Trump appointees

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The man who hopes to be President Donald Trump’s health secretary repeatedly asked to see “data” or “science” showing vaccines are safe – but when an influential Republican senator showed him evidence, he dismissed it.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent two days this week insisting to senators that he’s not anti-vaccine. He said that he instead supports vaccinations and will follow the science in overseeing the $1.7 trillion Department of Health and Human Services, which, among other duties, oversees vaccine research, approval and recommendations.

But Kennedy repeatedly refused to acknowledge scientific consensus that childhood vaccines don’t cause autism and that COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives, and he falsely asserted the government has no good vaccine safety monitoring. While appearing to ignore mainstream science, he cited flawed or tangential research to make his points, such as suggesting Black people may need different vaccines than whites.

His responses raised concern among health experts that Kennedy lacks basic skills needed for the job.

“He ignores science. He cherry-picks sometimes fraudulent studies. Sometimes he takes well-done studies and takes little pieces of them out of context,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

He worries that Kennedy could further damage public confidence in vaccines and “we will see return of diseases that we really haven’t seen much of and unfortunately children will suffer.”

Kennedy “in many ways demonstrated his lack of capacity to really understand some details around science and evidence that I think he would really need to know,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin of the American Public Health Association.

The science on vaccines is clear to doctors and scientists — but not to Kennedy
Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and physician, said the science is clear that measles and other childhood vaccines are safe and not linked to autism.

Kennedy said if shown the data he would recommend those vaccines and “not only will I do that but I will apologize for any statements that misled people otherwise.”

So Cassidy pulled out and read aloud definitive scientific conclusions that vaccines don’t cause autism. Kennedy rebuffed him, instead mentioning a recent paper that outside experts have called fundamentally flawed — and Cassidy agreed “has some issues” – in an attempt to counter decades of rigorous studies.

The senator told Kennedy his history of “undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments concerns me” – and risks casting “a shadow over President Trump’s legacy” if people die of vaccine-preventable diseases should he become health secretary.

Sen. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire, said there’s a real-world ramification for “re-litigating and churning settled science” – diverting money and time that could be spent finding the real cause of autism.

Kennedy ignored science showing COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives
Kennedy claimed there’s no good surveillance system to know that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and lifesaving.

The U.S. tracks vaccine safety through multiple monitoring systems including electronic medical records from a list of health systems. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also checks how vaccines fare internationally, such as during the pandemic when large databases from Israel and the U.K. helped reinforce that the new mRNA vaccines were safe and lowering deaths from the coronavirus.

“You’re applying for the job — clearly you should know this,” said Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. “The scientific community has established that COVID vaccines saved millions of lives and you’re casting doubt.”

Kennedy declines to back a vaccine that prevents cancer in women
AAP’s O’Leary said there are about 35,000 cases of cancer related to the HPV virus that could be prevented by that vaccine, including 4,000 deaths per year. “We are already seeing decreases in the number of cases of HPV-related cancers as a result of HPV vaccination.”

Kennedy didn’t answer directly when asked if he stood by claims that the HPV vaccine could cause cancer or other disease. He instead brought up a pending lawsuit and suggested a jury — of non-scientists — would decide.

Kennedy’s unfounded comment about race and vaccine schedules
Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a Maryland Democrat, asked Kennedy about prior comments that Black people might need a different vaccination schedule than whites. Alsobrooks, who is Black, asked how Kennedy thought she should have been vaccinated differently.

Kennedy referred to some earlier papers suggesting people of African-American ancestry had a stronger immune response to measles and rubella vaccines than white people.

Vaccination recommendations aren’t based on race but on biological factors such as someone’s age and risk of a specific disease. Some studies show Black Americans are more hesitant than whites to receive certain vaccines.

“That is so dangerous,” Alsobrooks told Kennedy.

RFK may be a bad pick but Kash Patel as the director of the FBI should scare people.

Does any normal person who voluntarily voted for trump in 2024 actually think about the consequences of their decisions?

The MAGA crowd simply reacts, nothing more. It's Pavlovian responses to Trump who knows exactly how to trigger them.

So many (pick a number?) MAGAs are reactionary - defined as strong traditionalist conservative political perspective of a person opposed to social, political, and economic change. Reactionary ideologies can be radical in the sense of political extremism in service to re-establishing past conditions. Example of reactionary - someone who strongly opposes reform or change e.g. carrying reactionary attitudes toward women's rights.

So...cult.

But surely there's millions of trump voters who are capable of higher order thinking right?

What goes through their minds exactly, "oh well, I personally find what Mr trump says as offensive and his decisions are poor, he's a criminal and he lies all the time, and he associates himself with people who are dangerous to the USA, but hey! I'm a republican for life like my father before me....mental programming kicks in....

I mean, the whole shyteshow starts with accepting him as a successful businessman, the consummate deal maker, where it's clear he's neither.

Orwell got it right: "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
More simply: "The emperor has no clothes."