Does it matter if RFK Jr is an "anti-vaxxer"?
It does not, when vaccine safety standards are third rate
Summary:
The characterization of RFK Jr as an "anti-vaxxer" matters less than examining whether current vaccine safety standards meet first-rate criteria
Three critical standards should be met before dismissing vaccine skeptics from government positions:
First-rate vaccine approval process
First-rate pharmacovigilance
First-rate vaccine injury compensation
Multiple concerns exist about Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial data manipulation, as detailed in analyses by a_nineties_reads and OpenVAET
The CDC's transparency and oversight have deteriorated since 2007:
Removed detailed VAERS reports from EU countries and UK in November 2022
Allowed extreme delays in publishing severe adverse event reports
Failed to properly analyze v-safe free text entries
Did not leverage outside expertise for data analysis
Big Tech participated in censoring vaccine injury discussions, further breaking the feedback loop for safety monitoring
Vaccine injury compensation has been notably problematic:
Pfizer demanded liability waivers in multiple countries
Requested military bases and embassy buildings as collateral in Argentina and Brazil
Total compensation payouts have been minimal
The CDC's recommendations affect global vaccine policies, making their reduced transparency particularly concerning for worldwide public health
Recently The Real Truther posted a video on Twitter called “The truth about RFK Jr” and asked if RFK Jr is an “anti-vaxxer”?
First of all, according to Merriam Webster, the definition of anti-vaxxer changed from this in 2018:
a person who opposes vaccination or laws that mandate vaccination
to this by end of 2023:
a person who opposes the use of some or all vaccines, regulations mandating vaccination, or usually both
Meanwhile Dictionary.com has maintained the same definition (more or less) all through the pandemic
a person who distrusts or is against vaccination, often someone who is vocally opposed to vaccines
You can even represent this as a flowchart to explain this absurdity:
If it is reasonable for Webster to use such a definition without an outcry1 from the medical community, you will probably agree that selecting someone who is “anti-vaccine” as a high ranking government official should only be a concern if all these things are already true:
first rate vaccine approval process
first rate pharmacovigilance
first rate vaccine injury compensation
In other words, your product is so unquestionably safe that anyone who doubts their safety becomes unfit to hold high positions in government.
In the rest of the article I show that none of these things are first rate anymore.
In fact, Real Truther’s video might even make you think the CDC is still very transparent and is quite eager to solicit outside opinion
In September 2007, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions rejected allegations of any impropriety against the CDC. Addressing Kennedy's statement, the committee found that instead of hiding the Simpsonwood data or restricting access to it, the CDC distributed the data often to individuals who had never seen it before and solicited outside opinion regarding how to interpret it. The transcript of the discussions was made available to the public. So much for a conspiracy to hide the truth.
But this was in 2007!
Even if this were true2 back then, today’s CDC is nowhere near as transparent or as willing to solicit outside opinion, as I will show in the article.
Everything I write here refers to the COVID19 vaccines, and especially the mRNA3 vaccines.
Some people say prior vaccines were not nearly as bad. I think RFK Jr disagrees. And the rest of the world4 wants to see more data to figure out whether or not he is right.
Did we have a first rate vaccine approval process?
Even if you don’t think5 the speed of vaccine approval was a big red flag all by itself, you should read this article by
about all the different ways Pfizer tried to manipulate the clinical trial data.
And then read this article (from the same group)
If you still believe the vaccine approval process was first rate, please explain why in the comments.
Do we have first rate pharmacovigilance?
This is what I have been focusing on in my Substack.
As I mentioned before, one of the foundational viewpoints in The Real Truther’s video is the belief that the CDC has been transparent and willing to solicit outside expertise. And given that they decide something as sensitive as the childhood vaccine schedule, this is the least they should be doing (if they want to be considered6 the world’s authority on this topic).
But can we trust the CDC anymore?
The answer to this is just a plain NO
Here are some reasons:
Foreign VAERS reports
In November 2022, the CDC removed the writeups for VAERS reports from EU countries and the UK. They cited “privacy” as the reason, even though VAERS reports are usually anonymized before being published.
This is a big deal, because these writeups are very high quality and help us infer a lot of things about VAERS.
Number of deaths due to mRNA vaccines
The CDC has not been completely honest about the number of deaths from the mRNA vaccines
Extreme delays in publishing bad news reports
The CDC has actually allowed a lot of VAERS death reports to be throttled
And does the CDC solicit outside opinion anymore, like they did in 2007?
It seems very unlikely.
Broken paper review process
The v-safe Lancet paper published by CDC insiders did not even look at the free text entries.
Given that the v-safe paper passed review in a supposedly high quality journal, it is now pretty clear that the entire review process is broken when it comes to the topic of vaccines.
In addition, it also raises questions about CDC’s own capacity to be in charge of the safety of a product which was administered to BILLIONS of people worldwide.
And if the CDC did not have the internal expertise7 on topics like how to use NLU and now LLMs for information extraction, what prevented them from crowdsourcing the analysis of the v-safe free text entries?
In fact, the CDC went in the opposite direction, and actually decided it wasn’t going to publish the dates (watch the video from minute 8:00) associated with the free text entries!
(After all, why be helpful when you can just get a free pass from vaccine pushers like The Real Truther who lack the skillset to cross verify CDC claims?)
Big Tech censorship
It is already bad enough to be less than 100% transparent on vaccine injury reports in VAERS and v-safe, but the COVID19 vaccine was so dangerous that US Health agencies had to call for more reinforcements to maintain the “safe and effective” narrative.
So they also asked their buddies at Big Tech to censor people who were complaining of vaccine injuries.
Quite predictably, this shattered whatever little remained of the already broken feedback loop.
Do we have first rate vaccine injury compensation?
Here, the story actually gets hilarious8.
Pfizer was not allowed to sell its vaccine in India because it demanded a liability waiver and the government refused unless they did clinical trials under the supervision of local government officials. And Pfizer decided it was better to walk away from a billion people market!
Pfizer demanded military bases and embassy buildings as collateral in case someone in Argentina or Brazil sued them for vaccine injuries despite the liability waiver clause!
The total payout till date has been comically small9
So in the worst case, if you are injured by the vaccine, you cannot expect first rate injury compensation either.
Conclusion
So is RFK Jr an “anti-vaxxer”?
If your product is actually dangerous, then there is absolutely nothing wrong if someone is “anti-” your product.
And if all the processes which make your product safe have become third rate, then your product should be considered dangerous until you fix them.
In fact, not only was there no outcry, the medical community even changed the definition of the vaccine to accommodate COVID19 vaccines!
And some say it is not true. And we are slowly uncovering stories where the CDC was less than honest even during that time period, because of people like
who have been on the case for a very long time.I don’t have a high opinion of the AstraZeneca viral vector vaccine which was used in India either. But the vaccine pushers seem to be singularly focused on the mRNA vaccine, probably because it is likely to be much more lucrative.
Except for the vaccine pushers, of course. They seem to be a little too keen to continue the gatekeeping.
And to be honest, I did not think it was a red flag at the beginning either. I took two doses of the AstraZeneca Covishield vaccine in mid-2021. In my case, I only started questioning things when I realized that the FDA was actually trying to demonize Ivermectin (and got humiliated as a result)
Do they want to be? I honestly don’t know. But the rest of the world behaves like they are the world’s foremost authority. So whether they like it or not, their recommendations affect nearly everyone on the planet!
That would be scarcely believable, but let us suppose it is true
A vaccine pusher might find all this normal though. Vaccine pushers seem to have the capacity to normalize anything and everything.
Yes, I know, some people use this as “proof” that the vaccines are extremely safe.