Isaac Saul (21:13)
Alright, that is it for the left and the writers hang. Which brings us to my take. So as I was watching the Kennedy testimony, I quickly realized this topic spans too much ground for a take focused on any one thing. So here are 13 thoughts about the state of Make America healthy again, the CDC, the FDA and Kennedy's testimony. Number one, I've never been an outright Kennedy Jr. Supporter, but when he first announced he was running for president as an independent, I defended him, writing that the dismissal of RFK Jr. Is little more than some rabid anti vaxxer says more about the corporate media's laziness and groupthink than it does about him as a person, adding that the label as an anti vaxxer was mostly unimportant, and arguing that I was aligning with his view on the fundamental way American government was failing so many people. Of course, this was long before his name was floated as HHS secretary or the Make America Healthy Again movement took its name, but the corporate media's criticisms of him have all aged better than mine. The anti vaccine label was accurate and his vaccine stances have proven really, really important. Number two by now, with the benefit of 2020 hindsight, we should all be able to understand the damage public health agencies have done to their reputations. Irrespective of your feelings about Kennedy, we can't pretend CDC guidance was consistent or defensible as the agency has admitted, or that COVID 19 vaccine mandates weren't disruptive. Telling people that they have to put a new and unknown drug into their body to participate in a normal society is understandably going to cause pushback. Doing so in the ham handed way these agencies did, with unfulfilled promises and poor public messaging, gives us what we have now a lot of distrust. Number three Covid is no longer an emergency. So ending the emergency authorization of COVID 19 vaccines makes sense. But failing to replace it with another access plan for those who need booster shots to protect themselves, especially for the immunocompromised and elderly, is a huge mistake. As columnist Bethany Mandel put it, mandates and social coercion during the pandemic took options away from families. Now Kennedy has done the same thing, only in reverse. What was once an overreach of coercion has now been replaced with an overreach of restriction. End quote. Number four I personally stopped taking the COVID 19 vaccine boosters after the original shots and after I got the virus several times and my infections got less and less serious. I'm pretty young and pretty healthy, so I don't worry about COVID much more than a cold anymore. But that's just me. For people like my mom, who just survived her third bout of breast cancer and is still getting treatment, a booster provides important protections against serious COVID infection. The conservative radio host Eric Erickson tweeted about his wife having stage four lung cancer and now being unable to get the vaccines which actually helped keep her alive. Kennedy just made life harder for all of these people. Number five A number of Republican senators very clearly do not want Kennedy to be the head of hhs, but are too scared of Trump or Trump's base to do anything about it. This is not a healthy state of Affairs. Number six, we don't know exactly how many lives the COVID 19 vaccine saved, partly because a lot of people died with COVID but not necessarily from COVID which means counting deaths and thus estimating prevented deaths is really messy. We do know that places with lower vaccination rates had much higher death rates from COVID not just in the US but globally too. The politicization of vaccine acceptance led to red blue divides in Covid outcomes, where Democratic voters fared better against the virus, which became a partisan issue. Which is all just to say the vaccines did actually save a lot of lives and you were safer from COVID if you took them than if you didn't, even if they didn't actually prevent you from getting the virus. Number seven, one core component of Kennedy's platform is that the COVID 19 vaccines caused a lot of injuries, which in turn destroyed trust, which is part of why he has to tear these agencies apart and rebuild them. But the evidence for this is not very strong. After four years, the COVID vaccines, by any objective measure, have proven miraculously safe. That is not to say they were risk free. We know, for example, that MRNA vaccines cause heart inflammation in very rare cases, and the risk was higher for young males. This is especially alarming and frustrating because young men were least in need of the vaccines to avoid serious illness. Additionally, cases of Guillain Barre syndrome were elevated among those who had taken the now discontinued Johnson and Johnson vaccine. But remember, over 5 billion people took some kind of COVID vaccine. So it's not at all surprising that several hundred thousand adverse effects were documented. We've never had any kind of mass vaccination for a novel pathogen like this ever before. Number eight. When Kennedy is pushed into a corner to answer for his views, we see just how conspiratorial they are. Both the Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart association are offering vaccines vaccine guidance that differs from Kennedy simply because they're filled with doctors whose careers inform their guidance on best health practices. Instead, Kennedy thinks they're filled with doctors who are getting paid off by Big Pharma. Chronic illness is on the rise, mostly because we are getting older and acting less healthy. Instead, Kennedy thinks the CDC is creating a health crisis. Number nine. When testifying before Congress, Kennedy was asked to explain his firing of Susan Monorez. He told Congress that he asked Monarz if she was a trustworthy person. She said no, so he fired her. Alternatively, you can read Monarz's firsthand account of being fired in which she says Kennedy let her go because she refused to pre approve the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel that had not yet met or made any recommendations. Consider that for a moment. Either Monarz, a microbiologist and wildly successful public health official, delivered the worst and most bizarre job interview in the history of mankind, where Kennedy replaced the vaccine advisory panel with handpicked scientists, then told the CDC director she had to approve their recommendations before the board had even convened. Number 10 I run a business. If I insisted potential employees agree to future plans for TANGLE before knowing what they were, I'd lose a lot of really smart and qualified employees. If my top staff members were all resigning in protest of my leadership and throwing up red flags about how I was running tangle, you would all rightly be concerned about what was happening here. But the Department of Health and Human Services isn't a small, independent media shop. It's a powerful government department that controls the regulation of drugs, the delivery of vaccines, and the recommendations the government gives on public health. Number 11 Remember that all of this, according to Kennedy, is part of his effort to restore American trust in our health officials and science. But is it working? According to a CBS News poll, Kennedy's approval rating is 45%, with 55% disapproving. Just 1 in 4Americans trust him with health advice. 74% of Americans want vaccines to be more available. 22% want access to remain the same. Just 4% want them to be less available. Distrusting Kennedy's recommendations is an equivalent to supporting broad vaccine mandates. But clearly Kennedy's views are out of step with the country's enough to worry about him distancing public trust in the government's health recommendations even further. End number 12 Finally, a closing note. I've said repeatedly that I share some of Kennedy's views about our health. We are being ravaged by diseases of despair. We don't eat well. Our sedentary lifestyles are bad for physical and mental health. But we don't talk nearly enough about the successes of public health and the advancements of science, which have largely been pushed by agencies, doctors and research. Kennedy and the Trump administration are now attacking our food, though more processed, is less contaminated. Thanks to FDA regulation. Infant mortality has plummeted. Cancer deaths have dropped 34% since 1991. Death rates from leukemia in kids are down 93% since 1950. Vaccines for measles, polio, Hep B, and HPV have saved millions of lives. Smallpox was eliminated. Measles is down 99%. Life expectancy rose in the 20th century by 10 years. Cardiovascular disease mortality fell 60% from the 1950s. Even the maternal mortality rates in the US have been overstated, and new studies show our numbers are much more in line with other developed nations. HIV and AIDS Deaths are down 80% from the mid-1990s. Overdose deaths finally fell in 2024 by a whopping 27%. The list goes on and on and on. In short, we're doing a lot of things right and doing it in large part because of these agencies scientific research, new drugs, new vaccines and new treatment protocols. Quite obviously, this is enough to warrant not burning the entire system down. We'll be right back after this quick break.
