"Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. keeps promising to "make America healthy again," but his summer-long anti-vaccine rampage made clear that his actual impact will be to make America sicker. A lot sicker. And, in too many cases, dead. Before we get down to cases, let's remember why we're here: Kennedy made a deal with Donald Trump that presumably got Trump some votes from RFK Jr.'s anti-vaccine followers, and Kennedy got the job he's craved for years."
"Kennedy loves to claim that America was healthier when his uncle, John F. Kennedy, was president, cherry-picking a few select statistics to make his point. He conveniently omits the fact that, as NPR noted in a fact-check, life expectancy back then was nearly 10 years shorter than it is today. Black people, whose life expectancy in 1960 was just 63.6 years, have made the biggest gains, coming much closer to parity with whites in recent years-no doubt due in part to all that research on vulnerable and underserved populations that Trump and RFK Jr. have been cancelling as alleged "DEI.""
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as Health and Human Services Secretary, has promoted anti-vaccine positions and implemented policies that restrict vaccine access, actions that will worsen public health and increase mortality. He obtained the role through a political deal that mobilized anti-vaccine voters. He rejects the consensus of medical, epidemiological, and virological experts while claiming superior knowledge. Historical public-health advances have raised life expectancy nearly ten years since 1960 and reduced under-five childhood mortality to less than one quarter of its 1960 rate, gains strongly linked to vaccination and targeted research. Recent FDA COVID-vaccine approvals were narrowed to older adults and medically vulnerable groups.
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