There’s a double tragedy here. RFK Jr is simultaneously both a dangerous anti-vaxer AND the recipient of well-deserved recognition for his environmental advocacy and his work as an environmental lawyer earlier in his career, helping to bring egregious polluters to account and clean up waterways.
This dichotomy is very unfortunate because too many people tend to see issues in simplistic black-and-white. There may be those who, recognizing the importance of his environmental work, might feel that his anti-vax claims have merit. There may be others who, recognizing his anti-vax propagandizing as complete bullshit, might conclude that his environmental work was bullshit, too, and by extension, other environmental initiatives, perhaps also including those on climate change.
I have no idea what led him to become an anti-vax zealot, but I suppose it’s possible that many years of bringing egregious environmental polluters to justice created some kind of delusional pathology that left him with a complete distrust of all corporations and all governments.
Attacking vaccination because one is convinced that corporations (i.e. Big Pharma) are evil implies a massive brain disconnect/absence of critical thinking capacity.
As has been pointed out ad nauseum, the relatively small proportion of pharma income that comes from vaccines would be dwarfed by the huge amounts of money they’d make if we stopped immunizing, and vaccine-preventable diseases ran rampant again. Just one illustrative case showing the enormous medical cost involved:
The last time I checked, tetanus vaccination (DTaP) cost around $33.
RFK Jr.'s pathology has to run much deeper than a distrust of corporations.
Big Pharma is evil but also somewhat regulated and closely watched. Killing people with vaccines isn’t the evil that pays off for them under those circumstances.
Sure if you accept a science based reality, but if you buy into the new improved antii-vax reality (now with 95% more woo).
Vaccines don’t actually prevent any of these diseases, but instead cause all sorts of other health problems. So pushing the vaccines allows big bad pharma to double dip. Not only do they get paid the big bucks for the vaccines, they also get big bucks for treating the conditions caused by their vaccines.
True - but given the horrifying specter of mass depopulation caused by vaccines (Natural News terms it “vaxtermination”), Pharma is destroying its customer base and dooming future profits.
Also, in Anti-Vaxx world, vaccine manufacturers are judgement-proof, because the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program is set up to immunize vaccine manufacturers from civil legal consequences. So vaccine manufacturers have financial incentives to pump out dangerous cocktails of toxins and call them “vaccines.”
(In the real world, it’s pretty much the opposite. VICP is funded by special assessments paid by the vaccine manufacturers. If you or your child suffers a “table” injury, that is, a known side effect of a vaccine, you automatically get compensation without needing to show any evidence other than coincident timing that your specific incident is due to a vaccine. If you think you’ve suffered a vaccine-caused injury that’s not on a table, you just need to prove it’s plausible your injury might have been caused by a vaccine. And your attorneys fees are paid by the court, win or lose. And if the vaccine manufacturer has actually been negligent, you can still bring a normal civil suit against them, and bypass VICP altogether.)
I had not seen that previously - that’s too funny. Incidentally, the phrase ‘doing their own research’ is starting to get the skepticism it’s long deserved, but naturally, it’s The Onion that just completely nailed it:
“Is the sabotage of air travel, high-quality healthcare, first-responder capability and other core services, by vaccine mandates, an intentional step designed to further weaken Americans’ resilience and expand authoritarian controls?”
The only difference between this blather (from someone with marginal credibility on the Left) and similar spewings from right-wingers is that RFK Jr. phrases it in terms of JAQing off.
High-quality healthcare has always been available in America…for those who can afford it.
What’s sabotaging it at the moment is the vast number of COVID cases overwhelming hospitals, particularly in areas where the anti-vaccine movement is strong.
