“Anti-Vaxxer” is Now a Government Title

With RFK Jr. in charge of U.S. health policy, flu deaths & measles are spiking as he seeks to validate his discredited anti-vax views. Our kids are already paying a high price, and it could get worse.

Which are we more concerned about? RFK Jr.’s fantasies, or sick kids?

The chair of the new vaccine panel appointed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. summed up his views on vaccines in just two words: Being labeled an anti-vaxxer, he said, was “high praise.”

So now it’s pretty official, right? This panel wasn’t created to study vaccine safety. It was designed to echo RFK Jr.’s dangerous, discredited crusade against life-saving immunizations, and to elevate the kind of junk science that once got him banned from Instagram. For years, this sad son of a celebrated family has been angling to turn conspiracy into credibility, hoping to use government authority to validate his personal delusions and settle old scores with public health institutions that routinely mocked his views.

Now, Trump has handed Kennedy Jr. that power, and children across the country will pay the price.

Already, we’re seeing the consequences: A nationwide measles outbreak has surged past 1,227 confirmed measles cases, the highest annual count since the year 2000, when the CDC reported that measles was eliminated in the U.S., with the only instances seen being brought in from abroad. This outbreak didn’t come from abroad; it started in Texas, where MAGA Republicans rule.

At the same time, a record 246 flu-associated pediatric deaths have been reported this year, the highest number ever for a non‑pandemic season. This comes in a year when only 49% of kids got a flu shot, down from 57% before the pandemic, when Trump and his allies began undermining vaccine confidence to score political points. If some children died as a result? That was just collateral damage.

What’s next?

The wide range of vaccines under attack protects kids from some of the most devastating illnesses imaginable: measles can cause pneumonia, brain swelling, and lifelong disabilities. Whooping cough can leave infants gasping for air until they turn blue. Polio once filled iron lungs and left children paralyzed for life. Hib meningitis can lead to brain damage, deafness, or death in toddlers. Hepatitis B can quietly destroy the liver over decades.

These are the nightmares we locked away with vaccines, and the ones RFK Jr.’s proud little group of anti-vaxxers may well allow in.

Kennedy fired all 17 legit members of this vaccine study group two weeks ago. He named eight new members, at least half of whom have expressed deep, public skepticism about vaccines.

CDC staff members who oversee the panel and organize data workshops preceding the meeting were replaced or reassigned before the meeting, according to a New York Times story on the meeting. The agency also does not have a director to sign off on the recommendations, which is the usual procedure. RFK Jr. will sign off, and we know his background.

He said recently he may bar government scientists from publishing in the world’s leading medical journals. Instead, he wants to create a set of “in-house” publications under his sole control. A major public health report he released was generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in garbled scientific references and entirely fabricated studies nobody bothered to check.

This comes from a man who has repeatedly linked vaccines to autism, ignoring basic facts to push his anti-science agenda. With no legitimate study in hand, Kennedy has linked autism to vaccines in at least 36 appearances, according to a Washington Post report in late January.

Nothing fuels Kennedy more than proving he’s smarter than the so-called “medical elite,” even if he has to twist reality to do it. It’s a personal characteristic that’s stuck with Kennedy through his heroin use as a young man, his worm-in-the-brain excuses during divorce proceedings, his Central Park Bear carcass escapade, and his latest conspiracy-laced tirades about Big Pharma, medical journals, and the “deep state” plots against him.

In the latest assault on public health, Lyn Redwood, a former leader of Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy Jr., is scheduled to present recommendations on a version of the flu vaccine that contains thimerosal. Redwood has been hired as a special government employee, the Times reported.

Redwood’s presentation initially included a slide with references to studies that did not exist, CNN reported on Tuesday. On Wednesday, that slide had been removed from her presentation. But the presentation still maintained that the flu vaccine contains 50 micrograms of thimerosal, double the actual amount in the shot.

I’ve written at length about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s takeover of our national health systems, but it keeps getting worse. This latest panel could upend long-standing immunization schedules, shifting how and when American children get vaccinated.

Filtered Information

This is where we are now: We can no longer trust information from our government. Everything is filtered through politics, paranoia, and propaganda.

Did we really “obliterate” Iran’s nuclear program, as Trump and his minions claim, or just set it back a few months, as a Pentagon study concluded? Who should we believe, a lifelong compulsive liar or career professionals still buried in the system, issuing warnings no one in power wants to hear?

The same dynamic applies to public health. The experts are being ignored, sidelined, and replaced by political loyalists. Can we trust anything this vaccine panel says, when it was stacked with people already committed to Kennedy’s anti-vaccine crusade? I can’t. Can you?

We’ve seen this coming. I’ve written before about Kennedy’s slow, calculated march from fringe crank to federal power broker. But this — a vaccine panel chaired by someone who calls “anti-vaxxer” a compliment — marks a new and dangerous phase. This isn’t just rhetoric anymore. This is policy, backed by taxpayer dollars and the full weight of the U.S. government.

Trump didn’t choose Kennedy Jr. for his expertise. He chose him for the spectacle and the fight. It’s the same pattern we’ve seen with education, immigration, the environment: Put the saboteurs in charge and call it reform. Vaccine policy is now a performance art.

And for children across this country, that performance could end in an ICU. What do you think?