EDITORIAL: The president must deal with this human health hazard

Judging from the first eight months of his second term, Donald Trump intends his presidency to be a rolling shock-and-awe drama. Actions that would have been considered outrageous in any past administration, Republican or Democrat, are now routine. Yet even in that Wild West of White House politics one presidential decision stands out as breathtakingly irresponsible—putting a man who is committed to reversing one of the most important human health achievements in history in charge of the nation’s health. 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has worked for decades to undermine vaccination with crackpot claims that the vaccines are more dangerous to health than the diseases they prevent. His anti-vaccine rhetoric—fear-mongering often aimed at parents of young children—has been thoroughly debunked and repeatedly proven false in scientific studies. Nevertheless, Kennedy has now been given the power to act against the vaccination principles he condemns. He is Trump’s secretary of health and human services. 

Kennedy has spread misinformation and fanatical conspiracy theories about vaccines of all types, but his current anti-vaccination crusade is aimed at discrediting the mRNA vaccines that have saved millions of lives from deadly infections by fast-mutating viruses.

It is an axiom of the science of virology that it was the ability of mRNA technology to adapt quickly to evolving viruses that made possible the unprecedented speed of the development of effective Covid-19 vaccines. 

That did not stop Kennedy from acting to restrict mRNA research and development by scientists and access to Covid vaccines by the public. 

Kennedy ordered the cancellation of $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine development. Then he directed the Federal Drug Administration to issue restrictions that can deprive many Americans of the protection provided by Covid vaccination.

Public health experts fear, with ample reason, that Kennedy’s campaign to disparage vaccines could enable the return of deadly diseases conquered long ago. But that is just a worrisome possibility, unlike what he has already done to weaken defenses against the coronavirus that just in this decade ravaged the world.

Kennedy’s new FDA rules approve Covid vaccines only for people 65 and older and those who have underlying health conditions. People younger than 65 cannot be vaccinated unless they have a prescription or “attest” to a health care provider or pharmacy that they have an underlying health problem.  

Before the changes ordered by Kennedy, the FDA authorized the vaccine for everyone six months and older regardless of their health. Under intense criticism from senators of both political parties at a congressional hearing, Kennedy asserted that anyone who wants a Covid shot can get one. Like most of what he has said about vaccination, the statement was false. Some younger-than-65 Americans who don’t have an underlying health condition and are too honest to attest to having one will be denied Covid vaccination. 

Twenty-four percent of the 1.2 million Americans who died of Covid during the pandemic were younger than 65, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kennedy has called Covid vaccines, in a typically bizarre claim backed up with nothing resembling evidence, “the most deadly vaccine every made.” 

His boss, Donald Trump, in a statement that was uncharacteristically free of hyperbole, has called Covid vaccines “one of the great achievements of mankind.” 

The World Health Organization estimated that Covid vaccines saved at least 14.4 million lives worldwide in 2021 alone.

The development of the mRNA Covid vaccines was one of the great turning points in history. Beyond its life-saving impact during the pandemic when thousands of people were dying of Covid every day, it brought light and hope to the darkest of times, allowing shuttered schools and businesses to reopen, making it safe to resume the human social activity that was made dangerous by pandemic.  

Trump did a service for the world with his Operation Warp Speed pushing drug companies and their scientists to use mRNA technology to create safe, effective Covid immunization faster than vaccines had ever before been developed.

Now in his second term, President Trump faces another imperative to take decisive action in support of the health of the people of the U.S. and the world: Fire RFK Jr.