Anti-Vax Group Beats RFK Jr. Into Submission

(Or something like that.)

The headlines make it sound as if the HHS secretary, being held at gunpoint, made a tragic decision to abandon his morals, betray his country, and hand over the keys to his minivan: Kennedy Fulfills Anti-Vaccine Group Demands.

Here’s the non-hysterical version: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just reinstated the Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines—a panel Congress ordered into existence in 1986 after the DTP vaccine injured and killed so many kids that lawsuits were piling up in the billions and the vaccine industry was on life support. The law literally says this task force must figure out how to make vaccines that “result in fewer and less serious adverse reactions than those vaccines currently on the market,” and provide Congress with progress reports every two years. In plain English: they need to make vaccines safer—and prove it.

You know… the thing every rational human being with a functioning brainstem should want.

But of course, the media can’t peck out a single sentence about Kennedy that doesn’t also have the phrase anti-vaccine in it. From The Hill:

“Kennedy has questioned the safety of childhood vaccines for decades and frequently claimed existing vaccines that have been on the market for decades and have repeatedly been proven safe—like the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine—are risky.

‘It’s another politically-controlled forum that can be used for bad messaging and to make investment in and production of vaccines less viable,’ Dorit Reiss, a law professor at University of California Law San Francisco, said in an email. ‘Secretary Kennedy has worked to undermine vaccines for 20 years; this likely seems to him like another tool to make vaccines less accessible.’”

I’ll reiterate: The task force, which was created decades ago not by Kennedy, has a single purpose: ensuring vaccine safety. Which they obviously realized in 1986 was a pressing issue. (I don’t recall getting that memo, do you?) Is the gentle law professor suggesting that vaccines that could possibly be dangerous (we won’t know if we don’t look!) should continue to be handed out like Halloween candy at regularly scheduled “well visits”? How can these people continue to try to spin basic common sense into a reckless, fringe crusade?

CNN, naturally, sought answers in Paul Offit’s vaccine-loving arms:

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an anti-vaccine activist who has these fixed, immutable, science-resistant beliefs that vaccines are dangerous,” Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine scientist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the FDA’s outside vaccine advisory committee, told CNN. “He is in a position now to be able to set up task forces like this one who will find some way to support his notion that vaccines are doing more harm than good.”

Axios tracked down a mind-reader to explain what’s really going on:

“This is a response to a performative lawsuit that was filed to give RFK Jr. another mechanism to put kids at risk of preventable diseases,” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan, told Axios.

Yes, Angela. The man who’s been fighting for children’s health for decades obviously spends his days looking for fresh new ways to put kids at risk of preventable diseases. Too bad you chose a career in virology instead of clairvoyance. Your mind-reading gifts are next-level.

NOTUS (News of the United States, get it?) played the criminal accomplice card:

“It’s the latest decision inviting vaccine skepticism into HHS. Kennedy announced earlier this month that the department was cancelling millions of dollars of contracts with companies developing mRNA vaccines. He also fired all the members of the committee that recommends which vaccines should be added to the childhood immunization schedule and replaced them with appointees of his own choosing, some of whom have a history of questioning vaccines.”

It’s funny how the press trots out “a history of questioning vaccines” the same way a true-crime documentary might gravely intone, “the suspect had a history of violence, substance abuse, and eating the neighbors’ koi from their pond.” It’s meant to conjure images of shadowy figures in dimly lit basements plotting to undermine established health policy, when in reality, the “crime spree” in question involves reading ingredient labels, asking if flu shots contain liquified bat wings, and—God forbid—saying out loud that maybe safety studies should last longer than a manicure.

The original vaccine safety task force was formed in 1990, quietly vanished in 1998, and—despite being required by law—was never replaced. For nearly three decades, HHS just shrugged and pretended it didn’t exist. Kennedy even sued in 2018 to get the agency to cough up the required reports, forcing HHS to admit there were none. Zilch. Not one.

Even then, nothing changed.

Fast forward to last month: When RFK Jr. passed the hundred-days-in-office mark, Children’s Health Defense, the so-called “anti-vaccine” group Kennedy once chaired, actually filed a lawsuit against him for not having already such a panel in place. They cited the 1986 law, called the dereliction a “blow to the rule of law,” and asked a federal judge to force him to comply. Kennedy looked at the lawsuit and… complied. Without the judge. Without drama. Without hiding behind excuses.

NBC was the only outlet not to use anti-vax in their headline (it’s still in the piece of course).

So how does the media cover it? By breathlessly warning that he has “met the demands” of an “anti-vaccine group,” as if creating a panel to improve safety standards for medicine given to babies is some kind of extremist overreach or desperate concession. It’s the bureaucratic equivalent of replacing the brakes on a school bus and CNN running the chyron: “Local Man Plots to Undermine Transportation System.”

The absurdity writes itself: A politician revives long-abandoned, legally required safety oversight for children, and the press frames it as a sinister plot to sabotage public health. If vaccines are the wonderful, miraculous, lifesaving interventions we’ve all been taught to believe they are, what exactly is the nefarious endgame here? And if the people pushing them are so confident in their rock-solid safety, wouldn’t they welcome a review—if only to rub it in the faces of all those “dangerous skeptics”?

No poll today. Just LMK what you think in the comments. :)

Only four more months ‘til Christmas OMG.