Pragmatics to Replace Conspiracy Theory Central: RFK, Jr’s HHS

Pragmatics to Replace Conspiracy Theory Central: RFK, Jr’s HHS

“The firewall between science and ideology is completely broken down.” 

 Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, August 31st

"I don't know how many died… I don't think anybody knows because there was so much data chaos coming out of the CDC." 

Robert Kennedy, Jr when, at a September 4th Senate Finance Committee hearing, VA Senator Warner asked him whether he accepts that more than 1 million Americans died from COVID, as is widely accepted in the health community.

“I would say effectively we are denying people vaccines.” 

Louisiana Senator, Republican Bill Cassidy (a former practicing physician - gastroenterologist) responding to RFK, Jr.’s less-than-credible testimony before that same Senate Finance Committee hearing.

“Everybody can get the vaccine. You’re just making things up. You’re making things up to scare people, and it’s a lie.” 

Kennedy lied to Maggie Hassan (D/NH) at that hearing, as the CDC had just published severe limitations as to who could get the new COVID booster.

Robert Kennedy, Jr, now Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, has long since been an outcast from the famous Kennedy family… apparently going back to his childhood where his cruelty to small animals was an early sign of his mental state. A lawyer paid by an antivaxxer group, Kennedy is now paid by the taxpayers instead. A conspiracy theory favorite, he bolsters Trump’s standing with that segment of his MAGA base. RFK, Jr’s strategy in running HHS is simple: fabricate, lie with statistics, get rid of anyone who with credibility who disagrees with him, label empirical science as conspiracy theory and conspiracy theories are the only true science. Sprinkle in a few token outcast MDs, with a preference for those with TV hosting experience.

With the credibility of a cabinet appointment, Kennedy has a lot of clout. But like other cabinet secretaries, he has discharged long-standing expert advisory panels (notably vaccine experts with medical degrees) that won’t accept his conspiracy theories, replacing them with quacks who do. As new COVID cases are beginning to accelerate and as we are experiencing measles infections rising that we have not seen in three decades, there is a nascent move from red state governors (led by Ron DeSantis’ Florida) to eliminate vaccine mandates for school children. RFK, Jr’s aggressive testimony before that meeting of the Senate Finance Committee did not go well.

“Three Republicans, including Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who was key in advancing Kennedy’s nomination, joined Democrats in criticizing Kennedy’s actions. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina at one point told Kennedy that remarks he gave to the panel during the confirmation process “seem to contradict” what he is doing now as Health secretary.

“The decorum usually associated with congressional hearings at times fell by the wayside. Kennedy and senators repeatedly shouted over one another, accused each other of lying and engaged in name-calling. In one instance, Kennedy told Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) that she was engaging in ‘crazy talk’ when asked about vaccine access. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) called Kennedy a ‘charlatan.’

“Thursday’s session [9/4] marked a peak of bipartisan frustration over a string of controversial decisions by Kennedy that have thrown his department into disarray. Kennedy dismissed an entire advisory panel responsible for vaccine recommendations and replaced its members with known vaccine skeptics. He withdrew $500 million in funding earmarked for developing vaccines against respiratory viruses. And, just last week, he ousted the newly appointed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention following disagreements over vaccine policy.

“In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday [9/4], Susan Monarez, the former CDC director, wrote that she was forced out after she declined to recommend people ‘who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric’ to an influential vaccine advisory panel…. At the hearing, Kennedy said Monarez was lying and that the shake-up at the CDC was “absolutely necessary.” He added that he fired her because he asked her if she was trustworthy, and she told him, ‘no.’… ‘We depoliticized it and put great scientists on it from a very diverse group, very, very pro-vaccine,’ he said.” Ana Ceballos writing for the August 5th Los Angeles Times. What Kennedy didn’t say is that he pushed Monarez out also because she would not sign off on a vaccine report she hadn’t even seen. As noted by Nicholas Florki in the September 4th The Atlantic: “In the past 200 days, Kennedy has terminated mRNA-research grants, stuffed a CDC advisory panel with anti-vaccine activists, and propped up unproven treatments during a deadly measles outbreak.”

The Senate committee meeting was filled with tension, Democratic Senators’ not holding back with similar responses, more politely framed by Republicans: “Cassidy asked Kennedy if he believed President Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for his administration’s work on Operation Warp Speed, the initiative that sped the development of the COVID-19 vaccine and treatments… ‘Absolutely,’ Kennedy said… Cassidy said he was surprised at his answer because he believes Kennedy is trying to restrict access to the COVID-19 vaccine. He also expressed dismay at Kennedy’s decision to cancel $500 million in contracts to develop vaccines using mRNA technology, which Cassidy said was key to the operation.” LA Times.

Equally interesting was Kennedy’s testimony that Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” contained a $50 billion allocation (over five years) to support rural hospitals. What he did not mention with the cost-saving centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” at least $880 billion in cuts largely to Medicaid to help cover the cost of $4.5 trillion in tax breaks that benefit mostly the rich… is that Medicaid main source of funding for those same rural hospitals. Kennedy seems to be a well-practiced con man. What one hand giveth, the other taketh away (but, oh, so much more). He continued spouting that vaccines are more dangerous that the diseases they are intended to prevent, a wild statistical fabrication. At the Senate hearing, Kennedy even told Senator Michael Bennett (D/CO) that he agreed with Retsef Levi (an MIT professor of management, with no medical degree), whom he’d elevated to the CDC’s vaccine-advisory panel earlier this year, who has claimed that “evidence is mounting and indisputable that MRNA vaccines cause serious harm including death, especially among young people.”

Bottom line, HHS, and in particular its CDC, are no longer reliable sources of fact-based medical information and policies, forcing some states to create their own credible separate versions of those federal agencies. Health officials from Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are coordinating their own vaccine recommendations. Parallel efforts are taking place in upper Midwestern states, and California is joining with Oregon and Washington (labeled the “West Coast Health Alliance”), to pursue that growing need for that HHS/CDC alternative workaround.

I’m Peter Dekom, and with increasing use of AI, we just may eventually have an accurate assessment of precisely how many Americans (especially children) will have died by reason of Kennedy’s policies and selected senior HHS officials and advisors… but those numbers are already mounting fast.