Proof about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s incompetence - Measles 2019 in American Samoa

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Brian Deer:

In November 2019, when an epidemic of measles (5,700 cases of measles and 83 deaths) was killing children and babies in Samoa, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who in recent days became Donald Trump’s pick to lead the department of Health and Human Services — sent the prime minister of Samoa at the time a four-page letter. In it, he suggested the measles vaccine itself may have caused the outbreak.❗ 😱

He claimed that the vaccine might have “failed to produce antibodies” in vaccinated mothers sufficient to provide infants with immunity, that it perhaps provoked “the evolution of more virulent measles strains” and that children who received the vaccine may have inadvertently spread the virus to other children. “Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of any assistance,” he added, writing in his role as the chairman of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group.

At the time of his letter, 16 people, many of them younger than 2, were already reported dead. Measles, which is among the most contagious diseases, can sometimes lead to brain swelling, pneumonia and death. For months, families grieved over heartbreaking little coffins, until a door-to-door vaccination campaign brought the calamity to a close. The final number of fatalities topped 80.

I was in Samoa during that outbreak as part of my more than 16 years of reporting on the anti-vaccine movement. The cause of the outbreak was not the vaccine, but most likely an infected traveler who brought the virus from New Zealand, which that year had seen the biggest measles outbreaks in decades, especially among that country’s Indigenous and Pacific Islander communities. 

Migration and poverty were likely factors in a sudden spread of measles in Samoa and New Zealand. But, as an editorial in the New Zealand Medical Journal reported, so too was a factor that Kennedy specializes in: “Increasing circulation of misinformation leading to distrust and reduced vaccination uptake.” Samoa’s vaccination rates had fallen to less than a third of eligible 1-year-olds.

Vaccine skepticism has ballooned worldwide, and Kennedy and others who back him have encouraged it. Americans may be well aware that their possible future health leader holds dangerous beliefs about vaccines. The consequences of his views — and those of his orbit — are not merely absurd but tragic.

In my reporting, parents have mentioned fearing vaccines after watching “Vaxxed,” a 90-minute documentary, which had also toured countries such as New Zealand. The film, focused on unproven allegations, was released more than three years before the Samoa measles outbreak. Among much else, it claimed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had committed fraud.

Two of the filmmakers — Del Bigtree and Andrew Wakefield — are buddies of Kennedy. The director, Mr. Wakefield, is a former doctor whose medical license was revoked in his native Britain in2010 amid charges of ethical violations. One of the producers, Mr. Bigtree, became Kennedy’s presidential campaign communications chief.

In the years before the documentary was released, I revealed, in a series of articles, evidence that Mr. Wakefield’s research in the 1990s had been rigged at a London hospital to make it look as if the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine was linked to autism. 

This research was retracted in 2010. Kennedy certainly didn’t seem fazed by Mr. Wakefield’s professional downfall. “In any just society, we would be building statues to Andy Wakefield,” he yelled, for instance, from a platform he and Mr. Wakefield shared at an event in Washington, D.C., a few days before he sent his letter to Samoa.

Reports say Kennedy is reviewing résumés for his possible Health and Human Services empire. He’s reportedly eyeing Joseph Ladapo, a Florida health official who has questioned the safety of COVID vaccines. I’d say Mr. Bigtree may get a role; Mr. Wakefield is trickier, given how discredited he is, even in the United States. 

But, sadly, there are plenty of others in Kennedy’s (crazy 😠😒) circle whose claims ought to concern everyone.

Consider Sherri Tenpenny, a doctor who has been declared by Mr. Kennedy as “one of the great leaders” of the anti-vaccine movement. She has falsely claimed that a “metal” attached to a protein in the Covid shots was making their recipients magnetic. “They can put a key on their forehead and it sticks,” she told Ohio state lawmakers in June 2021. “They can put spoons and forks all over them and they can stick.” I could pluck plenty more outrageous characters from  Kennedy’s circle over the years, including veteran AIDS denialists.

In recent days, Kennedy appears to have tried to change the conversation around his vaccine views to focus on America’s junk food diets (But wait❗  Then he was photographed with Trumpti-Dumpti, while on a Trumpzi flight, earting a MacDonald's hamburger🍔👀💥 ). But, his views on vaccines shouldn’t be forgotten. In January 2021, speaking to a gathering of loyalists in Ohio, he outlined a three-point checklist that had to be met for him to consider a COVID vaccine. First, he said, “you take one shot, you get lifetime immunity.” Second, side effects are only “one in a million.” 

Third, “herd immunity” is achieved at 70 percent public uptake — after which, he stipulated, “nobody in this society” ever gets the disease again.

“If they came up with that product,” he said, “I’d be happy to look at it.”

His audience laughed. But it’s not funny.

Brian Deer is the author of “The Doctor Who Fooled the World,” detailing the origins of today’s anti-vaccine movement.

Antivaxxers must end hotheaded culture war against medical science

"We have witnessed how anti-mask and anti-vaccination demonstrations have become hotbeds of Holocaust trivialization and antisemitic conspiracy theories across the United States and abroad."

Using Nazi symbols to protest vaccines is disgraceful

Protecting public health should never be equated to the horrors committed by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust

Echo opinion published in Deseret News, a Utah newspaper.

By Spencer Cox and Seth Brysk

Like the rest of the nation, Utah is working hard to keep the Beehive State safe from COVID-19. Yet, in the face of this enormous challenge, some have abandoned reason in favor of hate-fueled actions.

Protests began early and spread nearly in sync with the pandemic. The right to protest is a fundamental American right. 

The star of ostracism and death

Nazis forced Jews in Germany to wear a yellow badge, which meant they were excluded from society. The identification symbol was a precursor to the Holocaust.

Unfortunately, some used the coronavirus as a convenient catalyst to focus bigotry on Asians and others. Rules regarding the use of face coverings and promotion of vaccines may have created an inconvenient imposition, yet were met with vitriol directed at ethnic and religious groups and also the leaders of the public health response.

One of the most disgraceful and misplaced of the myriad comparisons used to decry the public health measures are Holocaust analogies and Nazi symbols.

Earlier this month, a group of protesters outside the Governor’s Mansion displayed enormous banners with swastikas formed out of the image of syringes — equating vaccination with Nazism.

Comparing the two makes a mockery of the scale and scope of the Holocaust and the systematic murder by the Nazis of 6 million Jews, including 1.5 million children and millions of other innocents.

Extremists have invoked new conspiracies by using old tropes to blame Jews for the pandemic or profiting from it. We have also watched with alarm as protesters have affixed a yellow Star of David to their clothing to protest public health requirements. Jews in Nazi-Germany were forced to wear yellow stars visibly on their clothing so they could be identified as Jews in the aftermath of the violent pogrom Kristallnacht on Nov. 9, 1938. Jews who refused to comply were subject to being shot on the spot.

Using a swastika or yellow star as a cheap symbol of protest against the vaccine or mask requirements is odious. The genocide committed by the Nazis resulting in the destruction of two-thirds of European Jewry and one-third of the global Jewish population is not a subject for glib comparisons or politicization. Denying, minimizing or trivializing of the Holocaust is at worst an expression of antisemitism and at best a display of the ignorance of the protester invoking the comparison.

Protecting public health should never be equated to the horrors committed by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. Encouraging vaccinations does not compare to schemes hastening the mass murder of millions of innocent people. Tying the Holocaust to anti-vaccine and anti-mask protests is as shocking as it is inaccurate and offensive. Policies designed to save lives do not equate with policies devised to mete out death.

Such offensive analogies by opportunists and fringe groups are an act of moral outrage. By brandishing distrust or outright disdain of research and science, they ridicule history.

To be sure, we respect and defend the right to protest. Freedom of expression and the right to assemble are core American values which we cherish. Even so, we condemn the use of antisemitic and other hate-filled slurs or symbols, which are causing deep pain and offense, intentional or not.

We believe Utah must be better than this. We believe we can disagree without hating each other.

We can make Utah an example to the nation.

We have witnessed how anti-mask and anti-vaccination demonstrations have become hotbeds of Holocaust trivialization and antisemitic conspiracy theories across the United States and abroad.

It is a testament to the need for continued and intensified Holocaust education across all ages. And it demands a strong and unequivocal call to action.

We must return to civility, whenever we disagree, through reasoned and thoughtful engagement in our collective desire to end the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Utahns can lead the way.

Gov. Spencer J. Cox is the 18th governor of Utah. Seth Brysk is the Central Pacific regional director of the Anti-Defamation League.

Freedom as euphemism for hypocritical disconnect - "Life or Liberty"

Interesting thoughtful insight about how "freedom" is used and abused.

"Americans live in a theocracy, and Freedom is our God," writes Spencer Heitman, a junior philosophy, English and public policy leadership triple major, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

This echo essay was published in The Daily Mississippian, published by the Mississippi Press Association.

Conceptual conflicts are evident. The nation’s most famous port, New York Harbor, houses a statue dedicated to this principle. 

A replica of the Liberty Bell serves as a similar reminder on the Mississippi Capitol grounds, and on our own campus, a new center designated to the “study of American freedom” is being established. But these are only fragments of a broader story.

The U.S. Government Turned Away Thousands of Jewish Refugees, Fearing That They Were Nazi Spies

At the same port as the Statue of Liberty stands, we should remember the hundreds of Jewish refugees turned away in 1942 on the S.S. Drottningholm. Alongside the Liberty Bell replica at our Capitol, we should notice Belle Kenney’s monument to the women of the Confederacy, questioning the purpose it serves and the roles they played. And on the same campus as this newfound center, we see buildings named for slaveholders and should question how their legacies related to freedom. Here, there is a disconnect between the world we live in and the stories we tell ourselves about it.

The reason so many are willing to look past this disconnect is because freedom has become a religion: complete with icons, symbols, rituals and evangelists. 

Sometimes, however, freedom is falsely evoked, serving no other purpose than to justify harm. My message to the Statue of Freedom atop the U.S. Capitol: your name is being taken in vain.

With mask mandates being enforced and vaccination mandates being called for by both the faculty senate and the Associated Student Body Senate, resistance to this perceived overreach has taken many forms, from a protest outside Baptist Memorial Hospital to calls for a “mask-off walk” through the Grove. However distinct in form these protests may be, they have a common message: they want freedom, and they feel that theirs is being taken away.

What those who protest these public health restrictions often ignore is the way in which they contradict their own principles. 

By antagonizing local music venues for mandating COVID-19 precautions at their events, you contradict the belief that private businesses are free to do whatever they want. 

By claiming to be “for life” and commenting your support on a petition that will put many at risk, you reveal a conflict of values.

More importantly than this threat to principles, however, is the real-world threat this reverence for freedom poses to our physical safety. The effectiveness of masks and vaccines is known, with seemingly infinite evidence for this claim. It should come as no surprise, then, that when the faculty senate voted on a campus-wide vaccine mandate, there was no opposition from the Department of Chemistry or School of Pharmacy. Those who still dissent see this and ignore it. Freedom has become their capital T Truth.

Freedom is a beloved value toward which we should strive, but we do not need to put it above all else. 

Even in the U.S. — a country with a lot to say about freedom — our own Declaration of Independence puts it second to life. We can treat it with respect without treating it with religious reverence. But even if you refuse to denounce this faith, there is room for agreement. Maybe freedom is the end-all-be-all good, but if it is, we need to take it seriously. 

Call for freedom loudly when you see it threatened, but be sure to be right. (Connect the dots between the intent of supporting Freedom and the actions required to protect us against hypocritical abuse of this inalienable right.)

Anti-vaxxers are COVIDIOTS - Summary echo about stupidity

Echo opinion editorial by Charles M. Blow published in The New York Times.

Nothing better exemplifies the gaping political divide in this country than our embarrassing and asinine vaccine response. #TFG Trump’s scorched earth political strategy has fooled millions of Americans into flirting with death. 

Anti-vaxxers are choosing to be stupid rather than live.

And now thousands are once again dying for it.

Almost from the beginning, the efforts to combat the virus were met with disdain from #TFG (a once upon a time failed president) who felt the crisis made him look bad. 

Unbelievably, the science was denied. We came to live in a world where masking was mocked and ingesting disinfectant was offered up as a possible cure.

All the while, the patients on ventilators gasped for breath, and refrigerated trailers filled with bodies. Death is one of the ultimate truths of life, and yet not even it could dissuade the headstrong from casting doubt on the science.

And then, a miracle.

In response to this raging, deadly virus, scientists developed multiple, highly effective vaccines with breathtaking speed. It was like a prayer had been answered. An antidote to the plague had arrived.

We should all have been celebrating in the streets and running to a lifesaving serum with our sleeves rolled up and a smile on our face. But not enough of us were.

(Caused by #TFG incompetence)...The public had been poisoned by partisanship. Masking was a political statement. Social distancing was a political statement. Receiving the vaccine, for far too many, was a political statement.

And so, countless Americans responded with a political statement of their own: (stupid!) defiance.

They hated that businesses were forced to close, and being asked to wear masks inside when they reopened. They hated their children having to stay home from school and being made to wear masks when they returned.

But, the simple truth is that all of this could have been avoided if all Americans eligible for the vaccine — and that’s pretty much every adult at this point — had simply chosen to be vaccinated. But they didn’t. They haven’t. They are too dug in, too committed to the lies and conspiracies, too devoted to rebellion.

In the beginning, as the vaccine was rolled out, there were some access hurdles and some understandable apprehensions. But now, billions of people worldwide have received the vaccine, and very few have had adverse effects.

The vaccine is safe, incredibly safe.

There are no microchips or magnets in it. It does not cause Covid and it is not more dangerous than Covid.

Believing all these lies is a luxury of people who have not sat by a hospital bedside, or watched from behind glass, because Covid regulations prevented them from comforting a relative or friend as they drew their last breath, struggling against a virus that choked that breath off.

It is a luxury to be irresponsible in a society where others will be responsible for you, where you simply assume that you are safer because others take the appropriate precautions to be safe: You do not need to get the shot because others have.

But the Delta variant is testing that faith.

You will not be safe as an unvaccinated person riding on the coattails of the vaccinated. Delta is extremely transmissible and unremitting. It is stronger than its progenitor.

As the Delta variant surges there is an uptick in the pace of vaccinations in the country. It’s almost like religion: Many disbelievers will call out to whatever God there may be when the reaper is at the door. Fear of ideological defeat is no match for the fear of imminent death. And yet, it shouldn’t have taken another surge of sickness and death for good sense to set in.

Why were Americans turning away a vaccine that many people in other parts of the world were literally dying for? Many did so because of their fidelity to the lie and their fidelity to the liar. They did it because they were — and still are — slavishly devoted to Trump, and because many politicians and conservative commentators helped Trump propagate his lies.

A recent Monmouth University poll found that “among those who admit they will not get the vaccine if they can avoid it, 70 percent either identify with or lean toward the Republican Party while just 6 percent align with the Democrats.”

The optics of countless socially distanced funerals is less offensive to those conservatives than the optics of being socially distanced in a Fuddruckers.

It was all lunacy. It is all lunacy. This should never have happened. There are people dead today — a lot of them! — who should still be alive and who would be if people in the heights of government and the heights of the media had not fed them lies about the virus.

But apparently, after you get so used to so much blood on your hands, you forget — or make yourself forget — that you weren’t born with red palms.

So, we have a situation in America where people are dying and will continue to die of ignorance and stubbornness. They are determined to prove that they are right even if it puts them on the wrong side of a eulogy.

This is like watching millions of people playing in traffic.

Charles M. Blow joined The New York Times in 1994, and became an Opinion columnist in 2008.

Stop the dangerous Big Lie and remove politicians who falsely support #TFG

#TFG #FormerGuy Trump’s GOP zealots aren’t a nuisance, they’re a menace that must be stopped!

Echo opinion published by the Editorial Board in the Colorado Sentinel newspaper:

#FormerGuy Trump and his dogmatists last week advanced their battle in their crusade against reality and U.S. democracy, signaling the rest of the nation that it must treat the scourge as the menace it is.

Colorado news

Trump appeared to a few hundred devotees at a Republican fundraiser in North Carolina, thrilling the room, and thousands tuned in on live computer feeds, with his relentless lies and disinformation about his winning the 2020 presidential election.

Trump lost the election by 7 million popular votes and 74 electoral votes. His alternative reality is a pernicious lie.

The menace here is that neither the event nor the rhetoric were new for the former president. In fact, it’s the nation’s weariness of the exploits of Trump and his advocates that make his political persistence so perilous.

For the most part, Trump delivered a classic Trumpzi rambling, 90-minute lecture, repeating proven lies and distortions about non-existent voter fraud and unaccountable voting systems in the myriad Republican counties he lost to President Joe Biden.

The charade followed a week where his devotees in Congress fled to right-wing media outlets with baseless claims that Dr. Anthony Fauci was outed as a Chinese sympathizer in a Democrat-led scheme to hide the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The nexus of this new mythology was Trump’s unproven claims — and what real scientists say is a highly unlikely scenario — that the pandemic virus was created and released by a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Trump and his comrades have capitalized on their fan’s mass delirium and the fact that scientists do not rule in nor out information based on political whims.

The origins of the pandemic virus has been the fodder of numerous theories and considerations since it was identified. The case is and has been open from the beginning. Fauci is simply the most recent lightning rod used by tRumpzi and his #Jonestown cult devotees to incite the mass of cultists into yet another dangerous fury.

Vaccine gap exists among White evangelicals

Unnerving, consistent, polls show that as many as two-thirds of the nation’s registered Republicans have been convinced by Trump’s grooming lies, distortions and gaslighting. 

Despite a parade of election officials who are members of their own political party, they choose to believe Trump’s fable, that he was indeed elected president.

For those who either pooh-pooh or dismiss current Republican politics, consider this. A recent PRRI poll reveals that one-in-four Republicans also believe in the Q-Anon myth, that the nation is secretly controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping child molesters.

It begs the question, what other falsehoods are Trump’s followers capable of believing, and acting on?

Last week, lawyers for Jan. 6 Capitol rioters said their clients were misled and incited by Trump and his obedient media backers into believing his rhetoric about a “stolen” election and the demise of the nation.

Clearly millions of his minions still believe Trump’s constant drumming about the pandemic being a hoax, refusing to get vaccinated and jeopardizing a remarkable opportunity to control a virus that has controlled the entire planet.

Lies perpetuated by Trump, and fortified by thousands of Republican lawmakers in Congress and state legislatures across the country, are eroding not only hard-won voter rights, but the reliability and integrity of U.S. elections, the very foundation of American democracy.

The strategy of wearing down or distracting the enemy to advance a battle is tried and true throughout history. Trump and his offensive, imbued in white supremacy, is counting on the fatigue from the rest of the nation.

It’s never been more important to push back against Camp Trumpzi’s rhetoric. In Colorado and across the country, everyone must demand their elected representatives call out lawmakers who either look the other way, in hopes of avoiding Trump’s wrath, or those who willingly join forces with their liege to protect their own power, inviting the peril of everyone.