Is it a good idea to place an anti-vaxxer as head of health in the US?

It’s a terrible idea. I think Medicare and other government programs like free vaccines would be thrown into chaos.

What makes zero sense is that usually when people are given cabinet positions, and appointed positions, they are competent in the field of the position. For example, when someone is appointed to something regarding defense, they usually have military experience. To appoint a person like Kennedy to something where he has no experience or education makes no sense. At least put someone in who is somewhat qualified. He’s an attorney and environmental litigator.

Dan Rather just put it very succinctly: ”Having Robert F Kennedy Jr running our country’s health care is like putting Hannibal Lecter in charge of the food supply.”

It is another Trump backwards thinking !

What is best for Trump and worst for the country is the way he rolls.

I wonder how much North Korea , Russia and China are paying him ?

It’s crazy to have an anti-vaxxer and I think it should be someone with some science or medical education. I have no idea if the people in that position are usually doctors or scientists.

If it happens, hopefully he will be happy to have a title, the paycheck, and the perks, and not change much. I don’t know how much power he will actually have over the FDA and CDC and the availability of vaccine, and if he will have any power over the states and their recommendations. There are federal level recommendations and state level.

My guess is he would try to do away with children being required to get vaccines for school. I was just on a facebook thread where a parent had moved from California to Texas and wanted her kids to go to the Catholic school in Texas, but the school required certain vaccinations, so they were going to put their kid in a different school. I found it interesting that a person who was a religious Catholic was going against the church position on vaccines and not going to give their child a Catholic education.

I realize the child can still go to CCD and be confirmed and so on, but my friends who put their kids in Catholic schools and then considered taking them out for another school were extremely anxious and even cried making the decision, it was very hard for them.

It is like having a fascist in the White House . . . that doesn’t believe in the Constitution . . . just ME ME ME ME !

It’s only a good idea if your goal is to create chaos and break down the current system.

RFK Jr is a child killer.

We are so close to eliminating polio from the planet. Someone like Kennedy could screw it up.

We probably could stop Measles too.

@Caravanfan And a whale and bear-killer.

Don’t forget, Elon Musk will also be in a position of power if Trump wins. The clowns running the circus. I hate that I find it funny, since it’s also potentially destructive, but it’s weird how Trump seems almost sane compared to the people he surrounds himself with…

No idea to what degree Kennedy is at as an anti-vaccine proponent.

Does he mean to eliminate all of it? Some? Is he a rational human being who genuinely cares about people or just a deranged wannabe political-celebrity like Trump?

“Anti-vaxxers”, “no masks” and “don’t distance yourselves”; may have caused 250,000 to 400,000 deaths in the USA during the pandemic.

If you point that out they’ll blame China and FDA research developing the virus.

Denial, deflection and diffusion !

^^regarding vaccines, I’m more worried about measles, rubella, pertussis, polio, all of these vaccines actually do prevent with high efficacy the spread of the disease hence giving us herd immunity. Covid vaccine didn’t do that, and unfortunately was initially promoted as being able to accomplish it.

I agree that a few hundred thousand people in the US died who wouldn’t have if we didn’t have anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers, but at this point the government has decided not to try to protect the population from covid through any well promoted advice to be cautious.

My biggest frustration is we don’t promote wearing masks on mass transportation. I’m not asking for a mandate, just an acknowledgment that traveling spreads the virus (and other viruses) around. There are ads to get your updated covid shot, but not our SG promoting washing hands and if you feel under the weather please isolate or mask a few days. I’ve wanted that to happen for 20 years.

The proverbial fox in charge of the hen house.

It’s on the stupidity spectrum along with putting a flat-Earther in charge of NASA.

RFK Jr. is a conspiracy theory crackpot.

No one who denies medical science should ever be anywhere near the department of medical health for the country. Too many people would die if he decided that no one should get any vaccines, covid or otherwise.

Having him in charge would be like arming our citizens against disease with bleach colon cleanses, and ivermectin Kool-aid.

He’s an unpopular eccentric politician who has been disowned by his own family because of his crackpot ideas. The Trump administration is the only place left for him to go.

@gorillapaws for the win!

I predict there will be an addition to the DSM in the future based on the study of Trump.

I’m predicting that a Trump lover on Fluther is going to say that an anti-vaxxer being in charge of something on the Federal level of health care will say that RFK will bring a refreshing perspective to the Department lol.

You might remember in the news the Florida Surgeon General called for a halt of the use of the mRNA vaccines for covid. Something like that. I ignore it. We can easily get covid vaccine in Florida, so I am not sure what the deal is with that whole thing.

@Forever_Free LOL Megalomaniacal narcissist with undertones of orange.

It’s deranged MAGA idea #473,189, at this point.

But NO, it’s not a good idea.

@jca2 This is what the Trump administration started doing immediately in 2017: appointing saboteurs to head all branches of government, people chosen because they would undermine and do as much damage to those branches of government as possible. It’s one of the reasons why I felt Trump should have been in jail in early 2017.

OMG. In 2016 I saw shit like this and didn’t say anything. I thought “Surely his stupidity was painfully obvious to every one.”
I had just gotten up and was making my way to the BR when my daughter called.
I answered the phone with “Who won?”
“Trump” she said in disgust.
I was stopped in my tracks by a jolt of disbelief.
I’m sure saying something now.
If only the electoral college would stay the F out of it this time.

What was the question?

Not an issue.

I don’t really care if someone in charge of health agencies has concerns about vaccines. Some people call me anti-vax because I was severely harmed by the COVID vaccine and, because there is no science to understand why some of us are seriously harmed, I am cautiously avoiding certain vaccines.

I care if someone (anyone) in power, especially in science/health, uses their beliefs instead of evidence and the current body of scientific body of knowledge to make decisions.

It is about how leaders seek, access, interpret, develop policy and implement programs. There is a little role for beliefs. Beliefs can, in convergence with the masses (or other powerful people, funders, etc.) help guide you towards a topic. But beliefs don’t make good policy (see ascientific anti-abortion policy for examples).

I also care that government and administrators in health-related spaces have the appropriate training. Law is fine in almost any position. But positions related to health and populations of people require public health or population health or translational health degrees. Not medicine. Not public administration. Not communications. Public health. The others are great additions to a public health degree, not a replacment.

@Cupcake “I also care that government and administrators in health-related spaces have the appropriate training”

RFK Jr has no medical training whatsoever.

RFK Jr is now wanting trump to take fluoride out of drinking water without any scientific evidence that it causes harm. In fact, it is shown to prevent cavities. He’s got delusions of grandeur.

I read that today. It’s lunacy. The gd thing is he doesn’t have the power to do it, just to suggest it. It’s up to each municipality.

It’s the beginning of the total unacy.

I also saw a tweet by RFK about torturing children but I’m not sure what it was in reference to.

@caravanfan Yeah, no kidding. I guess I need to be clearer. I don’t care about his anti-vax beliefs, I care how he makes decisions (poorly) and his training (lacking).

I was answering the question, how do I feel about anti-vax people leading health agencies.

It can’t be any worse than having someone in there that pushes experimental vaccines that aren’t really vaccines and didn’t get fully tested.

^Yes it can. We all know what Polio, mumps, measles and other diseases that have mostly been eliminated can do to children.

According to @seawulf575 rumor equals fact cuz he likes how it sounds.

@Dutchess_III
He is a follower of Nurgle.

RFK Jr would be an extinction level event for public health policy
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/rfk-jr-is-now-an-extinction-level-threat-to-federal-public-health-programs-and-science-based-health-policy/

Where is Fauci when you need him?

CDC’s Dr Mandy Cohen came from North Carolina.

Yeah, I can’t imagine where RFK jr. gets ideas like vaccines cause autism. You’d think there was a scientific study that could point to that if it was true.

My point is that there are many opinions on things like this. There is scientific evidence that supports and refutes just about every claim. That is how science works. It always questions. To say we shouldn’t question is ignorance.

The “vaccines cause autism” studies were debunked.
https://www.chop.edu/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety/vaccines-and-other-conditions/autism

@seawulf575 Yes, I like how you get your medical information from a business executive who was an expert in international finance. (And here is an article by an actual physician who knows what the fuck he’s talking about that debunks that excreble paper)

I think more and more things are hung on the autism cross in the last 30 years.

Has anybody here had measles, mumps, rubella, polio? No? Probably thanks to vaccines. (mic drop)

@jca2 The anti-vax crowd credits better sanitation like measles, mumps, and rubella are like cholera and dysentery.

It’s ridiculous.

My husband had mumps as a young child. Possibly Mexico started vaccinating later than the US.

There are still small outbreaks of measles, mumps, and rubella in the US. People who travel bring it in. Polio is on it’s way to be eliminated from the planet like small pox. The anti-vaxxers have focused a lot on polio, attempting to disrupt the effort. Unbelievable. Even Israel had a cease fire to vaccinate children for polio.

There are some vaccines I don’t get, for other reasons, but I’m definitely pro vaccine for the majority of them.

I had mumps and measles. I was born in ‘58, so I don’t know when vaccines started.
I do know that mumps was an incredibly stupid looking disease. My jowls hung down almost to my shoulders. <eyeroll>

I had mumps when I was little. I remember i was sleeping a lot.

MMR vaccine started in the early 70’s. Not sure if mumps vaccine was given alone before that.

My husband was born in ‘67, so he might simply have had it before the vaccine was rolled out.

@chyna Anyone born before ‘57 wasn’t given the MMR vaccine. Or, generally that’s the case.

A friend of mine in her 70’s never had measles and never received MMR as a child, so she is vulnerable if there is an outbreak unless she is naturally immune, which is unlikely.

My sister got the mumps.

I feel like a member of the Mumps Club!

I feel left out.

I had the mumps and measles in the early 1950’s.

I think I was vaccinated against polio in 1956, so I never got it.

@seawulf575 “There is scientific evidence that supports and refutes just about every claim. That is how science works.”

This is one of the most profoundly idiotic statement ever made on Fluther. Of course science has messy data and sometimes it has studies (of varying quality) that can seem to have contradictory conclusions, but to simply assert that because the data is sometimes messy, ergo there is no objective truths in Science, or Scientific consensus on things is the epistemological equivalent of shitting the bed.

@gorillapaws I never said there was no objective truth. What I said is that there are always conflicting reports. It is the nature of how science works. If someone sees a report and starts acting on it but then later studies say it’s wrong, it is foolishness to denigrate the person for acting on written, scientific study.

Here’s one for you, there were numerous studies that showed that surgical masks did nothing for stopping the spread of bacterial infection and possibly made it worse. Those studies were out when Covid-19 first came out. Initially Fauci said to not bother with masks as they did nothing. He then revised that to say if you want to wear something over you face you can, but there isn’t any real proof it helps. He then revised that to say that masking was absolutely vital to stop the spread of the virus (btw, viruses are far smaller than bacteria). Yet there were not actual studies done to support that complete opposite view (that masks helped). There were a number that came out after he started making that claim but they were really basing their results on anecdotal evidence…not a peer reviewed study. So why is it that when he spouts complete gibberish, you all bow down and praise him, yelling at others to stop putting everyone’s lives in peril? Yes, eventually people started trying to point to the garbage studies done to say making helped, but the peer reviewed studies showed they didn’t help. So you had two sets of studies, one side had far more strenuous requirements than the other, and people were looking at both studies and coming up with completely opposite answers. Yet both sides were supposedly supported by science.

Everything @seawulf575 wrote is wrong except the part where viruses are smaller than bacteria. That is correct.

1) There are not always conflicting reports. Anybody can write crap and publish, but that doesn’t make it valid (like that bullshit paper he linked to before)
2) Fauci never said masks don’t do anything
3) N95 masks stop viruses
4) Regular masks stop droplet spread. Viruses live in the droplets.

Our family was in Disneyland in 2014 the exact days when unvaccinated measles carriers were there. They spread measles to quite a few people while they were there. We had recently updated our MMR (for various reasons), so were unaffected. 4 wins for modern medicine!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disneyland_measles_outbreak