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