This reporting is so good and precise. And so is the recent Bulwark podcast on the same topic, See in the feed, "Watch an Expert Dismantle RFK Jr's Vaccine Myths (w/ Paul Offit)" Even if the lunatics won't take in the information, we can mark for history that we told them so.
The Bulwark's addition of reporters like Jonathan Cohn, Will Sommer and Adrian Carrasquillo is so important. As a loyal subscriber, I thank you.
Very nice explainer, and example of what is happening across the federal government as Trump and his MAGA minions continue to slash and burn our expertise and scientific capacity. Unfortunately, in addition to canceling the mRNA vaccines HHS also canceled Project NextGen, which was beginning clinical trials for a nasal inhaled sterilizing vaccine against COVID that had potential as a platform for other respiratory diseases. So much has been lost in just six months and it will take years to rebuild.
Had an interesting experience along these same lines recently. Just spent a long weekend with some MAGA guys who were bemoaning vaccines. Another friend and I, both veterinarians, took the time to explain how mRNA works to build proteins and how those are then expressed on the cells surface to induce the cells and antibodies we need to fight the real infection. They actually listened, asked questions and quit poopooing the vaccine. I was amazed because it was pure ignorance, a reflection of our lack of scientific teaching and our slant toward religiosity, that have lead us to this point. I don't know how we turn this corner and prevent reverting to the dark ages, but my sense is we are on a very slippery slope.
What has this country done to deserve the havoc that Trump has unleashed upon us?
I'm about as far from being religious as a person can be, but sometimes I think that, using Occam's Razer is the only answer for the question is that God has damned America, and we are currently reaping that damnation. I have not felt so helpless in afflicting any meaningful change to our current situation in my entire life.
Ignorance, shortsightedness, and vindictiveness - hallmarks of any Trump administration. RFKJR was appointed and confirmed because his agendas pander to the ignorance of the MAGAts and inflame the left - both are only about short-term political ends. They have nothing to do with actually making America great, but that was never actually Trump's goal.
I have an obvious question that only occurred to me yesterday: Does this announcement mean that we won't be getting any COVID shots this fall? I was already concerned that they might not cover the cost of them, but it only just now hit me that there might not be any at all.
Kennedy is doing to HHS what Zeldin and Vought are doing to the EPA, NSF, NASA and NOAA. Rather than global warming, Kennedy is ignoring the overwhelming scientific consensus on vaccines in order to gut research on vaccines.
Some have commented that the public health community over-promised solutions to Covid. that may be true but the stage for disbelief and anger came directly from Trump himself. At the very start of his Presidency his aids threw out a lengthy national plan for how to handle a major pandemic and public health crisis which had been worked on by a large number of medical and public health experts under Obama. Thus when Covid arose the government had no plans to deal with it or other similar problems. Then Trump immediately stepped in with lies, nonsense and non-scientific solutions - remember ivermectin, or maybe inserting bleach into the system? And promises that it would all be gone in a few days or weeks or ----
Given Trump's desire to have the spotlight, his public health officials either had to sit by and simply listen to his nonsense or to try to correct it without insulting him. In addition, Covid was a new virus and so the scientific community had to work at understanding it and how to manage it. This changed over time as does the study of any new phenomenon. At the same time, as the public health community tried various strategies (masking, isolation, etc.) and the hospitals were overwhelmed with patients, Trump himself started taking sides based on how people responded to the various restrictions.
When Trump, himself, came down with Covid rather than attributing his survival to intense medical interventions (not available at the level to most Americans) he told the public not to be afraid - it wasn't so serious after all. He stopped wearing a mask while a number of his close aids came down with the disease. He postulated that he was then immune.
In the end, the public was, and remains, confused about how to handle or avoid a public health crisis. Over 1.2 million Americans died from Covid. Trump made it fashionable for politicians like Kennedy to pose as experts without having any real expertise. And so we have a politician like Kennedy, clearly sanctioned and abetted by Trump, making life and death decisions based on his personal prejudices, profound medical ignorance, and political imperatives based on what his supporters want.
One thing: the text “and one that appeared mostly just for adolescent boys and young men” doesn’t sit right. There’s something casual/dismissive about it—maybe it’s the awkward phrasing “mostly just” and no statistics. Just a few dozen boys & young men? Just a couple 100 boys and young men? A few thousand?—that made me recognize why anti-vaxxers get hysterical. I follow a professional athlete who had numerous complications from myocarditis post COVID vaccine. Early on, he even went to DC to raise awareness and to ask officials to state publicly that serious potential side effects exist, such as myocarditis…for boys and young men like him, their lives were dramatically altered post Covid vaccine.
The amount of failures from the Public Health Orgs during COVID lead to this. I still disagree with disputing claim 1. From your JAMA source " VE was 29% against COVID-19–associated emergency department and urgent care encounters, 30% against COVID-19–associated hospitalization, and 48% against COVID-19–associated critical illness, with VE being the highest 7 to 59 days after vaccination and waning against all outcomes." So it lasts 2 months. I'd hardly call that effective. We'd be on booster 24 by now. I've still never seen the one statistic that actually matters with pharma products: number needed to treat. What is the number of people who need to take the shot to prevent one death. It's in the thousands. So that means if it 1000, you have a 99.9 % chance of it not helping you. Why this was pushed onto kids when they are at extremely minimal risk? WHy healthy people under 65 or 70? Why on people who already had it? $$$$$$$$$ I took 3 of the pokes. Partly because I believed I wouldn't get it or spread it. Partly because I was pressured by my job. I still got it 2x. I knew people in healhcare who lost their jobs because they wouldn't be mandated. I knew businesses that closed. I was a sheep. And I sincerely regret taking it.
I think we are forgetting the reports out of Italy in early 2020 and NYC a month or two later and the ERs and ICUs filled to capacity with people dying in the corridors and the refrigerated morgue trucks parked in the streets. Many people were desperate for anything that would prevent COVID. The article linked above is for 2023-24 and by that point most people had some exposure to COVID either through vaccination or infection. People think of vaccination as conferring lifelong immunity against infection, with Flu as the exception, but I recall messaging pretty early on that the COVID shots were designed to prevent death or serious illness, not necessarily infection since that happens in the nasal passages. COVID also has a bimodal seasonality so two months gets an individual through the winter peak and another booster through the smaller summer peak. When I was able to get an appointment in the spring of 2021 it felt like I'd won the lottery. PH got some things right and some things wrong, but the vaccines were miraculous.
From Trump on down, there is an incentive to pick the least intelligent capable people, since they cannot provide effective pushback against idiotic policies. Plus they will seem more 'authentic' to roughly half of the country.
At least per my reading of "the mainstream media", there is a serious and generally unaddressed aspect of Kennedy's Luddite assault on vaccines, especially mRNA-based versions: that's bioterrorism.
Russia, North Korea and (probably) other rogue states are known to have stockpiles of smallpox and other "Garden of Earthly Delights" viruses.They are known to have weaponized them. Add to that climate change and thawing of the Arctic permafrost (where thousands of bodes from the pox-related GULAG victims are buried: smallpox has been cultured from specimens stored in formalin at Johns Hopkins pickled in that agent for >75 years) and the risk of an attack is manifest.
Given the incompetence of our public health sector and appropriate general panic a bioweapons attack would engender, there is a near-zero chance of safely, rapidly and effectively distributing stockpiled vaccines. We now have zero chance of developing new ones in a timely fashion (i.e., before total societal collapse). In part, thank general lack of strategic planning by the government (long antedating Trump and his Paleolithic paladin, Kennedy) and overall complacency coupled with ineptitude and widespread incompetence.
North Korean (and many US soldiers, plus overseas diplomats) have been preëmptively innocated. This is a rhetorical question, because you have not been given the vaccine(s) because they're not available outside restricted circles. Bird flu and other pandemic sources can easily be engineered and weaponized. The USA has already rendered itself not only susceptible, but a prime target for attack, thanks in part to lack of strategic planning and now to the "public health" posture of RFK, Jr.
Kennedy only had to fool Trump; this is not terribly difficult. At least one report coming out of his department is written, at least partly by AI and has multiple mistakes and references to articles that don’t exist. Kennedy and Trump will destroy meaningful research; they have already done a lot of damage.
This reporting is so good and precise. And so is the recent Bulwark podcast on the same topic, See in the feed, "Watch an Expert Dismantle RFK Jr's Vaccine Myths (w/ Paul Offit)" Even if the lunatics won't take in the information, we can mark for history that we told them so.
The Bulwark's addition of reporters like Jonathan Cohn, Will Sommer and Adrian Carrasquillo is so important. As a loyal subscriber, I thank you.
I could not agree more.
Very nice explainer, and example of what is happening across the federal government as Trump and his MAGA minions continue to slash and burn our expertise and scientific capacity. Unfortunately, in addition to canceling the mRNA vaccines HHS also canceled Project NextGen, which was beginning clinical trials for a nasal inhaled sterilizing vaccine against COVID that had potential as a platform for other respiratory diseases. So much has been lost in just six months and it will take years to rebuild.
Had an interesting experience along these same lines recently. Just spent a long weekend with some MAGA guys who were bemoaning vaccines. Another friend and I, both veterinarians, took the time to explain how mRNA works to build proteins and how those are then expressed on the cells surface to induce the cells and antibodies we need to fight the real infection. They actually listened, asked questions and quit poopooing the vaccine. I was amazed because it was pure ignorance, a reflection of our lack of scientific teaching and our slant toward religiosity, that have lead us to this point. I don't know how we turn this corner and prevent reverting to the dark ages, but my sense is we are on a very slippery slope.
What has this country done to deserve the havoc that Trump has unleashed upon us?
I'm about as far from being religious as a person can be, but sometimes I think that, using Occam's Razer is the only answer for the question is that God has damned America, and we are currently reaping that damnation. I have not felt so helpless in afflicting any meaningful change to our current situation in my entire life.
Ignorance, shortsightedness, and vindictiveness - hallmarks of any Trump administration. RFKJR was appointed and confirmed because his agendas pander to the ignorance of the MAGAts and inflame the left - both are only about short-term political ends. They have nothing to do with actually making America great, but that was never actually Trump's goal.
I have an obvious question that only occurred to me yesterday: Does this announcement mean that we won't be getting any COVID shots this fall? I was already concerned that they might not cover the cost of them, but it only just now hit me that there might not be any at all.
Kennedy is doing to HHS what Zeldin and Vought are doing to the EPA, NSF, NASA and NOAA. Rather than global warming, Kennedy is ignoring the overwhelming scientific consensus on vaccines in order to gut research on vaccines.
Some have commented that the public health community over-promised solutions to Covid. that may be true but the stage for disbelief and anger came directly from Trump himself. At the very start of his Presidency his aids threw out a lengthy national plan for how to handle a major pandemic and public health crisis which had been worked on by a large number of medical and public health experts under Obama. Thus when Covid arose the government had no plans to deal with it or other similar problems. Then Trump immediately stepped in with lies, nonsense and non-scientific solutions - remember ivermectin, or maybe inserting bleach into the system? And promises that it would all be gone in a few days or weeks or ----
Given Trump's desire to have the spotlight, his public health officials either had to sit by and simply listen to his nonsense or to try to correct it without insulting him. In addition, Covid was a new virus and so the scientific community had to work at understanding it and how to manage it. This changed over time as does the study of any new phenomenon. At the same time, as the public health community tried various strategies (masking, isolation, etc.) and the hospitals were overwhelmed with patients, Trump himself started taking sides based on how people responded to the various restrictions.
When Trump, himself, came down with Covid rather than attributing his survival to intense medical interventions (not available at the level to most Americans) he told the public not to be afraid - it wasn't so serious after all. He stopped wearing a mask while a number of his close aids came down with the disease. He postulated that he was then immune.
In the end, the public was, and remains, confused about how to handle or avoid a public health crisis. Over 1.2 million Americans died from Covid. Trump made it fashionable for politicians like Kennedy to pose as experts without having any real expertise. And so we have a politician like Kennedy, clearly sanctioned and abetted by Trump, making life and death decisions based on his personal prejudices, profound medical ignorance, and political imperatives based on what his supporters want.
Kennedy is a worm-brain, heroin dope fiend moron. Those, alas, are his strong points.
Kennedy's main researcher cited, Dr. Martin Wucher, is an "Integrative Dentist"
Thank you for the great reporting!
One thing: the text “and one that appeared mostly just for adolescent boys and young men” doesn’t sit right. There’s something casual/dismissive about it—maybe it’s the awkward phrasing “mostly just” and no statistics. Just a few dozen boys & young men? Just a couple 100 boys and young men? A few thousand?—that made me recognize why anti-vaxxers get hysterical. I follow a professional athlete who had numerous complications from myocarditis post COVID vaccine. Early on, he even went to DC to raise awareness and to ask officials to state publicly that serious potential side effects exist, such as myocarditis…for boys and young men like him, their lives were dramatically altered post Covid vaccine.
The amount of failures from the Public Health Orgs during COVID lead to this. I still disagree with disputing claim 1. From your JAMA source " VE was 29% against COVID-19–associated emergency department and urgent care encounters, 30% against COVID-19–associated hospitalization, and 48% against COVID-19–associated critical illness, with VE being the highest 7 to 59 days after vaccination and waning against all outcomes." So it lasts 2 months. I'd hardly call that effective. We'd be on booster 24 by now. I've still never seen the one statistic that actually matters with pharma products: number needed to treat. What is the number of people who need to take the shot to prevent one death. It's in the thousands. So that means if it 1000, you have a 99.9 % chance of it not helping you. Why this was pushed onto kids when they are at extremely minimal risk? WHy healthy people under 65 or 70? Why on people who already had it? $$$$$$$$$ I took 3 of the pokes. Partly because I believed I wouldn't get it or spread it. Partly because I was pressured by my job. I still got it 2x. I knew people in healhcare who lost their jobs because they wouldn't be mandated. I knew businesses that closed. I was a sheep. And I sincerely regret taking it.
I think we are forgetting the reports out of Italy in early 2020 and NYC a month or two later and the ERs and ICUs filled to capacity with people dying in the corridors and the refrigerated morgue trucks parked in the streets. Many people were desperate for anything that would prevent COVID. The article linked above is for 2023-24 and by that point most people had some exposure to COVID either through vaccination or infection. People think of vaccination as conferring lifelong immunity against infection, with Flu as the exception, but I recall messaging pretty early on that the COVID shots were designed to prevent death or serious illness, not necessarily infection since that happens in the nasal passages. COVID also has a bimodal seasonality so two months gets an individual through the winter peak and another booster through the smaller summer peak. When I was able to get an appointment in the spring of 2021 it felt like I'd won the lottery. PH got some things right and some things wrong, but the vaccines were miraculous.
Kids were vaccinated to protect their more vulnerable relatives, and also their teachers, many of whom are older as well. We don’t live in a vacuum.
Most of us aren't very bright - I'd hold my hand up to that one any day of the week.
That's why it's REALLY important that we choose educated, intelligent people as our Government, whatever their party.
The GOP candidates seem to be failing badly on this.
I'm real tired of the country being shoved around by people I wouldn't even trust to chop wood.
From Trump on down, there is an incentive to pick the least intelligent capable people, since they cannot provide effective pushback against idiotic policies. Plus they will seem more 'authentic' to roughly half of the country.
At least per my reading of "the mainstream media", there is a serious and generally unaddressed aspect of Kennedy's Luddite assault on vaccines, especially mRNA-based versions: that's bioterrorism.
Russia, North Korea and (probably) other rogue states are known to have stockpiles of smallpox and other "Garden of Earthly Delights" viruses.They are known to have weaponized them. Add to that climate change and thawing of the Arctic permafrost (where thousands of bodes from the pox-related GULAG victims are buried: smallpox has been cultured from specimens stored in formalin at Johns Hopkins pickled in that agent for >75 years) and the risk of an attack is manifest.
Given the incompetence of our public health sector and appropriate general panic a bioweapons attack would engender, there is a near-zero chance of safely, rapidly and effectively distributing stockpiled vaccines. We now have zero chance of developing new ones in a timely fashion (i.e., before total societal collapse). In part, thank general lack of strategic planning by the government (long antedating Trump and his Paleolithic paladin, Kennedy) and overall complacency coupled with ineptitude and widespread incompetence.
North Korean (and many US soldiers, plus overseas diplomats) have been preëmptively innocated. This is a rhetorical question, because you have not been given the vaccine(s) because they're not available outside restricted circles. Bird flu and other pandemic sources can easily be engineered and weaponized. The USA has already rendered itself not only susceptible, but a prime target for attack, thanks in part to lack of strategic planning and now to the "public health" posture of RFK, Jr.
I will for the next 4 years trust the EU advice. Can't trust the Trump administration to tell the truth about anything.
I wouldn't ask the trump administration to tell me the time - even if it was wearing three watches. . .
Kennedy only had to fool Trump; this is not terribly difficult. At least one report coming out of his department is written, at least partly by AI and has multiple mistakes and references to articles that don’t exist. Kennedy and Trump will destroy meaningful research; they have already done a lot of damage.