Kennedy made his most brazen attack on vaccines in January, slashing the CDC's childhood vaccine schedule from 17 immunizations down to 11 to be in line with recommendations of Denmark, a much smaller country with a relatively homogenous population and universal health care. The US is now an outlier among peer nations for recommending so few childhood vaccines.
Americans are also facing a bizarre epidemic of gullibility and cynicism-gullicism, if you need a portmanteau-that is drawing people into a world of conspiracism and falsehoods, one where facts are drowned out by a cacophony of extremely loud and wrong voices. Reliable information is both more available and harder to find than ever.
"At least in the immediate or intermediate future, the United States is going to be hobbled and hollowed out in its scientific leadership," said Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University public health law professor who was removed from a National Institutes of Health advisory board earlier this year with a letter that said he was no longer needed. "I think it will be extraordinarily difficult to reverse all the damage."
Islington Council won a legal case allowing them to vaccinate an eight-month-old girl in their care, despite her mother's objections based on disproven claims linking vaccines to autism The baby, under council guardianship due to concerns her mother could not meet her care needs, was scheduled for routine NHS vaccinations Mr Justice McDonald ruled vaccination was in the child's best interests, citing health risks from preventable diseases
This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss how Trump is using the powerful machine of government prosecution to reverse-engineer crimes supposedly committed by enemies, his diatribe against Tylenol at the disastrous press conference on autism, and the echoes of past Red Scares in today's free speech climate with historian Beverly Gage, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century.
Aseem Malholtra, an adviser to US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, said: "One of Britain's most eminent oncologists Professor Angus Dalgleish said to me to share with you today that he thinks it's highly likely that the Covid vaccines have been a significant factor in the cancers in the royal family." Wes Streeting, the health secretary, said that it was "shockingly irresponsible" of Reform to allow Dr Malholtra at the conference.
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. remained combative during an extraordinary Senate Finance Committee hearing on September 4 as Democrats grilled him about creating "chaos" at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the committee's ranking Democrat, said Kennedy fired career scientists at the CDC and replaced them with "cranks" and "conspiracy theorists" who promote mistrust in basic public health principles.
Stratus doesn't necessarily cause more severe illness than the variants we've seen before, and the symptoms are broadly similar-cough, fever, fatigue, and so on. There are some reports of "razor-blade throat," although that kind of extreme sore throat was seen with prior variants as well. But, by their nature, variants that arise are more transmissible; they've outcompeted other variants. From that perspective, they should be on our radar.
Several panelists ganged up on Jennings for focusing on the inclusive language used by one of the resignees, vaccine chief Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, instead of the misinformation and disinformation from RFK Jr. A frustrated Cupp presented Jennings with settled science on vaccines, as Jennings interrupted to say You seem to be very angry with me. I fundamentally agree with you.
A letter signed by hundreds of current and former HHS employees, addressed to Kennedy and members of Congress, says Kennedy is "complicit in dismantling America's public health infrastructure and endangering the nation's health" by questioning the integrity of the CDC's workforce, making false claims that COVID vaccines are not safe or effective, changing vaccine policy based on ideology rather than science, and contributing to "harassment and violence experienced by the CDC staff."
