RFK Jr: No qualifications + dangerous, crazy ideas = Doozy of a nominee.
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As bird flu — and God knows what else — heads our way, what could possibly go wrong with Bobby K. Jr. in charge of the United States Department of Health and Human Services?
That department, 80,000-strong, oversees a huge empire, including the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, Medicare and Medicaid, and so much more.
The latest thing we ought to be worried about — probably really worried about — is bird flu, which, while still just “on the horizon,” ticks up by the day and, on a per-case basis at least, can be far worse than COVID-19. (And — surprise, surprise — COVID-19 is back in yet another incarnation. Also, a nastier, more deadly version of monkeypox has reached the US, though it’s not yet affecting the general public.)
On the bird flu front, the bomb is ticking, as millions of infected birds have already shared their disease with thousands of dairy cows in growing numbers in several states, and numerous other mammals, including bears, coyotes, big cats — and house pets? It has even spread to the Antarctic, where it is killing elephant seals. (It’s also infected at least one pig. Go here to read about the exceptional dangers that poses.)
And since April, 2024, 52 people in the US have been infected; worldwide, it’s 909 — and over half have died from it.
“Every time we see the virus go from birds into mammals, we worry about the virus adapting closer and closer to being able to infect and be transmitted efficiently between humans,” said Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Matthew Binnicker.
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Bobby Jr. has long given us every indication that he’s not the person we want in charge of health policy under the best of circumstances, but especially not when something particularly dangerous is on the horizon.
As reported this week in The Washington Post, the growing list of former highly placed health officials speaking out against his appointment now includes both Scott Gottlieb, the head of Trump’s first-term Food and Drug Administration, and Jerome Adams, Trump’s first-term surgeon general.
Should we worry, along with them, that Kennedy will do what he has said he would do?
Or was it all an act to build a following by hooking the gullible — while, secretly, he’s always believed in science and knows that vaccines and strong, coordinated central action are essential for survival in a pandemic?
Either we can take him at his word or we can’t — I’m not sure which is scarier.
But let’s hope that he’s a certain kind of bad guy — cynical and calculating. That is, that he knew there was a constituency who was desperate for some explanation for the host of tragedies that befall us — ready to be told that everything could be blamed on the government and the pharmaceutical companies, that there was some magical alternative to the long, slow slog of research, carefully designed experiments, and large scale testing.
And let’s hope (against hope) that suddenly he gets religion, and says, Well, now that I’m inside the establishment, I’m listening to actual experts, and, in retrospect, no, I didn’t really mean or shouldn’t have said all those things I said.
What Things? Here’s a Small Selection
Trump’s transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick described Kennedy’s plans:
He says, if you give me the data, all I want is the data and I’ll take on the data and show that it’s not safe. And then if you pull the product liability [protection], the companies will yank these vaccines right off of the market. So that’s his point.”
On X, formerly known as Twitter, Kennedy recently wrote:
FDA’s war on public health is about to end. This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma. If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.
Bird flu has been found in raw milk. And does Kennedy know of all the other dangerous bugs in raw dairy products? Like salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, toxins producing E. coli, Brucella, Campylobacter, and many other bacteria.
And of course, to take what Kennedy said literally, he believes the federal government up to now has been against vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, and exercise, and exclusively supports expensive drugs for everything.
Separating what Kennedy himself believes from what he wants others to believe can be tricky. But here’s a case where he appears to have knowingly promoted a false story in order to discourage parents from getting their children vaccinated against the usual childhood diseases, including measles.
In July 2018, two infants died immediately after being vaccinated in Samoa. At first everyone — including Kennedy — assumed the vaccines were to blame. Then, in August 2019, it was announced that two nurses had accidentally poisoned the babies — yet, Kennedy’s anti-vax ads continued to exploit those infant deaths as a reason to avoid getting vaccinated.
Thanks to his efforts, measles has been spreading, but does he still believe that Samoa’s long, measles-free period (before the drastic reduction in vaccinations) was due to “nutrition and clean water, not the vax”?
Referring to vaccines in general, RFK said, “They get the shot, that night they have a fever of 103, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone. This is a Holocaust, what this is doing to our country.” Does that sound like your experience, or that of your family and friends?
Other claims:
– HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. Big Pharma obscures its true cause — decadent living, recreational drugs — in order to profit over its treatment AZT.
In the early 2000s, such AIDS denialism led to South Africa’s failure to provide antiretroviral drugs, leading to hundreds of thousands of preventable AIDS deaths and HIV infections. Could something like that happen in the US?
– 5G cellular networks allow governments to collect users’ private information and “control” their behavior.
– WiFi radiation causes “cell phone tumors” and “opens your blood-brain barrier” to toxins.
– Fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease. (Actually, fluoride reduces dental decay and has been proven safe in decades of studies since its introduction into water supplies.)
– COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese. (This notion was first proposed by Dr. Sherri Tenpenny.)
– Antidepressants are linked to mass shootings.
For our extensive coverage and bold take on Kennedy’s anti vaccine and quack cure activities, please go here, here, here, here, and here,
What If?
But what if he did and still does mean all of this? Shouldn’t we all be open-mouthed at the prospect of this singularly mismatched man heading up a vast and complex enterprise for the public good? More importantly, perhaps, should we not be 100 percent terrified about Bobby Jr. being our commanding general when a new war against a deadly contagious disease might be headed our way?
And who might our commanding general draft to help him with this? One of his advisers — whose work he has endorsed and who was part of his Virtual Health Policy Roundtable (June 27, 2023) — the Holocaust-denying osteopath, Sherri Tenpenny? That luminary who Kennedy said “is leading this movement against vaccines.” The one who claimed vaccines leave people magnetized: “They can put a key on their forehead. It sticks. They can put spoons and forks all over them and they can stick.”
Related: RFK Jr.’s Panel of Health Hoaxers, Hustlers, & Hucksters – WhoWhatWhy
Notwithstanding the (belated) public and media alarm and criticism that finally swamped him fairly late in the election process, it still seems that not enough of the actual danger has been made manifest to the Senate and the American people.
It’s impossible to know whether he actually represents more of an existential risk than Matt Gaetz would have posed running Justice, or Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon, or Tulsi Gabbard heading up national intelligence. But one can argue the stakes are chillingly high.
Who needs to ponder this? Well, the Republicans in the Senate.
Since the Democrats basically made it harder in 2013 for the opposition party to filibuster nominees, it’s entirely a GOP decision now.
What will it take to convince just a few Republicans in the Senate that common sense and our shared common destiny means choosing to protect health and lives? That this must take precedence over their personal need to mollify Trump and his most fervent zealots and thus avoid primary challenges in upcoming elections?
It’s up to us to sound the alarm. And it’s up to rational Republicans to do the right thing. Now, not when we’re in the midst of a new pandemic. The next Senate majority leader, John Thune (R-SD), made clear that his fellow Republicans might not rise to the occasion.
“We take that role seriously, but we also are not going to allow the Democrats to obstruct or block President Trump and the will of the American people,” he said November 14 on Fox News.
It sounds like that determination applies as well to Bobby’s fellow public health brick-throwers — such as herd immunity-proponent Jay Bhattacharya to head NIH; Marty Makary at FDA; Christian memoirist, vitamin supplement entrepreneur, and Fox News contributor Janette Nesheiwat as surgeon general; and Dave Weldon for CDC — all of whom require Senate confirmation.
If Thune’s is a pure political calculation, he and his colleagues on that side of the aisle may come to regret their stance should things go terribly wrong.
Presumably, they’re already assessing how often they can go against their party leader and under what circumstances. A sort of “Get Out of the Doghouse Free” card.
Of course, it’s very rare, under ordinary circumstances, for senators to vote against the picks of their same-party president. But these are not ordinary circumstances, and we’ll all have to make a great effort to ensure those senators do the right thing, not the expedient thing.
With perhaps thousands or even millions of lives at stake, there’s not a moment to lose to start banging the nonpartisan, commonsense drum. To be sure, at this moment, it seems futile to try anything at all. Yet these are deeply unsettled, unpredictable times, and we just never know.
One thing certain to get the Senate and public’s attention would be a dramatic mass-message from the scientific and medical communities — best delivered in the form of a March on Washington led by our frontline caregivers. Remember: This would not be some pointless idealistic exercise. We’re talking about everyone’s well-being.
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