The Truth about RFK Jr

[Trebuchet]

Has RFK Jr also targeted Polio vaccination? That could be interesting. I know that many do not think polio myelitis is much of a problem because nobody has it these days, and in case it is an infant's disease.

But the reason adults don't get paralytic polio is that they are either vaccinated, or they have had prior exposure to the polio virus. Most infections are asymptomatic. But if an entire population has not been vaccinated, it is a disease for adults too, not just infants. This happened for Albania when Hoxha died, and Albania was opened up: The Albanian population had been isolated from the rest of the world, and was not adequately vaccinated, so the virus ran wild!
This could be the future of the U.S. if vaccination against polio is scrapped.

You know who had Polio? That Commie FDR! Any kid that gets Polio is a Commie just like him!
You know who was President when I was vaccinated in 1954? That RINO Eisenhower! The only REAL Republican to be President was Trump45!

 

[Tero]

Has RFK Jr also targeted Polio vaccination? That could be interesting. I know that many do not think polio myelitis is much of a problem because nobody has it these days, and in case it is an infant's disease.

But the reason adults don't get paralytic polio is that they are either vaccinated, or they have had prior exposure to the polio virus. Most infections are asymptomatic. But if an entire population has not been vaccinated, it is a disease for adults too, not just infants. This happened for Albania when Hoxha died, and Albania was opened up: The Albanian population had been isolated from the rest of the world, and was not adequately vaccinated, so the virus ran wild!
This could be the future of the U.S. if vaccination against polio is scrapped.

Google:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has publicly shifted his stance on the polio vaccine, recently stating he supports it and would not discourage its use. This marks a shift from his past controversial claims, where he previously suggested the vaccine was a "mythology" and linked it to cancer outbreaks. [1, 2, 3, 4]

 

[Norman Alexander]

Google:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has publicly shifted his stance on the polio vaccine, recently stating he supports it and would not discourage its use. This marks a shift from his past controversial claims, where he previously suggested the vaccine was a "mythology" and linked it to cancer outbreaks. [1, 2, 3, 4]

"Not discourage it's use"... Well, isn't that a thoroughly ringing endorsement for a technology that wiped out a plague 60 years ago.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

At Beyond the Noise Paul Offit rebutted the too-many-vaccines argument embodied in presidential executive orders with two counterarguments. Summarizing his first argument, he wrote, "In other words, we had a larger challenge to our immune system from the one vaccine given 100 years ago than from the 17 different vaccines given today." His second argument is that these vaccines save lives. "During my 12-hours-on-12-hours-off Emergency Department rotation, I would do 2-3 spinal taps a night. Bacterial meningitis was common. We didn’t have vaccines to prevent Haemophilus influenzae type b or meningococcus or pneumococcus. Every year, tens of thousands of children suffered or were permanently disabled or killed by meningitis...between 1994 and 2023, well after the 1980s vaccine schedule that Trump’s executive order touts as the “good old days”, vaccines have prevented about 500 million illnesses, 32 million hospitalizations, and 1 million deaths. More vaccines. More shots. Fewer children suffering. Fewer children dying."

Dr. Offit went on to say, "Denmark, which has a national health system, chooses not to pay for the rotavirus vaccine, which prevents a virus that causes vomiting, diarrhea, and severe dehydration. Children in the United States have received the rotavirus vaccine since 2006, virtually eliminating the 55,000-70,000 hospitalizations every year. Accounting for the fact that Denmark has roughly the same population as Maryland, the percentage of children hospitalized with rotavirus-induced dehydration in Denmark is the same as U.S. rates before the vaccine. Denmark should mimic the U.S., not the other way around." Full disclosure: Dr. Offit was one of the co-developers of a vaccine against rotavirus.

 

[shemp]

'We're cooked': RFK Jr.'s work disengagement alarms experts as Ebola outbreak spreads

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reportedly arrives at the Department of Health and Human Services around 10 a.m., leaves by 4 p.m., spends staff meetings scrolling on his phone, and once apologized to colleagues for his "dysfunctional self" — and that's just the management style. The vacancies are a separate problem.

A sweeping New York Times investigation published Sunday by reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg, based on accounts from a dozen people with direct contact with Kennedy, paints a portrait of a health secretary deeply disengaged from the department he runs while an Ebola outbreak spreads and critical positions sit empty.

When the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in Africa a public health emergency — with six Americans already exposed — a reporter asked Kennedy if he was worried. "Yeah, we're working on it," he said. He has made no public comments about the outbreak in the nearly three weeks since. He has received very few briefings from CDC scientists about the virus, according to the Times.

It gets worse, read the rest at the link.

 

[Resume]

'We're cooked': RFK Jr.'s work disengagement alarms experts as Ebola outbreak spreads



It gets worse, read the rest at the link.

Example after example after example of incompetence and indifference.

 

[steenkh]

'We're cooked': RFK Jr.'s work disengagement alarms experts as Ebola outbreak spreads



It gets worse, read the rest at the link.

Considering what he does when engaged with something, isn't it a good thing that he isn't much engaged in his work?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

At MedPage Today Dr. Gabriela Alvarado wrote an essay on the relationship between the Bradley pre-natal programs and Vitamin K refusal. To the surprise of her OBGYN, who had recommended the Bradley classes, the instructors presented "interventions as threats and doctors as adversaries." She continued, "Telling those parents that vitamin K is safe will not undo 12 weeks of instruction in medical adversarialism. And more importantly, it misses the point. The parents in that room were there because something had failed them before they ever walked through the door. Many had felt dismissed in medical appointments, rushed through prenatal care, or treated as bodies to be managed rather than people to be heard. The Bradley classroom offered them community, attention, validation, and a framework for understanding what was happening to them. The medical establishment was offering them pamphlets." I am putting this comment in this thread because one can argue that part of the job of the Surgeon General, who reports to an assistant secretary of HHS, is to work on a problem such as this.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

At SBM both Jonathan Howard and David Gorski treated the incident in which noted scientists were thrown out of the American Diabetes Convention because they distributed an editorial that was critical of current federal health policies, including the proposed shift away from peer review, discussed upthread. Dr. Howard wrote, "Dr. Bhattacharya promised that things would be different once he gained power. “If you don’t have free speech, you cannot have science,” he said...Maybe, just maybe, it will dawn on some of them [the editors of Reason] that they promoted phony censorship to bring about the real thing."

Dr. Gorski wrote, "Yet, the organizers, instead of first having someone politely inform Dr. Kahn and his colleagues that they weren’t allowed to do this, apparently called security and the state police to do it. That by itself is an intentionally intimidating action that seemed quite out-of-proportion to the task of dealing with several diabetes scientists passing out copies of an article, at least two of whom were well-known to the ADA given past awards, presentations, and even leadership positions. Calling the police suggests panic."

 

[dann]

Jonathan Howard on bsky, June 9, 2026
It’s a MAHA theme.
RFK falsely says many diseases are brand new and we need healthy kids for the military (Jonathan Howard on YouTube, April 22, 2025 – 1 min.)

Anne Grete (GoogeliArt) on bsky, June 9, 2026)
RFK Jr. Accidentally Makes a Case for More Army-Ready Kids
READY, KIDS?
“That’s something that should get everybody’s attention.”
RFK Jr. Accidentally Makes a Case for more Army-Ready Kids (The Daily Beast, June 8, 2026)

Jonathan Howard on X, June 9, 2026
Quack Oz wants kids to be healthy so they can be in the military (Jonathan Howard on YouTube, Feb 7, 2026–1 min.)

 

[Chris_Halkides]

At SBM Henry MIller discussed budget cuts at NIH and NSF. He wrote, "There is a word for what the federal government has done to American science during the past year and a half: sabotage...The numbers across the broader federal research enterprise are stunning. More than 7,800 NIH and NSF grants were cancelled or suspended in 2025." He elaborated, "The cruelty of the cuts is matched only by their capriciousness. A studyreported in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2025 found that 383 NIH-funded clinical trials lost their grant funding following the administration’s cancellations — affecting more than 74,000 trial participants. The administration used keyword searches to identify grants for termination — a method so blunt (and idiotic) that grants were killed for containing the prefix “trans-” in terms like “transgenic material” or “signal transduction.”

Dr. Miller also examined the long term effects of these cuts: " The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation estimates that a 20 percent cut to federal research spending would shrink the U.S. economy by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade and reduce tax revenue by roughly $250 billion. The administration is trading a trillion dollars in future prosperity for the political satisfaction of slashing budgets that its base can be told represent elite liberal excess."

 

[Resume]

Good idea!

 

[steenkh]

If the flies don't want babies, it's certainly not the job of the government to subsidise their operation.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Has RFK Jr also targeted Polio vaccination?

Dr. Kirk Milhoan, whom Secretary Kennedy picked to be chair of the ACIP, did not sound enthusiastic about the polio vaccine: "In a wide-ranging interview on the Jan. 22 episode of the “Why Should I Trust You?” podcast, ACIP’s new chair, Kirk Milhoan, MD, PhD, discussed the need for and potential risks of vaccines such as those for polio and measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR), and how the pre- and post-vaccine environments have changed. “As you look at polio, we need to not be afraid to consider that we are in a different time now than we were then,” Milhoan said. “Our sanitation is different. Our risk of disease is different. And so those all play into the evaluation of whether this is worthwhile of taking a risk for a vaccine or not.”"

At In the Pipeline Derek Lowe wrote, "That “shared-decision-making phrase” came up, and how, as ACIP recently proceeded to put half a dozen other childhood vaccines in the same category. And Kirk Milhoan himself did a thorough job of revealing this worldview on a recent podcast. He feels that mandatory vaccination for diseases like polio and measles is (his phrase) “medical battery” and that the right to refuse the shots outweighs and medical or public health objections."

 

[steenkh]

“As you look at polio, we need to not be afraid to consider that we are in a different time now than we were then,” Milhoan said. “Our sanitation is different. Our risk of disease is different. And so those all play into the evaluation of whether this is worthwhile of taking a risk for a vaccine or not.”"

In the early 1990's there was a polio outbreak in the Netherlands among the members of a religious sect that was opposed to vaccination. The sanitation in the Netherlands then was not significantly worse than in the rich part of the world today. And yet as the outbreak spread, children got paralysis, and were damaged for life (and two dead).

The outbreak was only stopped when parents secretly took their children to be vaccinated without the knowledge of the religious group (some children got vaccinated twice because the father and mother independently took their children to be vaccinated without the other knowing it).

A few unvaccinated adults were also among the patients.

And Kirk Milhoan himself did a thorough job of revealing this worldview on a recent podcast. He feels that mandatory vaccination for diseases like polio and measles is (his phrase) “medical battery” and that the right to refuse the shots outweighs and medical or public health objections."

And as always, the nutters find that their right to refuse the shots trump the need for immunocompromised people to be protected.

 

[jimbob]

In the early 1990's there was a polio outbreak in the Netherlands among the members of a religious sect that was opposed to vaccination. The sanitation in the Netherlands then was not significantly worse than in the rich part of the world today. And yet as the outbreak spread, children got paralysis, and were damaged for life (and two dead).

The outbreak was only stopped when parents secretly took their children to be vaccinated without the knowledge of the religious group (some children got vaccinated twice because the father and mother independently took their children to be vaccinated without the other knowing it).

A few unvaccinated adults were also among the patients.


And as always, the nutters find that their right to refuse the shots trump the need for immunocompromised people to be protected.

That is my goto example.

Poliomyelitis outbreak in an unvaccinated community in The Netherlands, 1992-93 - PubMed

An outbreak of poliomyelitis occurred in the Netherlands between September, 1992, and February, 1993, after 14 years without endemic cases. The outbreak was due to poliovirus type 3 and involved 71 patients, of whom 2 died and 59 had paralysis. The patients were aged between 10 days and 61 years...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

71 cases all unvaccinated in a population highly vaccinated (well over 90%), 59 paralyzed and 2 killed.

 

[Norman Alexander]

Dr. Kirk Milhoan, whom Secretary Kennedy picked to be chair of the ACIP, did not sound enthusiastic about the polio vaccine: "In a wide-ranging interview on the Jan. 22 episode of the “Why Should I Trust You?” podcast, ACIP’s new chair, Kirk Milhoan, MD, PhD, discussed the need for and potential risks of vaccines such as those for polio and measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR), and how the pre- and post-vaccine environments have changed. “As you look at polio, we need to not be afraid to consider that we are in a different time now than we were then,” Milhoan said. “Our sanitation is different. Our risk of disease is different. And so those all play into the evaluation of whether this is worthwhile of taking a risk for a vaccine or not.”"

At In the Pipeline Derek Lowe wrote, "That “shared-decision-making phrase” came up, and how, as ACIP recently proceeded to put half a dozen other childhood vaccines in the same category. And Kirk Milhoan himself did a thorough job of revealing this worldview on a recent podcast. He feels that mandatory vaccination for diseases like polio and measles is (his phrase) “medical battery” and that the right to refuse the shots outweighs and medical or public health objections."

Playing the long-debunked sanitation card as their primary reason not to vaccinate. Lysenkoism in action!

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

If the flies don't want babies, it's certainly not the job of the government to subsidise their operation.

And if Murrikan flies don't have no baybbies then forane flies will be bussed in from their asylums and jails and totally start eating the American flies' cats and dogs and stealing welfare.

MAFGA!

 

[dann]

Conference Ejects Scientists Sharing Anti-Trump Editorial (Bloomberg, June 5, 2026)

ETA:
Misguided Brushes of a Pen Continue to Dismantle and Destroy Biomedical Research in the United States: We Can No Longer Afford Complacency and Fear. We Must All Act Now! (Diabetes Care, Vol 49, #6 – April 29, 2026)

Apology from ADA:

Video: ADA Leader Apologizes to Researchers Ejected From Meeting (Medpaged Today, June 10, 2026)
— CEO says the organization will commission a review of the events
The CEO of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) has apologized to five members who were escorted by police outopens in a new tab or window of the organization's annual meeting in New Orleans last week after they distributed an editorial criticizing the Trump administration for making changes to diabetes research funding.

 

[dann]

RFK Jr.. on the defensive after being criticized in a NYT article: Secretary Kennedy on X, June 11, 2026

It's a very long post, but this is one sentence: "All one needs to refute your argument is to glance at my publicly available calendar and to review my unprecedented list of accomplishments on a wide range of issues, all of which I drove."
Another poster mentions the current measles outbreak as one of RFK Jr.'s accomplishments!

Sheryl Gay Stolberg on X, June 7, 2026
NEW: Major posts are vacant. Waves of scientists are gone. Ebola looms. How RFK Jr. manages HHS:
“If the C.E.O. lacked deep expertise in the company’s business and the leaders of its most important divisions were missing, investors would revolt."
Kennedy Shows Minimal Engagement With Vast Health Portfolio (NYT, June 7, 2026)

The replies to Stolberg's post are almost all from MAHA blueticks.