I take particular umbrage to the people who crow about personal choice when it comes to vaccines. When your choice endangers the lives of others, that's a real problem. Also, your children don't have your same self-determination. RFK Jr. is a monster for helping promulgate this anti-vax nonsense.
truth and those non-vaxed children are safe because they are surrounded by vaxed children.... that will not last much longer... he is beyond descriptive words.. calling him a monster just doesn't do it any longer.....
Thanks for highlighting this topic. It is unconscionable that our government is working desperately to undermine our public health and spread misinformation and more of their trademark lies. Sadly, I can't see a way that this will end well. Sigh.
Soviet and now Russian misinformation campaigns have been directed to this for decades. Just saying, if you look, you can always see the ‘useful idiot’.
Possibly block those that don’t “believe” in the Vaccines from getting the treatment for their idiocy!! If you don’t “believe” in vaccines, the you sure shouldn’t be getting the “cure”.
If you want to endanger others then you are LAST in line at the emergency room!!!! “Show me your papers”!
So... you are saying that stupidity should be painful? I agree completely. If we allow stupid people and their offspring to be selected against, maybe the species will gradually get smarter. Evolution?!? Let's give it a try!
The strategy is to provide an alternative more easily accepted explanation. We saw it when he met with the Mormon family whose child died. We saw it during Covid. (Ex: People “didn’t die from Covid” but old age, pneumonia, blah blah blah.)
RFK, Jr perfected this years ago and it made him a lot of $$. I think he is setting this up for his organization & affiliated personal injury law firms to cash in.
1. They never acknowledge that their words, decisions or actions are related to bad outcomes.
2. They provide “alternative” explanations to deflect from the result of their actions.
3. HHS, including CDC, is now providing “official” reports, documents & recommendations for the anti-health, anti-science, anti-vax movement. In the past judges batted away most of their lawsuits for lack of evidence from credible sources.
Thanks for this. But you know who will be cashing in? The law firms that sue his ass, and his co-conspirators, when he is no longer poisoning the halls of HHS.
I got a piece of mail from the Smithsonian yesterday and I thought, am I giving to Maga if I donate? I thought it might be nice to go to the museums of DC and then I thought, are they Maga-run and therefore a hall of revisionism? I decided to not go to DC, or support its cultural institutions while Twump was still president. Let those peeps who saved their money not vaxing their kids go visit. One hopes they don't bring a little typhoid Mary with them.
The observational data strongly suggests option 1. Ultimately though, it’s the morons who voted for him who are at fault and 70 years of Republicans attacking public education. I hope all of them get measles and worse… and yes, i am a bitter old man!
As someone who is old enough to have lived through the preMMR vaccine era, I remember that pregnant women who develop measles risk consequences to the fetus.
I am not a conspiracy theorist.......(I know, that's what every conspiracy theorist says) but I have to wonder WHY? Why does RFK jr and his ilk insist on spreading this deadly misinformation. A general war on truth? Control of a weakened population? Eugenics? Surely, over hopefully the not so long term, people will come to understand that their children are getting very sick and worse and will turn on those who gave them this misinformation. So why?
He is indeed a monster. These people have blood on their hands. This whole administration is creating problems that don’t currently exist and harming untold numbers of people as they focus only on their own gain. The cruelty and lack of empathy is stunning.
Thank you Judd for the excellent reporting done by you and your team.
I'm old enough to remember the before times when there were no vaccines. Lucky me, I had measles, mumps and chicken pox all in the same summer after first grade. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I can also remember the elation in the country when the polio vaccine was released. And I am disgusted by RFK Jr. and his fellow travelers who should know better than to bring back the before times. He's going to cause a lot of unnecessary deaths and needs to be held to account as do all of his co-conspirators and the Republicans who voted to put him in this job.
This is the result of the intentional dumbing down of school educational programs by Republicans. You end up with a bunch of ignoramuses and fools who are easily scammed by a bunch of monsters.
It's sad to see Kennedy Jr. spreading so much false information, and the gutting of the scientists and replacing them with laymen who are also ignorant, and I guess they must have an agenda; we're not sure what that agenda may be other than to inflict pain and death on ignorant citizens.
So, I guess Trump was lying again when he said he loves the poorly educated?
Not necessarily “laymen.” That fits RFK, Jr. But others have medical backgrounds although vaccinations and contagious diseases are outside their specialty. Robert Malone is a heart specialist. They provide ‘alternative’ explanations for measles deaths as they did Covid. They sold special products & made $$ as podcasters etc.
Malone got the boot from from respectable institutions but got fame & money with his scams. The anti-vax gig is made RFK, Jr million$. There could be more money if their personal injury lawsuits have official documentation & support from HHS (ex: CDC). Many lawsuits failed due to lack of credible evidence.
Thanks, but all I meant was that they act like laymen who are ignorant of the facts. That they take their "alternate" facts and make money off their lies is only more proof that an alarming portion of our electorate is dumber than a box of hair.
Being scammed by personal injury attorneys & medical “experts” does indicate lack of intelligence. Plenty of intelligent people suffer from ignorance, desperation &/or confusion. Humans like to believe they are logical creatures. In reality most of our decisions are based on emotion.
Who wouldn’t prefer to believe it was not their decision to not vaccinate but an unrelated pneumonia that killed their child?
(I should add that those who didn’t go to school in the 50s, maybe 60s, don’t have the same memories of what happened without vaccinations.)
Yes, I'm sure we all believe that we are much more intelligent than we really are, even you... lol
And I also agree that we who attended school at that time were more aware of the benefits of vaccination. I guess that's another reason some see it today as being alarmist, when we are only signalling a warning for their own good.
I’ll pass on the intelligence thing. I was not valedictorian of my class etc. But confess to emotional bias when faced with certain decisions. It takes real effort to try to neutralize that. 😊
In the 1970s I worked in what would now be considered a progressive “open” ward state mental institution doing all the administrative work on my assigned units. When shorthanded I also filled in on other units. One unit had children in state care with such severe devastating disabilities the fire marshal allowed the unit to be locked at all times — to prevent anyone unauthorized (including patients from another unit) from entering & harming them. Many of these children were victims of measles.
Yes, we never know what another person has been through or what challenges they have faced in their life. I try to use that, but I am as prone to emotions as the next guy/gal.
No, Trump really does love the poorly educated because they don't have the background to understand what he's doing. Even smart people without knowledge can be mislead. "Ignorance is Strength."
Replacing science with witchcraft and voodoo. Interesting article in WSJ just this week highlighted studies that the shingles vaccine appears to reduce the incidence of dementia. Imagine if the government focused on that instead?
When these men are required to apologize, it will be too late for the babies and children who are no longer with us. When these men go to prison for murder, will it relieve the heartbreak of the parents? Will the parents understand they had good information and a century of medical science behind vaccines and they chose to follow people who hadn't ten minutes of training or education in the same field? I imagine there are plenty of frustrated pediatricians practicing in these areas of measles outbreak right now.
This was not political for them. The parents are Mennonites - a community that does not embrace vaccinations. From the parents’ perspective (and those who push anti-vax theories) she did not die from measles.
The other children in the family were mildly ill & recovered. This child went to the hospital because she had trouble breathing not because of her rash. In other words, in their minds the obvious symptoms of measles are not related to the other later symptoms. It is a plausible explanation if you are not an ethical serious medical professional.
This is what the deniers did during Covid and still do. They claim the causes of death were the immediate cause & or the patient received wrong treatment for that cause. It makes it harder to explain a child who dies of pneumonia died because of not being vaccinated for measles.
What's sad to me is we live in an age when accurate information is at our fingertips, and yet trumpers prefer to be uneducated and prone to accepting conspiracy theories. And it started with trump's Big Lie that he actually won the 2020 election. Now these irrational people think elections are rigged and vaccines cause autism.
It's as if trump brought on a Dark Age Redux in America with 36% of Americans.
I am at the point where I just cannot read any more of this anti-VAX baloney coming from RFK Junior. We all know that vaccines have been one of the best preventions against disease, enabling the US population to increase lifespans. It is a travesty that one man has taken it upon himself to dismantle the research and evidence as well as protocols that protected the health of the human population.
So what are we going to do about it besides wring our hands?
I take particular umbrage to the people who crow about personal choice when it comes to vaccines. When your choice endangers the lives of others, that's a real problem. Also, your children don't have your same self-determination. RFK Jr. is a monster for helping promulgate this anti-vax nonsense.
truth and those non-vaxed children are safe because they are surrounded by vaxed children.... that will not last much longer... he is beyond descriptive words.. calling him a monster just doesn't do it any longer.....
If someone has decided “not to vax”, I do not think they should Then be able to Clog our Hospitals when their “informed” decision leads to illness.
If they Don’t Believe the science of Vaccines Why would they “Believe” the Science of the Cures ??? WTAF?
True but these death cultists don’t care. Probably better to require unvaccinated kids to all attend one Petri dish school.
Thanks for highlighting this topic. It is unconscionable that our government is working desperately to undermine our public health and spread misinformation and more of their trademark lies. Sadly, I can't see a way that this will end well. Sigh.
Soviet and now Russian misinformation campaigns have been directed to this for decades. Just saying, if you look, you can always see the ‘useful idiot’.
And Putin “loves” his useful idiots.
Possibly block those that don’t “believe” in the Vaccines from getting the treatment for their idiocy!! If you don’t “believe” in vaccines, the you sure shouldn’t be getting the “cure”.
If you want to endanger others then you are LAST in line at the emergency room!!!! “Show me your papers”!
So... you are saying that stupidity should be painful? I agree completely. If we allow stupid people and their offspring to be selected against, maybe the species will gradually get smarter. Evolution?!? Let's give it a try!
I’m say people should be held accountable for their actions.
Good point.
I just saw the massive MAHA banner on the HHS building in DC. It is an obscenity.
I would love to hear them explain how giving children and adults measles makes America healthy again.
The strategy is to provide an alternative more easily accepted explanation. We saw it when he met with the Mormon family whose child died. We saw it during Covid. (Ex: People “didn’t die from Covid” but old age, pneumonia, blah blah blah.)
RFK, Jr perfected this years ago and it made him a lot of $$. I think he is setting this up for his organization & affiliated personal injury law firms to cash in.
1. They never acknowledge that their words, decisions or actions are related to bad outcomes.
2. They provide “alternative” explanations to deflect from the result of their actions.
3. HHS, including CDC, is now providing “official” reports, documents & recommendations for the anti-health, anti-science, anti-vax movement. In the past judges batted away most of their lawsuits for lack of evidence from credible sources.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-confirmation-robert-f-kennedy-merck/
Thanks for this. But you know who will be cashing in? The law firms that sue his ass, and his co-conspirators, when he is no longer poisoning the halls of HHS.
I sure hope so.
Thanks Ann - great context - I will share elsewhere.
I got a piece of mail from the Smithsonian yesterday and I thought, am I giving to Maga if I donate? I thought it might be nice to go to the museums of DC and then I thought, are they Maga-run and therefore a hall of revisionism? I decided to not go to DC, or support its cultural institutions while Twump was still president. Let those peeps who saved their money not vaxing their kids go visit. One hopes they don't bring a little typhoid Mary with them.
REALLY?!
https://open.substack.com/pub/borowitzreport/p/republicans-finally-unveil-healthcare?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email.
Parody is important.
I've said this before:
Either:
1) Trump's a Russian asset whose assignment was to weaken/destroy America and the West, and he's doing a superb job
2) He's a figurehead for Project 2025 and they will toss him under the bus when he's no longer useful.
3) He simply really is a truly horrible person and a moron. Or maybe a combination of the three.
Assuming #1 and/or #3 to be the case, appointing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. US Secretary of Health and Human Services is a master-class move.
I have a feeling it’s all three.
I'll go w/ #3 Dump simply really is a truly horrible person and a moron.
He's a sociopath exacerbated by old age and dementia.
The observational data strongly suggests option 1. Ultimately though, it’s the morons who voted for him who are at fault and 70 years of Republicans attacking public education. I hope all of them get measles and worse… and yes, i am a bitter old man!
I would suggest you might be bitter about the idiocy that is rampant in this country.
As one of my heroes said, "The Trouble Ain’t That There Is Too Many Fools, But That the Lightning Ain’t Distributed Right".
I hope RFK, jr. winds up in prison for what he has done.
As someone who is old enough to have lived through the preMMR vaccine era, I remember that pregnant women who develop measles risk consequences to the fetus.
I am not a conspiracy theorist.......(I know, that's what every conspiracy theorist says) but I have to wonder WHY? Why does RFK jr and his ilk insist on spreading this deadly misinformation. A general war on truth? Control of a weakened population? Eugenics? Surely, over hopefully the not so long term, people will come to understand that their children are getting very sick and worse and will turn on those who gave them this misinformation. So why?
Excellent questions!
• What are the demographics of the unvaccinated?
• Do these nut-cases actually believe their anti-vax baloney or is this part of a plan?
By nature, I am also not a conspiracy theorist...but I can't come up with logical answers.
Some are wackos. Some are angry about being made outsiders. Almost all make $$ from it.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-confirmation-robert-f-kennedy-merck/
He is indeed a monster. These people have blood on their hands. This whole administration is creating problems that don’t currently exist and harming untold numbers of people as they focus only on their own gain. The cruelty and lack of empathy is stunning.
Thank you Judd for the excellent reporting done by you and your team.
I'm old enough to remember the before times when there were no vaccines. Lucky me, I had measles, mumps and chicken pox all in the same summer after first grade. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I can also remember the elation in the country when the polio vaccine was released. And I am disgusted by RFK Jr. and his fellow travelers who should know better than to bring back the before times. He's going to cause a lot of unnecessary deaths and needs to be held to account as do all of his co-conspirators and the Republicans who voted to put him in this job.
This is the result of the intentional dumbing down of school educational programs by Republicans. You end up with a bunch of ignoramuses and fools who are easily scammed by a bunch of monsters.
It's sad to see Kennedy Jr. spreading so much false information, and the gutting of the scientists and replacing them with laymen who are also ignorant, and I guess they must have an agenda; we're not sure what that agenda may be other than to inflict pain and death on ignorant citizens.
So, I guess Trump was lying again when he said he loves the poorly educated?
The agenda is not to pay for vaccination programs so they can pay for tax cuts and get kickbacks from the rich.
Like they say, follow the money.
Not necessarily “laymen.” That fits RFK, Jr. But others have medical backgrounds although vaccinations and contagious diseases are outside their specialty. Robert Malone is a heart specialist. They provide ‘alternative’ explanations for measles deaths as they did Covid. They sold special products & made $$ as podcasters etc.
Malone got the boot from from respectable institutions but got fame & money with his scams. The anti-vax gig is made RFK, Jr million$. There could be more money if their personal injury lawsuits have official documentation & support from HHS (ex: CDC). Many lawsuits failed due to lack of credible evidence.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-confirmation-robert-f-kennedy-merck/
Thanks, but all I meant was that they act like laymen who are ignorant of the facts. That they take their "alternate" facts and make money off their lies is only more proof that an alarming portion of our electorate is dumber than a box of hair.
Being scammed by personal injury attorneys & medical “experts” does indicate lack of intelligence. Plenty of intelligent people suffer from ignorance, desperation &/or confusion. Humans like to believe they are logical creatures. In reality most of our decisions are based on emotion.
Who wouldn’t prefer to believe it was not their decision to not vaccinate but an unrelated pneumonia that killed their child?
(I should add that those who didn’t go to school in the 50s, maybe 60s, don’t have the same memories of what happened without vaccinations.)
Yes, I'm sure we all believe that we are much more intelligent than we really are, even you... lol
And I also agree that we who attended school at that time were more aware of the benefits of vaccination. I guess that's another reason some see it today as being alarmist, when we are only signalling a warning for their own good.
I’ll pass on the intelligence thing. I was not valedictorian of my class etc. But confess to emotional bias when faced with certain decisions. It takes real effort to try to neutralize that. 😊
In the 1970s I worked in what would now be considered a progressive “open” ward state mental institution doing all the administrative work on my assigned units. When shorthanded I also filled in on other units. One unit had children in state care with such severe devastating disabilities the fire marshal allowed the unit to be locked at all times — to prevent anyone unauthorized (including patients from another unit) from entering & harming them. Many of these children were victims of measles.
Yes, we never know what another person has been through or what challenges they have faced in their life. I try to use that, but I am as prone to emotions as the next guy/gal.
No, Trump really does love the poorly educated because they don't have the background to understand what he's doing. Even smart people without knowledge can be mislead. "Ignorance is Strength."
True also. Evidence: his presence in our White House, or what's left of it!
Replacing science with witchcraft and voodoo. Interesting article in WSJ just this week highlighted studies that the shingles vaccine appears to reduce the incidence of dementia. Imagine if the government focused on that instead?
Imagine if the government focused on making the populous better off instead of enriching the top 1%?
When these men are required to apologize, it will be too late for the babies and children who are no longer with us. When these men go to prison for murder, will it relieve the heartbreak of the parents? Will the parents understand they had good information and a century of medical science behind vaccines and they chose to follow people who hadn't ten minutes of training or education in the same field? I imagine there are plenty of frustrated pediatricians practicing in these areas of measles outbreak right now.
A father in Texas, whose daughter died, said he did NOT regret not vaccinating his daughter.
Some folks have to rationalize a poor decision somehow, or live with the guilt.
Wow... talk about red-pilled. I wonder how the mother feels?
This was not political for them. The parents are Mennonites - a community that does not embrace vaccinations. From the parents’ perspective (and those who push anti-vax theories) she did not die from measles.
The other children in the family were mildly ill & recovered. This child went to the hospital because she had trouble breathing not because of her rash. In other words, in their minds the obvious symptoms of measles are not related to the other later symptoms. It is a plausible explanation if you are not an ethical serious medical professional.
This is what the deniers did during Covid and still do. They claim the causes of death were the immediate cause & or the patient received wrong treatment for that cause. It makes it harder to explain a child who dies of pneumonia died because of not being vaccinated for measles.
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/03/20/texas-measles-family-gaines-county-death/
What's sad to me is we live in an age when accurate information is at our fingertips, and yet trumpers prefer to be uneducated and prone to accepting conspiracy theories. And it started with trump's Big Lie that he actually won the 2020 election. Now these irrational people think elections are rigged and vaccines cause autism.
It's as if trump brought on a Dark Age Redux in America with 36% of Americans.
36% at its height after being re-elected (March). Down to 30% in NBC’s November report for its ongoing surveys. (No Kings went from nowhere to 43%.)
Stupid is as stupid does.
I am at the point where I just cannot read any more of this anti-VAX baloney coming from RFK Junior. We all know that vaccines have been one of the best preventions against disease, enabling the US population to increase lifespans. It is a travesty that one man has taken it upon himself to dismantle the research and evidence as well as protocols that protected the health of the human population.
So what are we going to do about it besides wring our hands?