Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not a “vaccine skeptic”

Because there ain’t no such thing in the 21st century. Vaccines work; we’ve known that for longer than this country’s been around. They save lives. It’s like claiming you’re a round-Earth skeptic — you’re either an ignorant crackpot or a lying fraud. As Albert Burneko puts it, “Vaccine denier” simply is not flattering to Kennedy; “vaccine skeptic” makes him seem … well, like the kind of person that antivaxxers like to think they are: serious, flinty-eyed question-askers, rather than stubborn assholes stamping their feet and refusing to learn what can be fully known because they want some special hidden truth of their own.

At any rate, “vaccine skeptic” certainly is nicer and less contentious than calling Kennedy a motivated bullshitter, a peddler of antiscientific garbage, the type of dogshit-brained imbecile who will stiff-arm all that can be learned from centuries of medical research and practice because he preferred what he learned from a 25-second TikTok video made by a spiral-eyed homeschool casualty who’ll be hospitalized next month with an illness that hasn’t sickened a human being since the Bronze Age. That laundering does him a favor he doesn’t remotely deserve, but it is especially egregious now that Kennedy seems very likely to end up holding a powerful position in national government. It’s that last bit, as much as his famous name, that wins Kennedy that favor; if this clammy lummox is going to be in charge of something important, then the Times must do its customary job of dressing him for the part.”

Or as Scott Lemieux put it, questioning Kennedy’s fitness for the job would be questioning TFG’s judgment and they don’t want to do that.

Nor will RFK’s position lead to illuminating discussions about public health. That’s like saying that putting a Holocaust denier into the Education Department would lead to illuminating discussions about the truth of history. His concerns about chronic illness are based on bad statistics and he’s blamed diabetes, asthma and ADD on vaccines. Indeed, it sounds at that link like he thinks inflicting chronic disease is deliberate, an old and hoary idea (doctors cause disease to get rich! has been around a while)

Or consider this point from David Bowman on Bluesky: RFK’s argument that vaccines cause autism is “the belief that autism is worse than death.”

And it’s not like the anti-vax movement needs health: vax opposition has already led to a surge in measles cases worldwide. We do not need a guy in charge who says government and big pharma should stop researching treatment for infectious diseases. And whose arguments about vaccines, Wi-Fi and other ideas sound scientific but are not science at all.

As Alexandra Petri says: “We’re doing our best to give the people what they want. For many years we thought what they wanted was clean drinking water, safe and tested vaccines to drive down deaths from childhood diseases, and food that is produced in sanitary conditions so the people who eat it don’t get sick. But we were wrong, and the change starts now.”

It doesn’t help that foreign scientific talent may not get visas to work here under the TFG regime.