And RFK Jr. Flops Again

 The problem with doing this blog is that I write the entries in advance. I did the piece on RFK Confounding His Friends on March 4. But, now I learn that he has again flip flopped and is saying that maybe we should trust in vitamins and crunchy cures rather than vaccinations.

Argh.

Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. That’s his nature. Of course he’d eventually abandon common sense for “medical care” that is based instead on herbs, weeds, and wishful thinking.

And the tragedy is that we all, and particularly children, will pay the price for his madness. 

RFK Jr. Confounds His Friends

So I read the other day that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., famous antivaxxer and brain worm supporter, has riled the antivaxx community by turning around and advocating the measles vaccine. Which comes under the heading of a little too late, given the fact that we’ve now got an outbreak of that insidious disease, but, well, maybe better late than never.

But it seems that anti-vaccine activists (a.k.a. “Enemies of Good Health and Humanity everywhere”) are appalled by his change of viruses in midstream. They’re now calling him a turncoat.

While, of course, I think the anti-vaccine movement is utterly wrong, and indeed a real threat to human life, still…I can understand, if not sympathize, with the anti-vaxxers’ reaction here.

It must be dreadful to be in the forefront of a lunatic movement, only to discover that your chief loonie has had an attack of sanity.

How dare you be sane?

Follow Up to RFK Jr.

So now, I read, RFK Jr. is calling the measles outbreak a “priority” and is actually going to do something about it. What actions he might take are, at least at the moment, unclear. But at least he says he’s going to take some kind of action.

The problem is that this is far too late. The trick in public health is to stay ahead of pandemics, not to catch up with them.

And, frankly, anti-vaccine Robert is already way late to the game. The terrifying question is what will he do, or not do, if something worse…and quicker…comes along. 

They Can Change

Here’s one encouraging piece on antivaxxers. It seems that they can, after all, change their minds if given the right information in the right way. Check out this piece in the Guardian, “Formerly anti-vax parents on how they changed their minds: ‘I really made a mistake’.” The authors cite the case of several anti-vaccine parents who woke up one morning and realized they were being lied to…and that those lies were putting their own children at risk.

Give the piece a read. It offers some useful techniques for the ways that communities and families can confront the (incredibly dangerous) antivaxxer movement. 

JFK jr.’s small comforts

Okay, there are two posts today. The first one I wrote on Feb 26, 2025, just after I saw the referenced article about RFJ Jr.’s inactivity regarding the recent measles outbreak. I thought I was being witty and somewhat tongue in cheek. I was wrong. The second posting, which follows this one, reflects what has happened since then. 

Interesting and disturbing article in Vox the other day, “What RFK Jr. has said about the ongoing measles outbreak: The new Health and Human Services secretary is facing one of his first public health crises. Will he blow up the typical protocol?” by Dylan Scott. In it, Mr. Scott looks at what the administration’s favorite antivaxxer is doing in response to the measles outbreak currently raging in Western Texas and Eastern New Mexico.

The fear is that he will interfere in some fashion with vaccination programs, and thus make the situation much, much worse. However, so far, he hasn’t done much of anything, for good or bad. That means that he has left the problem in the skilled hands of local authorities – which is a very good thing, indeed.

There is, however, something terrifying in the knowledge that the best you can ask from the new Health and Human Services secretary is that he remain inert, and so not hurt anyone.

Thus we have a whole new meaning of the term “competence.” In the case of this administration, it means immobility, so that the individual involved does not actively and vigorously engage in genuine evil, but instead remains safely asleep at the switch, and is thus only passively harmful.

As I say, I then discovered I was oh so very wrong. For that, go to the next post.