My former golf pro often referred to the blind squirrel that nevertheless occasionally found an acorn. Unnecessary food dyes in cereals and many other highly processed foods are Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s public health acorn. I’d even give him credit for finding it and pushing to remove most chemical dyes from the food chain.
But RFK Jr. (as he is usually referred to) and his crew are working hard to undercut the availability of old and new vaccines. Do not be misled by his acorn.
His First Attack Is on the Covid-19 Vaccines
For starters we have the recent CDC announcement that it no longer recommends the Covid-19 vaccines for pregnant women and young children, and effectively only recommends the vaccine for people over 65 and those over 50 with comorbidities. This change ignores robust data since 2021 that pregnant women and very young children are highly at risk for serious disease and even death from Covid and that the vaccines clearly help to reduce that risk.
If Vaccine Not Recommended It May Not Be Insurance Covered
All vaccines recommended by the federal vaccine advisory committee and CDC must be fully covered by health insurers so the patient can receive it at no cost. That is no longer necessarily true if the vaccine is not recommended for a category of people. If Covid vaccines are not covered, then the expected $100-$200 cost per dose will certainly discourage or prevent large numbers of people from getting it. That is precisely the point of RFK Jr’s maneuver.
I personally expect RFK Jr and his ideological enablers to try to downgrade the recommendations for many childhood vaccines including MMR, influenza, TdaP, hepatitis B, chicken pox, polio and pneumonia vaccines. He has publicly expressed skepticism about the decades of successful use of the vaccines and the robust supporting documentation of their high benefit and low risk. If he can’t delicense them, he’ll make them more expensive to discourage use.
Vaccines Continue to Be Safe and Effective
But the outcomes data haven’t changed. All the childhood vaccines that I mentioned above have long and successful histories. I saw many of those now-preventable diseases at Children’s Hospital early in my medical career before many of those vaccines were developed. The illnesses can be awful (Hemophilus influenza meningitis, measles pneumonia, German measles deafness). Most practicing physicians have never seen them. I never want to see them again. RFK Jr’s policies will bring them back.
Talk to Your State Representatives
So far Governor Healy has acted to assure the funding and science-based availability of vaccines in Massachusetts, which she can do because health insurance is state regulated. But she and the Department of Public Health need public support to continue to contravene the current CDC and FDA. Please consider calling your Massachusetts representatives and writing to Governor Healy. Make your voice heard.