Robert Kennedy Jr., Donald J. Trump’s picks for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has a history of making false and misleading statements about childhood vaccines. Kennedy’s opposition to vaccines is a core part of his health-related agenda. But while millions of people support his anti-science nonsense, few are discussing the diseases they prevent.
The most targeted of these is POLIO, which was virtually wiped out in America decades ago. Today, there are virtually no memories of children walking with crutches or living entombed in an iron lung. Up to 10 out of 100 people who have paralysis from poliovirus infection die.
Other diseases whose life-saving vaccines are under Kennedy’s gun include but are not limited to:
MEASLES, a viral illness with effects including encephalitis, meningitis, and blindness. In severe cases, measles can lead to hospitalization and death.
MUMPS, with common complications include swelling of the testicles, ovaries, or pancreas as well as viral meningitis. 1 in 100 cases leads to encephalitis which can cause death.
HEPATITIS B, which attacks the liver and can lead to cirrhosis, liver cancer and liver failure, both of which can lead to death.
INFLUENZA, which can lead to pneumonia and the worsening of chronic medical conditions such a, asthma and diabetes congestive heart failure and death. Adults over 65 and children younger than 5 are more susceptible to severe flu-related complications.
RUBELLA, also know as the German Measles, carries substantial risks during pregnancy. Congenital Rubella Syndrome (CRS) in infants can cause hearing impairments, eye hearing and and cardiac defects, growth delays, mental development issues, autism, diabetes mellitus, thyroid dysfunction, congenital deformity and death.
And of course, COVID. Kennedy has called these vaccines “a crime against humanity,” and claimed children did not need them. This indifference would hardly assuage the grief of the families of the some 1000 COVID-related deaths among individuals aged 0 to 19 in the United States, or the 17,000 worldwide.
Many of the inoculations against these diseases became routine in the United States over 50 years ago. The experience and horrors of these illnesses existing in society has been largely erased from public memory.
Kennedy and T**** are obviously in favor of again plaguing America with the horrors of these wholly preventable diseases, and are ghoulishly OK with seeing hundreds of thousands of Americans suffer and die needlessly.
There is only one way to stop this impending medical catastrophe. Only one way to protect the lives of innocent men, women and children from idiots like Kennedy and T**** putting right-wing political and conspiratorial insanity before medical science. Only one path forward.
RESIST.
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