One dangerous agent of Trumpist chaos is creating a tragedy to last decades
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Donald Trump’s appointee as secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has set out to dismantle an Atlanta-based institution, attempting to transform the Centers for Disease Control, the planet’s pre-eminent public-health agency, into the Centers for Deluded Conspiracy, an official purveyor of pseudo-science and quackery.
And those with the power to stop Kennedy’s assault on the CDC lack the courage and wisdom to do so, while those who do have the courage to act lack the power to intervene. As a result, we are witnessing a tragedy play out before our eyes that will have consequences for decades.
If that sounds alarmist, let’s review who we’re dealing with in Kennedy.
In the not-too-distant past, he has suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic was a “plandemic,” created by the pharmaceutical industry to drum up business for itself, with the CDC serving as the industry’s enforcer.
It’s a familiar line of thinking for Kennedy, an echo of his earlier conspiracy theory that the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001 may have plotted by the U.S. defense industry so it could keep selling arms and munitions.
Kennedy has said that there is no such thing as a safe and effective vaccine. He has said that the polio vaccine has killed more people than it has saved. He has suggested that COVID-19 was “targeted” to kill certain ethnic groups, such as white and Black people, while making Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese immune. He also insists that vaccines and Tylenol cause autism, theories that are utterly without scientific basis.
Trump himself, the man who suggested that we could fight COVID by injecting bleach into our veins or letting the sun shine into places in our body where God did not intend the sun to shine, posted a vaccine-related meme this week on his Truth Social account claiming: “They’re ALL poison. Every. Single. One.”
Given their unquestioning faith in their leader, a lot of Trump supporters will probably be even more reluctant now to be vaccinated, or to allow their children to do so, and that will have consequences for them. But again, when powerful national leaders make health care policy based on such nonsense, even those of us who know better will pay a heavy price.
Living and working in Atlanta, I’ve met a lot of CDC employees. They are smart, they are honest, they are dedicated to science and to the mission of public health. Many have sacrificed more lucrative career paths because they wanted to be at the CDC, where so much important work was being done.
Imagine being someone like that and you’re told that to keep your job you have to pretend that vaccines do more damage than good, and other such nonsense. For a lot of CDC employees, they don’t have to imagine that scenario because they are living it.
In recent testimony to the U.S. Senate, Kennedy was asked why he had just fired Susan Monarez as CDC director, after just four weeks in the job.
“I told her that she had to resign because when I asked her whether she was a trustworthy person, and she said no,” Kennedy told the senators.
Somehow, I doubt that’s how the conversation actually went down. It seems far more likely that Kennedy asked Monarez whether she could be trusted to spew the pseudo-science that Kennedy demanded. When she refused, as integrity demanded, she was fired.
Monarez holds a doctorate in immunology and microbiology, with a long career of research into infectious diseases and other public-health issues. Her replacement as acting director of the CDC, Jim O’Neill, has a master’s degree in the humanities, but apparently Kennedy considers him “trustworthy.”
It’s easy to see why. Like Kennedy, O’Neill champions the use of ivermectin, a horse dewormer, to treat COVID. He believes that the government should allow the sale of unproved drugs and other treatments so that people can experiment on their own to find out if they work or not. Yeah, they may die unnecessarily, but it’s not the government’s job to protect them from such choices.
There have always been people who prefer to live in an alternate reality of their own design, as Kennedy, O’Neill and others do. We saw that at the peak of the pandemic, when some individuals stubbornly rejected the vaccine and medical science in favor of quack remedies such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
It was their choice, and many died as a result.
But now, in our era of national madness, we have surrendered control of major agencies of the federal government to such people, not just at the CDC but at the Pentagon, the Department of State, the Department of Commerce and the Department of Justice.
Now all of us are living in their alternate reality. Now all of us are at risk when actual reality reasserts itself, as it always does eventually. We can’t know what form that challenge will take, but we do know it will come, and the charlatans and conspiracy fools that we now have in charge will prove spectacularly unfit to meet it.
Georgia Recorder
September 14, 2025
September 14, 2025
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Donald Trump’s appointee as secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has set out to dismantle an Atlanta-based institution, attempting to transform the Centers for Disease Control, the planet’s pre-eminent public-health agency, into the Centers for Deluded Conspiracy, an official purveyor of pseudo-science and quackery.
And those with the power to stop Kennedy’s assault on the CDC lack the courage and wisdom to do so, while those who do have the courage to act lack the power to intervene. As a result, we are witnessing a tragedy play out before our eyes that will have consequences for decades.
If that sounds alarmist, let’s review who we’re dealing with in Kennedy.
In the not-too-distant past, he has suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic was a “plandemic,” created by the pharmaceutical industry to drum up business for itself, with the CDC serving as the industry’s enforcer.
It’s a familiar line of thinking for Kennedy, an echo of his earlier conspiracy theory that the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001 may have plotted by the U.S. defense industry so it could keep selling arms and munitions.
Kennedy has said that there is no such thing as a safe and effective vaccine. He has said that the polio vaccine has killed more people than it has saved. He has suggested that COVID-19 was “targeted” to kill certain ethnic groups, such as white and Black people, while making Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese immune. He also insists that vaccines and Tylenol cause autism, theories that are utterly without scientific basis.
Trump himself, the man who suggested that we could fight COVID by injecting bleach into our veins or letting the sun shine into places in our body where God did not intend the sun to shine, posted a vaccine-related meme this week on his Truth Social account claiming: “They’re ALL poison. Every. Single. One.”
Given their unquestioning faith in their leader, a lot of Trump supporters will probably be even more reluctant now to be vaccinated, or to allow their children to do so, and that will have consequences for them. But again, when powerful national leaders make health care policy based on such nonsense, even those of us who know better will pay a heavy price.
Living and working in Atlanta, I’ve met a lot of CDC employees. They are smart, they are honest, they are dedicated to science and to the mission of public health. Many have sacrificed more lucrative career paths because they wanted to be at the CDC, where so much important work was being done.
Imagine being someone like that and you’re told that to keep your job you have to pretend that vaccines do more damage than good, and other such nonsense. For a lot of CDC employees, they don’t have to imagine that scenario because they are living it.
In recent testimony to the U.S. Senate, Kennedy was asked why he had just fired Susan Monarez as CDC director, after just four weeks in the job.
“I told her that she had to resign because when I asked her whether she was a trustworthy person, and she said no,” Kennedy told the senators.
Somehow, I doubt that’s how the conversation actually went down. It seems far more likely that Kennedy asked Monarez whether she could be trusted to spew the pseudo-science that Kennedy demanded. When she refused, as integrity demanded, she was fired.
Monarez holds a doctorate in immunology and microbiology, with a long career of research into infectious diseases and other public-health issues. Her replacement as acting director of the CDC, Jim O’Neill, has a master’s degree in the humanities, but apparently Kennedy considers him “trustworthy.”
It’s easy to see why. Like Kennedy, O’Neill champions the use of ivermectin, a horse dewormer, to treat COVID. He believes that the government should allow the sale of unproved drugs and other treatments so that people can experiment on their own to find out if they work or not. Yeah, they may die unnecessarily, but it’s not the government’s job to protect them from such choices.
There have always been people who prefer to live in an alternate reality of their own design, as Kennedy, O’Neill and others do. We saw that at the peak of the pandemic, when some individuals stubbornly rejected the vaccine and medical science in favor of quack remedies such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
It was their choice, and many died as a result.
But now, in our era of national madness, we have surrendered control of major agencies of the federal government to such people, not just at the CDC but at the Pentagon, the Department of State, the Department of Commerce and the Department of Justice.
Now all of us are living in their alternate reality. Now all of us are at risk when actual reality reasserts itself, as it always does eventually. We can’t know what form that challenge will take, but we do know it will come, and the charlatans and conspiracy fools that we now have in charge will prove spectacularly unfit to meet it.
Jay Bookman covered Georgia and national politics for nearly 30 years for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, earning numerous national, regional and state journalism awards. He has been awarded the National Headliner Award and the Walker Stone Award for outstanding editorial writing, and is the only two-time winner of the Pulliam Fellowship granted by the Society of Professional Journalists. He is also the author of "Caught in the Current," published by St. Martin's Press.
RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Panel May Restrict Covid-19 Shots for Those Under 75, Citing Unverified Death Reports
“They are leveraging this platform to share untruths about vaccines to scare people,” said one doctor Kennedy fired from the panel.
Stephen Prager
Sep 13, 2025
COMMON DREAMS
Health officials working under Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may seek to restrict access to the Covid-19 vaccine for people under 75 years old.
The Washington Post reported Friday that the officials plan to justify the move by citing reports from an unverified database to make the claim that the shots caused the deaths of 25 children.
The reports come from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a federal database that allows the public to submit reports of negative reactions to vaccines. As the Post explains, VAERS “contains unverified reports of side effects or bad experiences with vaccines submitted by anyone, including patients, doctors, pharmacists, or even someone who sees a report on social media.”
As one publicly maintained database of “Batshit Crazy VAERS Adverse Events” found, users have reported deaths and injuries resulting from gunshot wounds, malaria, drug overdoses, and countless other unrelated causes as possible cases of vaccine injury.
As Beth Mole wrote for ARS Technica, “The reports are completely unverified upon submission, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff follow up on serious reports to try to substantiate claims and assess if they were actually caused by a vaccine. They rarely are.”
Nevertheless, HHS officials plan to use these VAERS reports on pediatric deaths in a presentation to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) next week as the panel considers revising federal vaccine guidelines.
One person familiar with the matter told the Post that HHS officials attempted to interview some of the families who claimed their child died from the vaccine, but it is unclear how many were consulted and what other information was used to verify their claims.
In June, Kennedy purged that panel of many top vaccine experts, replacing them with prominent anti-vaccine activists, after previously promising during his confirmation hearing to keep the panel intact.
The Food and Drug Administration under Kennedy has already limited access to the Covid-19 vaccine. Last month, it authorized the vaccines only for those 65 and over who are known to be at risk of serious illness from Covid-19 infections.
While the vaccine is technically available to others, the updated guidance has created significant barriers, such as the potential requirement of a doctor’s prescription and out-of-pocket payment, making it much harder for many to receive the shot.
The Post reports that ACIP is considering restricting access to the vaccination further, by recommending it only for those older than 75. It is weighing multiple options for those 74 and younger—potentially requiring them to consult with their doctor first, or not recommending it at all unless they have a preexisting condition.
Prior to the wide availability of Covid-19 vaccinations beginning in 2021, the illness killed over 350,000 people in the US. And while the danger of death from Covid-19 does increase with age, CDC data shows that from 2020 to 2023, nearly 47% of the over 1.1 million deaths from the illness occurred in people under 75.
According to the World Health Organization, the US reported 822 deaths from Covid over a 28-day period in July and August this year, vastly more deaths than anywhere else in the world. CDC data reported to ACIP in June shows that Covid deaths were lower among all age groups—including children—who received the mRNA vaccine.
Nicole Brewer, one of the vaccine advisers eliminated by Kennedy, lamented that Kennedy and his new appointees are ignoring the dangers of Covid-19 while amplifying the comparatively much lower risk posed by vaccines.
“They are leveraging this platform to share untruths about vaccines to scare people,” she told the Post. “The U.S. government is now in the business of vaccine misinformation.”
ACIP is also reportedly mulling the rollback of guidelines for other childhood vaccines for deadly diseases like measles, Hepatitis B, and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV).
While ACIP’s guidelines are not legally binding, the Post writes that its meeting next week “is critical because the recommendations determine whether insurers must pay for the immunizations, pharmacies can administer them, and doctors are willing to offer them.”
“If you haven’t gotten your updated Covid vaccine by now, book an appointment fast before next week’s ACIP meeting,” warned Dr. David Gorski, the editor of the blog Science-Based Medicine. “After that, you might not be able to get one.”
“They are leveraging this platform to share untruths about vaccines to scare people,” said one doctor Kennedy fired from the panel.
Stephen Prager
Sep 13, 2025
COMMON DREAMS
Health officials working under Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may seek to restrict access to the Covid-19 vaccine for people under 75 years old.
The Washington Post reported Friday that the officials plan to justify the move by citing reports from an unverified database to make the claim that the shots caused the deaths of 25 children.
The reports come from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a federal database that allows the public to submit reports of negative reactions to vaccines. As the Post explains, VAERS “contains unverified reports of side effects or bad experiences with vaccines submitted by anyone, including patients, doctors, pharmacists, or even someone who sees a report on social media.”
As one publicly maintained database of “Batshit Crazy VAERS Adverse Events” found, users have reported deaths and injuries resulting from gunshot wounds, malaria, drug overdoses, and countless other unrelated causes as possible cases of vaccine injury.
As Beth Mole wrote for ARS Technica, “The reports are completely unverified upon submission, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff follow up on serious reports to try to substantiate claims and assess if they were actually caused by a vaccine. They rarely are.”
Nevertheless, HHS officials plan to use these VAERS reports on pediatric deaths in a presentation to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) next week as the panel considers revising federal vaccine guidelines.
One person familiar with the matter told the Post that HHS officials attempted to interview some of the families who claimed their child died from the vaccine, but it is unclear how many were consulted and what other information was used to verify their claims.
In June, Kennedy purged that panel of many top vaccine experts, replacing them with prominent anti-vaccine activists, after previously promising during his confirmation hearing to keep the panel intact.
The Food and Drug Administration under Kennedy has already limited access to the Covid-19 vaccine. Last month, it authorized the vaccines only for those 65 and over who are known to be at risk of serious illness from Covid-19 infections.
While the vaccine is technically available to others, the updated guidance has created significant barriers, such as the potential requirement of a doctor’s prescription and out-of-pocket payment, making it much harder for many to receive the shot.
The Post reports that ACIP is considering restricting access to the vaccination further, by recommending it only for those older than 75. It is weighing multiple options for those 74 and younger—potentially requiring them to consult with their doctor first, or not recommending it at all unless they have a preexisting condition.
Prior to the wide availability of Covid-19 vaccinations beginning in 2021, the illness killed over 350,000 people in the US. And while the danger of death from Covid-19 does increase with age, CDC data shows that from 2020 to 2023, nearly 47% of the over 1.1 million deaths from the illness occurred in people under 75.
According to the World Health Organization, the US reported 822 deaths from Covid over a 28-day period in July and August this year, vastly more deaths than anywhere else in the world. CDC data reported to ACIP in June shows that Covid deaths were lower among all age groups—including children—who received the mRNA vaccine.
Nicole Brewer, one of the vaccine advisers eliminated by Kennedy, lamented that Kennedy and his new appointees are ignoring the dangers of Covid-19 while amplifying the comparatively much lower risk posed by vaccines.
“They are leveraging this platform to share untruths about vaccines to scare people,” she told the Post. “The U.S. government is now in the business of vaccine misinformation.”
ACIP is also reportedly mulling the rollback of guidelines for other childhood vaccines for deadly diseases like measles, Hepatitis B, and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV).
While ACIP’s guidelines are not legally binding, the Post writes that its meeting next week “is critical because the recommendations determine whether insurers must pay for the immunizations, pharmacies can administer them, and doctors are willing to offer them.”
“If you haven’t gotten your updated Covid vaccine by now, book an appointment fast before next week’s ACIP meeting,” warned Dr. David Gorski, the editor of the blog Science-Based Medicine. “After that, you might not be able to get one.”
MIKE STOBBE
Fri, September 12, 2025
NEW YORK (AP) — Federal health officials intend to award a contract to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to investigate whether there is a link between vaccinations and autism, according to a government procurement notice.
The Troy, New York, engineering school is getting the no-bid contract because of its “unique ability” to link data on children and mothers, according to the notice posted this week.
Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to questions about the notice, including how much the contract is for or what exactly the researchers intend to do.
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading voice in the antivaccine movement before President Donald Trump selected him to oversee federal health agencies, announced in April a “massive testing and research effort” to determine the cause of autism by this month. He has repeatedly tried to link vaccines to the condition.
An RPI biotech engineering professor, Juergen Hahn, has used artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to look for patterns in blood samples of children with autism. Hahn “is renowned for the quality and rigor of his research," RPI officials said in a statement acknowledging the intended grant.
"If this project is awarded, he intends to publish the results of his work at the conclusion of the project,” the statement added.
The Associated Press left messages seeking comment from Hahn.
The notice raises many questions, said Alycia Halladay, who oversees research activities and grants for the Autism Science Foundation.
RPI is not known in the field as having any special access to data on this kind of question and “wouldn’t be the obvious choice,” Halladay said.
It's also not clear how the contract fits into other autism research that the government may be planning, she said
But perhaps the biggest question is why money is being spent on such a study at all, she added.
Scientists have ruled out a link between vaccines and autism, finding no evidence of increased rates of autism among those who are vaccinated compared with those who are not.
“The question has been studied for 20 years, multiple times by researchers around the world using millions of people, and there has never been a credible association found between vaccines and autism,” Halladay said.
Those who have spent decades researching autism have found no single cause. Genetics play a role, and other factors include the age of a child’s father, the mother’s weight, and whether she had diabetes or was exposed to certain chemicals.
Whatever amount is being spent on the project could instead be going to “other important research questions,” including studies of genetics and environmental factors, Halladay said.
“I think that’s the most frustrating part,” she said.
For months, HHS officials have been trying to use vaccine safety data compiled by the CDC to look for harms that might be tied to shots. Kennedy has accused CDC leaders of stonewalling those efforts, but the actual obstacle has been something else, said one former federal health official familiar with the situation, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
About a dozen medical research organizations collect the vaccine safety data and report it to the CDC. Contracts that stretch back nearly two decades give those entities — not the CDC — control over the data, and HHS has not yet been able to get it, the official said.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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