Donald Trump’s choice to lead the $1.8 trillion Department of Health and Human Services…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reportedly took steps to block the groundbreaking COVID-19 vaccines in 2021, just six months after they were rolled out during the peak of the pandemic when thousands of lives were still being lost to the virus.
In May 2021, Kennedy filed a petition with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), despite not being an elected official or public figure at the time. He called on health officials to revoke the emergency authorization for the vaccines and urged them not to approve any future COVID vaccines. The petition was filed on behalf of Children’s Health Defense, a non-profit organization Kennedy had founded and was leading at the time, as reported by the New York Times.
Kennedy argued that the risks of the vaccines outweighed the benefits and claimed that the vaccines were unnecessary, suggesting that alternative treatments for COVID-19, such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, were already available. These treatments, however, were quickly dismissed by public health experts as ineffective. In contrast, the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were proven to dramatically reduce the severity and death rates associated with the virus, ultimately saving millions of lives worldwide.
At that time, the vaccines had been developed at record speed, thanks to Operation Warp Speed, a program launched by the Trump administration to accelerate vaccine development and distribution with significant funding. Kennedy’s petition came five months after Trump announced that the FDA was poised to approve the vaccine under Operation Warp Speed, a program that Trump praised as “a monumental national achievement.”
Now, Kennedy is facing intense scrutiny ahead of his confirmation hearings for the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services. His stance against vaccines, as well as his promotion of debunked theories—such as the false link between childhood vaccines and autism—has raised alarms among public health officials who consider his views dangerous. As Kennedy stands on the verge of assuming a major role in U.S. government, these concerns are growing.
However, there may be some divergence between Trump and Kennedy when it comes to COVID vaccines. While studies have identified a small risk of myocarditis and pericarditis (inflammation of the heart and its lining) associated with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, experts consider the risk to be minimal.
Meanwhile, pro-vaccine philanthropist Bill Gates, who recently had a three-hour dinner with Trump, shared that the conversation was “wide-ranging” and that Trump was receptive to vaccine development. Gates, who has a long history of working on global health initiatives through his $75 billion foundation, noted that Trump had supported vaccine innovation during the pandemic and expressed interest in applying similar strategies to other health challenges, such as finding a cure for HIV. Gates remarked, “He accelerated vaccine innovation during COVID, so I was asking him if maybe the same kind of thing could be done here, and we both got pretty excited about that.”
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