RFK Jr, vaccines, and autism

[Chris_Halkides]

Respectful Insolence wrote, "There are many contradictions inherent in the MAHA movement that RFK Jr. has forged with Donald Trump. For example, RFK Jr. rails against the FDA as being too beholden to drug companies and quick to approve products without adequate evidence of efficacy and safety, while also wanting to lower the bar for the approval of the various quack treatments that he espouses, such as ivermectin for COVID-19 and cancer."

NBC reported, "The Immunization Safety Office maintains the Vaccine Safety Datalink, which houses data from patient health records used to conduct studies about rare adverse events following immunization. This raw data is available to researchers, but isn’t public for a variety of reasons including concerns over privacy, misrepresentation of data, and manpower. Kennedy suggested in the 2017 speech that the walled access is nefarious. “Oh, they’ve hidden it, and they won’t let anybody in it, except their own guys who cherry-pick and design these fabricated studies and change the protocols..."

Has anyone ever tried asking RFK Jr why he believes that, for example, chelation therapy is effective against autism or how he knows about what is in the raw data mentioned above? I don't understand where his certainty comes from, or maybe I do.

 

[sinnikal]

I have no doubt that RFK Jr has not the first idea how to read a scientific paper, let alone understand one.

 

[Foster Zygote]

No thread of this nature should ever leave out the fact, yes, FACT, that the Bastard Wakefield started this shameful nonsense in the first place, by faking his research linking vaccinations with autism, and then standing behind that fallacy for years and gaining die-hard followers the whole time.
RFK Jr. just picked up the slime covered ball and ran with it.

Was Wakefield the one who, when confronted with the massive Danish study showing zero statistical difference in autism diagnosis rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations, responded "I don't give a ◊◊◊◊"?

 

[MBDK]

All that nonsense will end shortly after the next viral pandemic arrives in the USA, and it will be RFK Jr. packing his bags.

The US public has been through a pandemic in very recent memory. Whether any lessons are learned or not about snake-oil salesmen, useless folk-remedies, and vaccine-denial will be the question. Another question will be how many American children will need to die before these lessons are re-learned.
Given COVID took 4.5 million US lives, the answer could be: quite a lot more than that...

Interestingly, if RFK Jr. is true to his own policies, he could be among the first to succumb to the next deadly disease that will inevitably hit the USA.

In order to be accurate, I have to say I question your data in the section I hilited.

Provisional COVID-19 Mortality Surveillance

www.cdc.gov

 

[Norman Alexander]

In order to be accurate, I have to say I question your data in the section I hilited.

Provisional COVID-19 Mortality Surveillance

www.cdc.gov

I stand corrected. It has been only 1.2 million US dead from COVID. That's a much sunnier result, isn't it.

Of course, that's in comparison to the 7.1 million deaths globally. Of which the USA makes up the largest percentage (17%). So the USA is winning on that score too! But RFK Jr. is going to get an even better result with the next pandemic, don't you worry!

 

[MBDK]

I stand corrected. It has been only 1.2 million US dead from COVID. That's a much sunnier result, isn't it.

Of course, that's in comparison to the 7.1 million deaths globally. Of which the USA makes up the largest percentage (17%). So the USA is winning on that score too! But RFK Jr. is going to get an even better result with the next pandemic, don't you worry!

I am pretty sure he won't be confirmed by the Senate, anyway. Despite the media representations, I think there will be enough Republican senators that understand the potential harm inherent in assigning RFK Jr. to be the secretary of Health and Human Services.

 

[Carrot Flower King]

I have no doubt that RFK Jr has not the first idea how to read a scientific paper, let alone understand one.

Course not: he's a lawyer by trade. They aren't bothered by mere evidence, just that their side wins (I have shared houses with law students and articled clerks...

Not to mention he probably hasn't studied any science beyond junior high school or similar.

 

[Carrot Flower King]

Was Wakefield the one who, when confronted with the massive Danish study showing zero statistical difference in autism diagnosis rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations, responded "I don't give a ◊◊◊◊"?

IIRC, Wakefield did challenge the stats in the 2002 Danish paper, 'cos reasons, which good ole Jakey Crosby trumpeted for a while. But I don't recall anything else he might have said.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

I would like to return to the subject of John O'Leary's results. "The claim, made in 2002 by a team led by Dublin pathologist John O‘Leary, that measles virus RNA had been detected in gut biopsies of children with autism, appeared to provide powerful vindication for Wakefield's hypothesis that a distinctive inflammatory bowel condition — dubbed ‘autistic enterocolitis’ — was the mediating link between MMR and autism...[Molecular biologist Stephen] Bustin's devastating testimony effectively destroyed the only piece of positive evidence that has been produced in support of the MMR-autism thesis since it was launched nearly a decade ago." Those interested in how RNA should and should not be quantitated could profit from reading Professor Bustin's paper, cited above.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

President-elect Trump was quoted in an interview: "'I think somebody has to find out,' Trump said in an exclusive interview with “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker. Welker noted in a back-and-forth that studies have shown childhood vaccines prevent about 4 million deaths worldwide every year, have found no connection between vaccines and autism, and that rises in autism diagnoses are attributable to increased screening and awareness. 'If you go back 25 years ago,' Trump claimed, 'you had very little autism. Now you have it.'


"'Something is going on,' Trump added. 'I don’t know if it’s vaccines. Maybe it’s chlorine in the water, right? You know, people are looking at a lot of different things.' It was unclear whether Trump was referring to opposition by Kennedy and others to fluoride being added to drinking water."

I assume that this means someone who is ultimately under the direction of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. If so, what evidence is there that Mr. Kennedy is open to rational persuasion? Mr. Kennedy has in the past, for example, pointed to poppers as being the true cause of AIDS, a notion that I consider dubious. I am bringing poppers up not as a tangent but to suggest that the answer to my question is that there is evidence that Mr. Kennedy does not approach these kinds of questions scientifically.

 

[bruto]

President-elect Trump was quoted in an interview: "'I think somebody has to find out,' Trump said in an exclusive interview with “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker. Welker noted in a back-and-forth that studies have shown childhood vaccines prevent about 4 million deaths worldwide every year, have found no connection between vaccines and autism, and that rises in autism diagnoses are attributable to increased screening and awareness. 'If you go back 25 years ago,' Trump claimed, 'you had very little autism. Now you have it.'


"'Something is going on,' Trump added. 'I don’t know if it’s vaccines. Maybe it’s chlorine in the water, right? You know, people are looking at a lot of different things.' It was unclear whether Trump was referring to opposition by Kennedy and others to fluoride being added to drinking water."

I assume that this means someone who is ultimately under the direction of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. If so, what evidence is there that Mr. Kennedy is open to rational persuasion? Mr. Kennedy has in the past, for example, pointed to poppers as being the true cause of AIDS, a notion that I consider dubious. I am bringing poppers up not as a tangent but to
suggest that the answer to my question is that there is evidence that Mr. Kennedy does not approach these kinds of questions scientifically.

I must say I admire your even-handedness. I have also heard some evidence that polar bears might pose a threat to unescorted hikers.

 

[Norman Alexander]

President-elect Trump was quoted in an interview: "'I think somebody has to find out,' Trump said in an exclusive interview with “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker. Welker noted in a back-and-forth that studies have shown childhood vaccines prevent about 4 million deaths worldwide every year, have found no connection between vaccines and autism, and that rises in autism diagnoses are attributable to increased screening and awareness. 'If you go back 25 years ago,' Trump claimed, 'you had very little autism. Now you have it.'

"'Something is going on,' Trump added. 'I don’t know if it’s vaccines. Maybe it’s chlorine in the water, right? You know, people are looking at a lot of different things.' It was unclear whether Trump was referring to opposition by Kennedy and others to fluoride being added to drinking water."
I assume that this means someone who is ultimately under the direction of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. If so, what evidence is there that Mr. Kennedy is open to rational persuasion? Mr. Kennedy has in the past, for example, pointed to poppers as being the true cause of AIDS, a notion that I consider dubious. I am bringing poppers up not as a tangent but to suggest that the answer to my question is that there is evidence that Mr. Kennedy does not approach these kinds of questions scientifically.

Can I suggest the main problem is a big bunch of complete idiots voting for a small bunch of scheming fascists and froot-loops led by the world's biggest idiot occupying the White House. And Macdonalds Big Mac sauce.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

No thread of this nature should ever leave out the fact, yes, FACT, that the Bastard Wakefield started this shameful nonsense in the first place, by faking his research linking vaccinations with autism, and then standing behind that fallacy for years and gaining die-hard followers the whole time.
RFK Jr. just picked up the slime covered ball and ran with it.

Oh Wakefield did a lot worse than that. You should look up the suffering he put kids through when trying to find evidence to support his fallacy, and all for a £50,000 retainer for a court case that was going nowhere.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

MedPageToday reported, "'It is a fantasy to think we can lower vaccination rates and herd immunity in the U.S. and not suffer recurrence of these diseases,' said Gregory Poland, MD, co-director of the Atria Academy of Science & Medicine. 'One in 3,000 kids who gets measles is going to die. There's no treatment for it. They are going to die.'"

 

[bruto]

MedPageToday reported, "'It is a fantasy to think we can lower vaccination rates and herd immunity in the U.S. and not suffer recurrence of these diseases,' said Gregory Poland, MD, co-director of the Atria Academy of Science & Medicine. 'One in 3,000 kids who gets measles is going to die. There's no treatment for it. They are going to die.'"

Yes but he will die ideologically pure. Focus, man, focus!

 

[PookieBear]

I have to say, though I am a skeptic, vaccine denialism is one of the few things that actually gives me some pause.

I very reluctantly took the Covid shot. Two doses of it. So did practically everyone in my life.

Guess what. I later got Covid anyway (despite social distancing) and it was absolute hell. Fevers, chills, inability to walk for weeks. I was at death's door or so it felt like.

My parents caught it from me, despite being presumably jabbed themselves, and my father nearly died. He trembled like he had Parkinson's disease!

An acquaintance had the same thing happen to him. He got the shot and got the disease anyway and spread it to others.

That makes me wonder....what good are these things if you get Covid anyway!?

 

[arthwollipot]

You didn't die.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

A vaccine is not a surface to air missile that can intercept a virus before it reaches you. WHO has a series of explainers on the subject of how vaccines work: " Once the body produces antibodies in its primary response to an antigen, it also creates antibody-producing memory cells, which remain alive even after the pathogen is defeated by the antibodies. If the body is exposed to the same pathogen more than once, the antibody response is much faster and more effective than the first time around because the memory cells are at the ready to pump out antibodies against that antigen." I wonder what RFK Jr. would make of this series.

 

[PookieBear]

Well, yes. Everyone knows that. That's common knowledge.

Here is where it gets....weird. The CIA was once engaged in producing fake shots, as part of some bizarre scheme to catch "the bad guys".

CIA fake vaccination campaign in Pakistan - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

To make this weird story even weirder, the Pakistani government arrested the doctor who was supposedly responsible for this and tortured him. They wanted to arrest him for treason, selling out to the CIA and all that....but then said he wasn't a CIA agent after all but a double agent for the terrorists.

Then, to make it weirder, it turned out he might have been the fall guy for the real spies.

He was sentenced to 33 years in prison and then moved from prison to "another place." No word on what happened to him after that.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

From Wikipedia: On May 16, 2014, Lisa Monaco responded that vaccine programs would be excluded from espionage.
From Wikipedia: On 23 May 2012, he was sentenced to 33 years' imprisonment for treason, initially believed to be in connection with the bin Laden raid, but later revealed to be due to alleged ties with a local Islamist warlord Mangal Bagh. Lawyers appealed against the verdict on 1 June 2012. On 29 August 2013, his sentence was overturned and a retrial ordered.

This does not have anything to do with the vaccines against Covid-19, which saved millions of lives in one estimate.