The Anti-Vaccine Administration is Making Its Mark

The move from the pharma company came just a day after the FDA said it would soon restrict the use of Covid vaccines to those over the age of 65 and with certain medical conditions, a move that flies in the face of just mountains of data on their efficacy and safety. Behind all this, of course, are the trio of Vinay Prasad, Martin Makary, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — the head of FDA’s vaccine division, the FDA itself, and umbrella agency HHS, respectively.

They have insisted that new trials will be needed to prove vaccines’ efficacy against placebo — a “radical departure” that ignores existing data and the sheer impracticality of the undertaking — and more generally that we do not know things about vaccines that we do, in fact, know. Moderna’s withdrawal of the combination vaccine application comes after a trial which found that it induced immune responses to both flu and Covid that were “similar to or higher than those achieved” with the individually administered jabs. The data it expects to have later in the year is from a trial specifically on its influenza vaccine, but who knows what sort of pressure or excuse FDA and HHS leadership will exert at that point.

The RFK-ification of the vaccine landscape is happening against a backdrop where his bullshit has seeped disturbingly far into the minds of many Americans. Polling in 2019 found that nine percent of Republicans thought the risks of childhood MMR vaccination outweighed its benefit; by January of this year, that number had risen to a sickening 24 percent. In that same polling this year, 81 percent of Republicans said they had a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust in RFK Jr. — who recently told us all to ignore his medical advice — “to make the right recommendations when it comes to health issues.” For Democrats that number was seven percent.

This is a country sliding its way toward millions of measles cases, reignited flu and Covid pandemics, and a population of immunocompromised people who will face growing risks every time they go out in public. “He’s an anti-vaccine activist, a science denialist who is going to do everything he can to tear down the infrastructure in this country of vaccines,” the vaccine expert Paul Offit told NPR earlier this month. “Robert F. Kennedy Jr is a dangerous man.”