health care and lower rates of serious outcomes from infectious diseases that it doesn’t vaccinate against but the U.S. does.
Denmark’s robust public health system, for example, makes it much easier for the country to test pregnant women for hepatitis B and ensure that babies born to women who test positive are vaccinated against it. A similar approach, now endorsed by the CDC, hadn’t been successful in the U.S. at cutting infection rates in children.
There’s a reason why public health experts are suggesting the changes Kennedy has made are dangerous. Context-free claims that we’re just modeling the vaccine schedule after another successful industrialized European nation entirely miss the point. The state of healthcare and the complexity of the population in each country are wildly different. And smart healthcare professionals understand the implications of those differences.
Kennedy understands none of this. Nor does he seem particularly interested in becoming educated on the matter. He’s an anti-vaxxer who has been given enormous power to foist his misguided personal conspiracy theories onto the American people.
There can be no doubt that there will be unhappy consequences to this.
