I have an unusual perspective on RFK Jr. I think that his skeptical approach to the current vaccination schedule will turn out to be a good thing, not because he will enhance skepticism about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, but because it will do the opposite--for safe and effective vaccines.
The current establishment chant is that any and all vaccines are an unalloyed good for everyone, always. To put it mildly, that simply cannot be true. It is a mantra, not a scientific conclusion, and the reason why the mantra is repeated so persistently is that public health officials are so scared that people will mistrust vaccines that they feel the need to force a unified message and brainwash people.
That was made obvious during COVID. You can even go read the transcripts of meetings within the CDC and FDA discussing the pros and cons of the mRNA vaccines, and the officials kept talking about ensuring that all messaging was simplified and unified. No nuance, no discussion, no informed consent. The belief was that keeping people UNinformed was crucial.
That's why the FDA's top two vaccine officials eventually bolted--right in the middle of the pandemic. The propaganda being put out was so deceptive that they couldn't stand behind it.
The truth is that the world is much messier than that. Some drugs and vaccines have been lifesavers, while others have had to be pulled off the market. Some people benefit more than others, while some are harmed in unexpected ways. Vaccines that in isolation may provide more benefit than harm may interact in unknown ways with others, and our government officials are wary of looking into such things.
Between birth and six years old, children are supposed to receive at least 30 different vaccinations, excluding the multiple mRNA COVID-19 shots. What is the likelihood that there are no downsides, side effects, interactions, immune system effects, or other unintended consequences? It's an interesting question, and one that isn't really studied in a systematic way. Many of these vaccines are barely tested before being rolled out.
My suspicion is that the safety and effectiveness vary quite a bit among the various vaccines out there, and I am absolutely certain that the vaccine schedule is unlikely to be suboptimal at the very least.
By now, we all know enough to distrust the process that got us here, and also know that the people assuring us that everything is hunky dory are perfectly willing to lie to us. Whether the current vaccine schedule is correct or not is not an ideological question, but a practical one, and we know that it isn't being treated as one by the public health community. They no longer believe in keeping up informed.
Even before Dr. Vinay Prasad was put in charge of answering the questions of what the evidence really shows about the safety, effectiveness, and whether the current vaccine schedule is optimal, I believed that RFK, Jr. would eventually relieve people's doubts about at least some vaccines. What we know now is that the current mantra about vaccines is not evidence-based. By the end of this process, it should be.
Prasad has promised randomized controlled trials, which, while imperfect, are the gold standard in collecting evidence. Believe it or not, RCTs are not required for the rollout of new vaccines. That COVID shot they want you to get? It was tested on mice, not to determine whether it prevents infection or transmission, but rather to assess whether an immune response occurred.
That's BS.
I trust Prasad a lot more than I did the previous batch of "experts," whom I once believed trusted me to make informed decisions. Instead, they decided to ensure I remained uninformed.
Everybody who is worried that RFK, Jr. is undermining faith in vaccines seems to have missed the fact that people have lost trust in public health officials for very good reasons. We demand that it is the skeptics, not the pro-vaccine fanatics, who examine the evidence and tell us the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Do I assume RFK, Jr. is right about his opinions about vaccines? No. But it's not like he has ripped all the vaccines off the market--he's hired good scientists to delve into the evidence and report to all of us what they find. Inform us. I suspect that the answers will differ from vaccine to vaccine, and that each vaccine has different risk and benefit profiles.
I want to know that, and then I can decide what I will do. I'd love to see companies that make vaccines lose their immunity to lawsuits--that will increase the incentive to ensure safety as well.
It is impossible to believe that every vaccine provides 100% benefits and 0% downsides. We know that. So let's do the work thoroughly, and the end point of the process--whatever it is--will provide more, not less, confidence in public health recommendations.
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