Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is distancing himself from his anti-vaccine work as he seeks to become the leader of the nation’s top health agency under President Donald Trump, according to government ethics documents released Wednesday.
Kennedy has pulled in roughly $10 million in income from his work over the past year, which includes speaking fees, leading an anti-vaccine nonprofit and legal fees, government ethics forms filed for his nomination show. He has millions of dollars more tied up in investments and other assets.
If confirmed, he has promised to stop collecting fees on some of his vaccine lawsuits involving the U.S. government.
This fucking quack is going to get large numbers of people killed.
He’s Kissinger, but with germs
Especially since the CDC and NIH can’t make public announcements currently unless there is a health emergency, which of course is up for review. Even if the pause is short, there could still be updates to the avian flu or other diseases that they can tell us about and the review process they are implementing could greatly hamper their ability to defend against future pandemics.
Edit: evidently it’s not just a communication freeze for the NIH (National Institutes of Health)
Again.
He already has. His anti vaccine campaign in Samoa led to a massive outbreak of measles which killed 83 people.
Just as Putin planned
Can’t wash that filth off. He wanted to pull covid vaccines right in the middle of the pandemic. Effective they were, and not the whatever-the-hell he believed/represented. Fuck this guy. He’s a danger to our health.
I don’t know how people are snowballed into believing his drivel. I have an extremely intelligent friend what loves what RFK says. I’m convinced it’s because he hated the inconvenience of getting the shots.
I am a therapist who does desensitization for specific phobias as part of my repertoire and one of the things I do somewhat regularly is needle desensitization for kids that struggle to get their vaccinations and blood draws, especially kids with autism. It’s no fun but unfortunately a part of life.
Often when I do it their parents have to leave the room or look away which is outright cowardly and sends a really bad message to their child who is terrified of needles
anti vaccination originally started rising in popularity because a lot of parents of kids with autism wanted an explanation for why their kids were “disabled” (keep in mind this goes back to like the 90s leading up the the discredited wakefield study in 1998). Then it had other people latch on for similar reasons, by the early to mid 2000s those people were blaming ADHD, dyslexia, generic “learning disabilities”, allergies, etc on vaccination. This is all pretty well established.
But I have this theory that it kept growing in popularity because people were simply afraid of getting needles. Covid was the catalyst for it to truly explode because a great deal of adults could skip most compulsory vaccinations. Before Covid if you were really stupid you could skip flu shots and your parents probably forced you to get most of the truly necessary ones ages ago. But then all of a sudden the big bad government is saying you need to get a big scary needle!! And not just one, but two!! And then maybe get them indefinitely!
The core kooks who say it has 5g nanochips or whatever probably truly believe that. But that’s probably a small minority. A great deal more are probably people who are otherwise sensible but are willing to enter delusional beliefs and are extremely susceptible to the kooks rhetoric because it allows them to believe something that enables them to endorse what they truly want to do, which is avoid the extremely brief moment of pain, because they are entitled whiny babies that cannot handle even a second of discomfort
This is just my theory though
To back this up with garbage anecdotal data I have talked to physician friends who describe adult patients having a much lower likelihood of getting bloodwork orders filled, a much lower rate of getting things like flu shots and newer vaccinations like hepatitis, shingles, hpv, chickenpox, etc.
Fuck those people.
I have hemochromatosis and a lifelong fear of needles dating back to being bit by a copperhead snake as a small child and a nurse being unable to get an IV in my hand. The year I got my diagnosis I donated a full unit of blood 32 times. I had to look away EVERY TIME, but I still did it because it was medically necessary.
Fuck all these overgrown children fucking up the world for those of us who chose to grow the fuck up.
And an additional Fuck, because I’m running out of them to give.
I wonder, if it’s even possible, if a device like the tasso blood collector would help people with this issue.
Needles are still involved but they’re significantly smaller and you can’t even feel or really even see them during the process.
I’ve had blood drawn using it and you can’t even feel it happening. It does take a lot longer than a typical blood draw, though.
I’m not at all ashamed to say I don’t like needles. I’m not an overall squeamish person, blood doesn’t bother, I’ve gotten all kinds of nasty cuts and scrapes and I just clean them up, throw some bandages on, and continue about my day. But something about needles specifically really skeeves me out. If the process was to stab me with a scalpel and rub the vaccine in there I wouldn’t mind it nearly as much.
It’s probably part of why I’m not great about going to the doctors for a regular physical and such, in the back of my mind I think that they’re gonna find some new excuse to stick me with a needle, and I’m even worse about getting blood work done (also there’s a part of me that feels really strongly that they should just be doing it as part of the physical. Surely this dude who went to medical school can handle a quick blood draw, so why should I have to go carve more time out of my life to go sit in another waiting room at LabCorp or wherever?)
That said, I can still suck it up and get my flu and COVID shots every year. Definitely helps that my work (county department of public safety) has someone come in to do it at my workplace so I can’t psych myself out of scheduling an appointment, I’m gonna be there anyway so i might as well get it done.
Hey if you own it that’s totally cool and fairly noble. And frankly even if you don’t it’s cool too. Not my job to decide who to take on as long as you’re within my practice scope and not actively suicidal, murdering people, or diddling kids, which are like three main dealbreakers for getting your therapist to snitch (varies by state and there are other exceptions check the fine print)
One of the things I explain to people when I’m doing needle desensitization is that the phobia does make sense to a degree. At its core there is a threat. We know that it will hurt. It’s why I fucking hate it when people use bullshit lies to get people to get shots, “oh it won’t hurt at all!”. No, that’s a lie, it by definition will cause some pain. And it’s pain you see coming. A scrape is different. We generally get those accidentally and often don’t notice it’s happened until the pain registers. But a shot or blood draw is more analogous to torture: I get a sharp needle, put you in a weird chair, and let you know that I will absolutely stick this into your body, piercing your flesh. You anticipate it. You tense up.
The thing to remind yourself is that it’s irrational and your anxiety is magnifying the intensity. The pain is real and will happen, that is true, but it is generally not that big of a deal outside of certain scenarios that are uncommon for most people. And even in some of the more painful scenarios like lumbar punctures there is an anesthetic involved (trust me I’ve had one. It’s not awesome but not as bad as you’d think).
Desensitization can help for the obvious reason of lowering your anxiety in reaction to the aversive stimuli. Avoiding it only serves to sensitize you and lower resilience to the stimulus. However this is the challenge of the phobia. Often they’re things we don’t have regular exposure to: vomiting, spiders, air travel, etc. so we desensitize, do much better, and then don’t have to deal with the thing for months or years and end up with it being an issue again. Maintenance is always necessary.
But with needle phobia there is a specific benefit. If you can calm yourself down during blood draws and relax your body the blood draws will actually hurt less. Tension held in your body makes the piercing of the needle sting a bit worse. It’s not a huge difference but apparently a noticeable one.
I hate needles too. What helped me was a small town clinic I used to go to pre-internet. One of the techs decided to tape a few single-panel comics to the separator walls so we would have something else to focus on instead. It worked wonders.
Nothing like that anymore, so just turn my head away and try to think of funny stuff. I still flinch but it does help.
I know people who like that he’s on board with shrooms and other recreational drugs as alternative treatments. Which I can honestly understand, given all the research that says stuff like shrooms does offer some promise in some mental health therapies. It’s ridiculous an agency like the DEA can dictate what drug options are available to people.
But other than that, RFK Jr is a fucking idiot and should absolutely not be allowed to head our health agencies.
Dude. I grow shrooms and make DMT. I give them to my friend I’m talking about all the time. That’s not his issue.
He’s mega wealthy married to a wife who has early era Microsoft money. They live in a castle-like house in Capital Hill, Seattle, near Volunteer Park. (in short, entitled af). I’ve watched him morph from a normal dude to this over the course of a decade.
It’s hard to give up on friends. But I’ve slowly been letting this one go. At least he didn’t vote MAGA. The slimmest glimmers of quality.
He’s morphed into what exactly? Being anti-vaxxers? I fortunately don’t know any anti-vaxxers personally, but I know plenty of MAGA idiots. Even those idiots tend to support vaccines, though. I just truly don’t understand anti-vaxxers, they’re the dumbest of the dumb.
From a friend without these views to one with them. That’s it.
I know people who like that he’s on board with shrooms and other recreational drugs as alternative treatments.
The only treatments that should be available are those that are proven safe and effective. Evidence-based, not anecdotal endorsements by people involved with fringe practicioners. If that includes shrooms, great.
It’s ridiculous an agency like the DEA can dictate what drug options are available to people.
That part I agree with. Bona fide clinical researchers should not be subject to laws restricting recreational use of drugs. But that doesn’t mean Tio Chuy’s Drive-Through Ayahuasca Clinic should be regarded as a researcher, either. There will need to be some standards.
RFK Jr is a fucking idiot and should absolutely not be allowed to head our health agencies
I also fully agree with that point. His kakistocratic appointment is a fuck-you to everyone wanting quality health care and freedom from quackery in the US.
The Ivermectin he undoubtedly took failed to eradicate his brain worm 🪱
His poor brain worm starved to death years ago
It had to mosey down to his gut to sustain itself on some old rancid raccoon meat
I don’t know why it took me until this thumbnail to realize it, but this guy always looks like a zombie.
