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What RFK Jr. Has Said About COVID-19

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s decide to go the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Providers (HHS), was grilled by Democratic senators throughout his affirmation listening to on Jan. 29, who confronted him with conspiratorial and conflicting statements he has made about COVID-19.

This is what to find out about Kennedy’s positions on COVID-19, and why some consultants and lawmakers are involved about him main the U.S.’s response to a subsequent potential pandemic.

Kennedy’s racial and ethnic claims about COVID-19

Kennedy has held some controversial and unsubstantiated views on COVID-19 and ethnicity.

In accordance with a 2023 video shared by the New York Submit, when Kennedy was a presidential candidate, he mentioned at a personal dinner in New York Metropolis, “There’s an argument that [COVID-19] is ethnically focused. COVID-19 assaults sure races disproportionately. COVID-19 is focused to assault Caucasians and Black folks. The people who find themselves most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese language.” After being accused of being anti-Semitic, Kennedy wrote on X that the Submit story was “mistaken,” and that “I’ve by no means, ever instructed that the COVID-19 virus was focused to spare Jews. I don’t consider and by no means implied that the ethnic impact was intentionally engineered.”

Senators introduced up the assertion on the listening to. “I did not say it was intentionally focused,” Kennedy mentioned once more.

What science says about COVID-19 and race

Authorities well being information on hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 point out that at occasions through the pandemic, the virus affected Blacks and Hispanics disproportionately. However that information additionally confirmed that the rationale for the imbalance was not as a result of any biologic elements associated to race, however to a slew of social elements. Through the pandemic, folks in these demographic teams tended to have a better threat of publicity to the virus as a result of they had been extra more likely to work important jobs that would not be carried out at house, a higher chance of residing in bigger households the place infections can unfold shortly, extra restricted entry to well being care and vaccines, and better charges of underlying power situations akin to bronchial asthma, diabetes and coronary heart illness, which might make them extra susceptible to critical sickness from COVID-19.

Learn Extra: What to Know About Spasmodic Dysphonia, the Condition That Affects RFK Jr.’s Voice

A lot of the disproportionate influence of COVID-19 “mirror inequities that come up as a result of structural racism and never race,” says Samantha Artiga, vp and director of the racial fairness and well being coverage program at KFF who has published an analysis of COVID-19 tendencies by race and ethnicity. “The thought of organic variations by race has been disproven,” she says. “Traditionally, it’s been used for an array of abuses and mistreatment of individuals of colour.”

Kennedy’s 2023 feedback about COVID-19 “capitalize on confusion and distrust within the public to push his personal agenda of pure medication and demonizing the medical trade,” says Dr. Eric Burnett, assistant professor of drugs at Columbia College. “He simply desires to burn all the pieces down after which not present actual options for easy methods to repair the issues he talks about.”

RFK Jr.’s opposition to COVID-19 vaccines

Kennedy, who’s known for his anti-vaccine views, has been a vocal critic of the federal government’s response to COVID-19, together with the lockdowns and vaccine and masks mandates, which he as soon as compared to Nazi practices in focus camps. “Even in Hitler Germany, you could possibly…cross the Alps into Switzerland. You would conceal in an attic, like Anne Frank did,” he mentioned at a rally protesting vaccine mandates in Washington, DC in 2022. (After his remarks had been extensively condemned, Kennedy apologized.)

His opposition to the vaccine additionally got here up within the listening to when he mentioned that “COVID vaccines are inappropriate for six 12 months outdated youngsters who principally have a zero threat COVID.” That is not supported by data from the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC), which present that younger youngsters can and do develop infections.

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Kennedy has referred to as himself an advocate for “medical freedom” and “bodily autonomy,” supporting the concept folks ought to have the ability to selected for themselves whether or not they get vaccinated, based mostly on having knowledgeable information.

However the proof he espouses is “his proof, proof that helps no matter his present idea is,” says Dr. Gregory Poland, president of Atria Analysis Institute, which offers customized well being care. “A part of the issue is that these are appalling errors in communication and consequence from not being a scientist and never being prepare scientifically. You utilize phrases and phrases that sound correct, like evidence-based medication, however evidence-based medication is totally based mostly on the scientific technique which he evidently rejects.”

As head of HHS, Kennedy would even have considerable power to influence vaccine policy in innumerable methods, together with by way of CDC committees that suggest vaccine coverage for all the pieces from childhood vaccinations to the yearly flu and COVID-19 photographs, and on the U.S. Meals and Drug Administration, which opinions and approves vaccines as protected and efficacious.

Concern over how Kennedy would lead throughout one other pandemic

Senators pressed Kennedy on his previous statements about COVID-19 as a window into how an HHS below his management would reply to a brand new pandemic—a thought that troubles Burnett. “The guardrails are gone” in President Trump’s second time period, he says. “Medical consultants, people who find themselves accustomed to pandemics and have labored on them earlier than: they simply aren’t going to be there. I feel it is going to be harder for the American folks to climate that storm.”

The priority is not purely hypothetical; as circumstances of chook flu proceed to rise amongst cattle, public well being consultants are fastidiously monitoring the virus’ potential shift to spreading amongst folks. “I intend to commit the suitable assets to stopping pandemics,” Kennedy mentioned through the listening to when questioned about chook flu. “That is a central a part of my job.”

Learn Extra: RFK Jr. Denied He Is Anti-Vaccine During His Confirmation Hearing. Here’s His Record

But the Trump Administration has already taken steps to weaken the federal government’s means to answer a pandemic. Simply days after taking workplace, Trump signed an government order withdrawing the U.S. from the World Well being Group (WHO); days later, public well being officers had been told to instantly stop working with the WHO. The Administration additionally froze federal health communications till additional discover—together with stopping publication of the CDC’s weekly MMWR report, which particulars the newest outbreaks of illnesses like chook flu and retains physicians and public-health consultants knowledgeable about rising threats.

“You and I as personal residents don’t have any strategy to collect, collate, and synthesize information from throughout the U.S., a lot much less from the world over,” says Poland. “We’re depending on the federal government to try this for us. However what occurs when that authorities gained’t, or can’t, or manipulates that type of data? That’s a world of damage.”


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