Going Wild on Health

RFK Jr., supported by dangerous quacks at the state level, are putting our whole nation at grave risk

Photo courtesy of the Washington Post

My heart sank when I first heard Trump make the pledge. During the campaign, Trump said of RFK, Jr., “I’m going to let him go wild on health.”

I feared, as many others did, that if appointed head of Health and Human Services, RFK, Jr. would be in a unique position to “go wild” and impose his conspiratorial, anti-science, dangerous policies upon the whole nation. I wasn’t sure how this would play out, but I suspected he would find a way to wreak havoc.

On a map of this potential national health nightmare scenario, we can now confirm, “You are here.” Eight months plus into Trump’s second term, RFK Jr. is living up to Trump’s campaign pledge—while dragging us all down with him.

Kennedy has now rescinded federal Covid-19 vaccine emergency authorizations, making them unavailable for most groups. Top leadership at the CDC has either been pushed out or has resigned. Staff at the HHS are in open revolt. And Kennedy’s policies are quickly dividing us into vaccine available versus unavailable and vaccine mandated versus optional states—a recipe for a health catastrophe.

So wow did we get here, and where is this headed?

Sen. Bill Cassidy, you idiot

There was a chance to prevent a kook like Kenndy from ever holding so important a position in our health system. His nomination had to first get past the Senate Finance Committee and was nearly sunk when Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who is himself a physician, expressed serious concerns over what direction RFK, Jr. would take us, especially on the question of vaccine health.

Yet Cassidy cast the deciding vote to allow Kennedy’s nomination to proceed after he received “assurances” that Kennedy would not disturb federal vaccine policy, in particular the composition and recommendations of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee. Cassidy claimed he’d received “serious commitments” from the administration, and further assured us that Kennedy and he “would have an unprecedentedly close collaborative working relationship,” even speaking multiple times a month.

Spoiler alert: Kennedy broke his promise. He set about “retiring” all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee in June. He claimed in an OpEd in the Wall Street Journal that the committee had become “little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine” and that a “clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.”

Sen. Cassidy is now scrambling, advising the committee to “postpone indefinitely” its next meeting given a host of key departures from the CDC. “If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership,” Cassidy said in a statement.

Assuming HHS ignores his pleas, which come far too late, we can expect the newly stacked vaccine advisory committee to issue new recommendations that fly in the face of established science and common sense. And that will sow chaos across the country as anti-vax forces seize upon the changes to advance their dangerous agenda.

Chaos at the CDC

In August, Kennedy moved to oust CDC Director Susan Monarez from her role. The move on Monarez, who had been confirmed by the Senate to her role just four weeks earlier, resulted after she refused to support changes to COVID vaccine policy and to sign off on the firings of high-level staff. Monarez is challenging her attempted ouster.

The effort to fire Monarez precipitated resignations of other top CDC officials who did not wish to put their names behind unscientific vaccine policies. A larger internal revolt then grew, with over 1,000 current and former HHS staffers signing a letter demanding RFK Jr. resign or that Congress remove him should he refuse to step down. On top of the attempted ouster of Monarez, the signatories cited the resignations of longtime CDC leaders, Kennedy’s appointment of “political ideologues” to key vaccine policy positions, and the rescinding of authorizations for Covid-19 vaccines without providing any data or methodologies behind that decision.

“We swore an oath to support and defend the United States Constitution and to serve the American people. Our oath requires us to speak out when the Constitution is violated and the American people are put at risk,” the letter stated.

The letter also follows a gunman’s attack upon the CDC, which took the life of an officer who had attempted to stop him. Documents found in a search of the killer’s home “expressed the shooter’s discontent with the COVID-19 vaccinations,” underscoring how vaccine disinformation, with Kennedy as the primary vector, had radicalized whole segments of our society.

The state-wide Darwin Award goes to…

The fight at the national level has now spread to the states. Florida state officials are actively aiding Kennedy’s shredding of our health safety by taking drastic steps that put millions of their residents—as well as the entire nation—at grave risk from deadly communicable diseases.

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, with a supportive Gov. Ron DeSantis by his side, announced plans to end all state vaccine mandates, including for children to attend schools. Upping the rhetoric around the issue, Ladapo likened the mandates to “slavery.” As the Washington Post reported,

Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo said that every vaccine mandate “is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery” and called the rollback “the right thing to do.” Ladapo’s stances on vaccines and other measures intended to protect Floridians have drawn criticism from public health experts and advocates.

"Who am I as a man standing here now to tell you what you should put in your body?” Ladapo said Wednesday.

If the rollbacks are approved by the GOP-controlled state legislature, Florida would be the first state in the nation to end vaccine mandates for children.

Health officials blasted the move. “It’s probably going to be catastrophic,” said James Colgrove, a Columbia University professor and expert on vaccine history. “Anyone who knows anything about public health can see this is a train wreck.”

Take your conspiracies and shove ‘em

Blue states aren’t standing idly by while Kennedy and Ladapo take an axe to vaccine safety.

On the West Coast, a group of states—California, Oregon and Washington—announced an alliance to coordinate immunization guidelines and preserve vaccine access. As Oregon Public Broadcasting noted,

The partnership, called the Western Health Alliance, will develop its own immunization guidelines “informed by respected national medical organizations,” according to a press release Wednesday from Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

New Mexico has also come out swinging, issuing a public health order on August 30 to help ensure all state residents would have access to the COVID-19 vaccine despite federal guidelines. “It’s important for New Mexicans to know the New Mexico Department of Health is committed to keeping residents safe as we enter the 2025–2026 respiratory virus season,” declared the state’s Health Secretary Gina DeBlassie. “This order will remove obstacles to vaccination access.”

Colorado’s Gov. Jared Polis asked the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and other state agencies to ensure his state’s residents have access to updated COVID-19 vaccines. The state’s health department responded with a public health order outlining several steps to expand COVID-19 vaccine access, describing it as necessary “to reduce confusion and uncertainty, and to enhance the protection of public health.”

A consortium of Northeastern states is also considering its own vaccine guidance policies. As NBC Boston reported, “Health officials from Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania met this week to consider coordinating their own vaccine recommendations, separate from the federal government.

Mandates are common sense, but MAHA doesn’t care

We are entering a new state of division in these increasingly divided states, which are self-segregating not only on abortion rights, trans medical care and education policy, but now also on vaccine mandates and vaccine access. The “Make America Healthy Again” movement, like the MAGA movement that inspired it, would drag us backward, this time to a pre-vaccine era, where millions suffered the scourge of communicable diseases from measles to smallpox to polio.

Blue state governors and health officials can only do so much, however, to keep us safe from the reckless policies of states like Florida. As Dr. Andrea Love, the Executive Director of the Lyme Disease Foundation and a renowned science communicator, warned,

Florida’s decision to erase school vaccine requirements will cause preventable illness and death.

Not just for kids in Florida.

For whole communities. Of all ages.

Across the country.

Because pathogens don’t follow state lines.

And as for mandates being “slavery,” she responded forcefully and factually to the claim.

Vaccines save lives.

Mandates have been used for hundreds of years in the US for that reason.

And they've been deemed constitutional.

Mandates are used bc people tend not to consider the entire community.

Because infectious diseases impact more than just a single person.

The pandemic, paired with MAGA Trumpism, broke something vital to our shared sense of public health and safety. And unfortunately for all of us, we are only now starting to understand how truly “wild” things will get under RFK, Jr.

Vaccinate your children. Stand up publicly for science. Support common sense blue state leadership. Help save lives.