Public Health Experts Groan as RFK Jr. Pitches Vaccines as ‘Personal Choice’

Story by Andrew Stanton. November 15, 2024.

  • Kennedy’s Nomination: President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, sparking concern among public health experts due to Kennedy’s controversial vaccine views.
  • Vaccine Misinformation: Experts worry that Kennedy’s stance could increase vaccine misinformation and reduce vaccination rates, which are crucial for herd immunity.
  • Public Health Impact: Lower vaccination rates could lead to outbreaks of preventable diseases and have long-term negative effects on public health.
  • State vs. Federal Authority: States have significant control over public health policies, which may help mitigate potential negative impacts of federal decisions on vaccines.

“People ought to have choice and ought to be informed by the best information, so I’m going to make sure that scientific safety studies and efficacies are out there and people can make individual assessments about whether that product is going to be good for them,” Kennedy said.

The problem with that line of thinking, according to public health officials who spoke to Newsweek, is that it does not take into account that for vaccines to be effective at scale, a significant portion of a population has to be immunized in order for that population to develop “herd immunity” from a disease.

Herd immunity is also what keeps those who cannot be vaccinated, such as people with certain medical conditions, safe from infection. When many people choose not to vaccinate against a certain virus or disease, this communal protection weakens, increasing the risk of outbreaks.

“What Mr. Kennedy adds to this mix is really only more confusion and disinformation about what vaccines can do, what they don’t do, how safe they are, how well they work. The spread of disinformation may be among the most damaging aspects of Kennedy’s potential confirmation, Osterholm said. Whether or the information he says is backed by science, he makes his claims in a way that is “authoritative” and that may give parents “pause” about whether they should get their children vaccinated. The question becomes in the minds of the consumer out here, who is not sophisticated in necessarily in vaccine safety and effectiveness, who am I going to believe? Him, or these other people who probably have some hand in the till at a pharmaceutical company, which is not the case either. It doesn’t matter what happens in the future,” he said. “We are already on a trail of mass confusion. Because of that, there will be children who will not get vaccinated. There will be adults who could receive adult vaccines who won’t get them. And there will be people who will die because of that.” – Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told Newsweek that Kennedy’s ascension to health secretary threatens to supercharge “misinformation and confusion” about vaccines among the American public and have long-lasting effects on children who may not get vaccinated as a result of his policies.

The consequences of Kennedy’s tenure could be longstanding, regardless of the actions of future administrations.

A decline in vaccination rates will have “long, long tails” for children, he warned. They will remain ‘potential targets’ for viruses as they grow up, and particularly virulent viruses like measles will “find you in a community.”

“RFK says he won’t take away vaccines if they are working. The problem with this statement is that vaccines do work or they would never have been approved in the first place. My biggest fear is that RFK will discount evidence and decades of research to revoke approval of vaccines. Then no one will be able to get those vaccines. While changes in policy could be reversed with a change of administration in 4 years, the impacts on children who miss vaccines during that time will be lifelong or even deadly.” – Cynthia Leifer, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Cornell University, told Newsweek that Kennedy’s vaccines statements “make people question vaccine safety,” despite the fact that vaccines “are already rigorously tested and safe. States may also need to bring on more public health experts to make decisions without federal CDC recommendations, potentially increasing costs, Leifer said.

“States determine and can keep school requirements, can educate the public and encourage vaccination. But of course if the national discourse were promoting a choice message which translated into more hesitancy this would be hard to fully counter.” States’ abilities to handle vaccines in their own way will be one way public health officials may be able to curb a rise in vaccine misinformation, Dr. Jennifer Kates, senior vice president and director of the Global Health & HIV Policy Program at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told Newsweek. States moving away from these requirements could “seriously affect population health,” emphasizing that there is a “balance between choice and population health, based on science and evidence.” Lower vaccine rates would lead to lower “herd immunity,” and that outbreaks of preventable diseases like measles is already showing that. “We already see rates declining since COVID and medical school exemption allowances rising,” she said. “It’s already happening.”