Summary

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s claim that he “had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa” during the 2019 measles epidemic is not credible.

While a 2018 vaccine mishap and subsequent pause primarily caused low vaccination rates, Kennedy’s engagement with the Samoan government, his promotion of anti-vaccine influencers, and his amplification of misinformation contributed to vaccine hesitancy.

The epidemic caused 83 deaths, primarily among children, with a mortality rate over 1%.

Kennedy has since downplayed his role, despite evidence of his involvement in anti-vaccine advocacy.

  • arc@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    RFK jr is a child killer. As in he killed children. Not directly but knowingly with misinformation that he used to manipulate others to cause their deaths. He is a fucking monster.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    This asshat is extremely dangerous to the lives of Americans and people worldwide.

    If Brainworms is given free reign, it’s quite possible he ends up responsible for more deaths than donvict’s policies do in his second term (even if you count the victims of his stochastic terrorism). It might even surpass the amount of death attributed to donvict in his failures in his first term during Covid…

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      Wouldn’t it be nice if he took the experience of not being proud and learned from it? Maybe even start to wonder whether his views might be wrong and stupid? But I guess he’ll just try again with the whole of the USA, and again deny responsibility for all the deaths everyone can see he’s about to cause.

      • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
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        3 days ago

        Wouldn’t it be nice if he took the experience of not being proud and learned from it?

        You misread the situation: just like the Nazis at the Nuremberg trial, he’s in fact very proud of what he did, but he knows everybody else frowns upon it, so he downplays his role in the matter.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Par for the course for these dipshits. Donvict’s lack of useful action during Covid likely caused excess deaths in the hundreds of thousands.

      • Blackout@fedia.io
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        3 days ago

        “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

        • DigitalNirvana@lemm.ee
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          3 days ago

          Alas, in this case the suffering is the point. It’s working just fine for RFKjr, and his handlers. But they can’t ’let the cat out of the bag’ before they get to try this on a larger population. So for now they have to maintain ‘plausible deniability’. Most of their base has never heard of Samoa, or at most think it’s a kind of cookie.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        You’ve obviously not noticed what FDR’s RFK’s last name is…

        Generational wealth/power always results in asshats like this with more money than sense who’s always been told their right, had every failing blamed on someone else, and a never ending like of sycophants after their money.

        But they’re confident and that’s all it takes for stupid average people, because the idea of failing upwards is so far removed from their life they honestly just can’t wrap their heads around ho someone that rich could be atupid.

  • GroundedGator@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Strange, this is the first time I’ve heard of the Samoan measles outbreak. It does sound very similar to the RFK Jr Measles Outbreak though.

  • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    What’s worse… denying healthcare claims for money, or convincing people to avoid life saving care because your a dumb fucking idiot or have a nefarious agenda.

    • BeardedGingerWonder
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      3 days ago

      Second one it’s one thing to be a corpo asshat, it’s quite something else to actually regress medicine

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        The scary thing is if he’s now in a position to spread total nonsense, with the power of the government, and nothing to really put a check on him, and no real platform that will go hard on countering his nonsense, he doesn’t even have to outright ban vaccines. Enough people will fall for this asshattery to drive down herd immunity [1] below the needed thresholds and many people, including children, will die as a result from it. People already have a high amount of distrust in science and government, this weasel muddying the waters even more is going to make it very, very bad. Fringe freaks like him already cause problems at the margins, but it’s about to get very, very real and weaponized and it will be aimed at kids.

        [1] I still reel at the notion that the anti-vaxxer loons think that calling it “herd immunity” means that “THEY” are just calling all of us SHEEPLE and openly mocking us and daring us to “do our own research”, hahahaha.

  • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
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    3 days ago

    Quite frankly, the one who should go to the slammer over this is whichever Samoan health official listened to a random American goofball giving him free advice on vaccination, regardless of whether the name of said goofball happened to be famous.

      • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
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        3 days ago

        I’m all for RFK Jr. doing time, but strictly-speaking, he wasn’t in charge of Samoan health services. He is totally free to say any nonsense he wants to anybody, the person responsible ultimately is the one who puts the nonsense into action.

  • cowfodder@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Going to once again suggest listening to the Behind the Bastards episodes about him. He’s a psycho.

    • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      John Oliver did a segment on him too. The thing that pisses me off most about RFK Jr is his use of a child’s untimely death to imply COVID vaccines caused his death (when the kid wasn’t even vaccinated against COVID). Shit like that is torturous to parents and as a parent it makes me livid.

    • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Man that was a rollercoaster. First episode, I think I like this kid.

      Second episode, yeah I do like him and he’s also funny and a badass that threatened a cop in an incredible way to try to save his friend, when he could have saved himself.

      Third episode, on yeah this guy is kind of a piece of shit.

      Forth episode, he should be in prison for the rest of his life for what he’s done.

  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    3 days ago

    I look forward to hearing about this man’s decisions AS THE HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES.

    Just disastrous.