In his appearance Thursday before the Senate Finance Committee, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a series of extreme statements that exposed the fascist character of his assault on vaccines, science and public health. Throughout the three-hour hearing, Kennedy repeatedly told senators they were “making stuff up,” dismissed basic scientific evidence as “confusion” and doubled down on his campaign to eliminate vaccine protections for American children.
When questioned by Senator Maggie Hassan about whether COVID-19 vaccines have saved millions of American lives, Kennedy responded with a total dismissal of scientific consensus: “The only confusion I’ve expressed is how many they saved. I don’t think anybody knows.” This statement flies in the face of overwhelming evidence, including research published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases estimating that nearly 20 million lives were preserved globally during the first year of vaccination alone.
Kennedy’s most revealing statement came when defending his firing of CDC officials involved in the pandemic response: “The people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving. And that’s why we need bold, competent and creative new leadership at CDC, people able and willing to chart a new course.”
This declaration makes clear that Kennedy’s attacks on science flow directly from the far-right opposition to all public health measures implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. Any semblance of public health must be replaced by “a new course” predicated on opposition to all efforts to save lives.
The Democratic senators’ theatrical outrage represents nothing but hot air from a party that has refused to organize workers in defense of public health, let alone Trump’s ongoing coup and efforts to establish a military dictatorship in the United States. These are the same Democrats who sat silently as the Biden administration dismantled COVID-19 protections, ended the Public Health Emergency and denigrated masking, policies that laid the political foundations for Kennedy’s far more extreme assault today.
Trying to square this with their insistence to also increase the birth rate, all I can come up with is they want young minds to indoctrinate.
The Covid skepticism was meant to kill democrats. Early on the pandemic affected denser areas more, which happen to lean democratic.
They’re just stupid and stubborn and refuse to change their mind, even when it backfires.
They are eugenicists, they actually think they can weed out the “weak” like that. Of course, that’s not how any of this works, but they have chosen to ignore about a hundred years worth of medical science.
In their minds germ theory is akin to demonic possession, and they don’t even subscribe to miasma theory. They believe in terrain theory… meaning that the body’ ‘health’ must be maintained or else ‘disease’ will manifest. What kind of disease is just a specific manifestation from that individual, meaning if someone got bone cancer instead of pneumonia, it is because that is how their 'terrain ’ responded.
They want young, dumb, and dependent. If you’re sick, or have family members that are sick, you need to work to pay for care. That’s why healthcare is still locked behind health insurance from your job.
The thing is it’s not one goal and it’s not rational. There are multiple sub-groups that are each pursuing their own insanity under the larger crazy umbrella. Under the more children group you’ve got, a) capitalists wanting cheap child labor, b) doomsday cultists that want more kids because gestures vaguely towards crazy shit in the bible, c) pedophiles that want more kids because of reasons I will not elaborate on, and d) other doomsday cultists that don’t actually want more children they’re just opposed to abortion and are really dumb. Then under the anti-vaccine groups we’ve got, a) capitalists wanting cheap child labor, b) conspiracy theorists that are just really really dumb, c) contrarians that don’t actually care one way or another they just do the opposite of whatever they’re told, and d) bog standards morons that are scared by the fancy science people words therefore they must be bad.
For instance, RFK Jr. himself is just a really stupid conspiracy theorist. I don’t know if he’s expressed any specific opinion on birth rates but he likely doesn’t really care outside of maybe going after specific birth control pills because of whatever insane conspiracy theory is hot this month.
But at the same time they want those young minds unvaxed and dead. They seem to be shitting in one hand while pleasuring themselves with the other.
Glad I got the latest Covid booster and flu vaccine yesterday. Hope they’ll still be legal next year.
I’m getting mine tomorrow and urge others to get it ASAP while they still can.
If we get through this period, he (among others) must be prosecuted for manslaughter at the very least.
They won’t. We won’t. And the rest of the world leaders are gonna say “hey look at the shit we can get away with”
Because most of the American people are letting them. They’re doing nothing to save their own democracy, and making excuses for it.
What are we supposed to do we’re surrounded by evil morons and our livelihood and our families survival depends on not stepping out of line.
The rest of the world leaders are about to do the exact same. And the citizens of those countries will to absolutely nothing.
Except maybe France. 🤣
That should have happened with Samoa.
Boy that last paragraph. I really wish people would not exaggerate. This is one reason I think public discourse is shot because folks love to couch things in the most severe language they can.
Yeah, WSWS doesn’t even try to be objective.
Who could’ve predicted that the World Socialist Web Site is based toward socialism?
