Summary
Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as U.S. health secretary has sparked backlash, with critics labeling Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist, a “clear and present danger.”
Advocacy group Public Citizen warned the appointment could lead to a “public health catastrophe,” while physicians condemned Kennedy’s history of spreading vaccine misinformation, linking it to fatal outbreaks like the 2019 Samoa measles epidemic.
Kennedy has also promoted debunked health claims, including raw milk and ivermectin for COVID, prompting fears his leadership could undermine U.S. health infrastructure.
We’re already shambling slowly into an antiviral resistant H5N1 pandemic at the moment. It has the potential to make COVID look trivial if (and at this point almost certainly when) it kicks off. We had an opportunity to contain it when it was only working its way through our livestock industries but the CDC and Dept of Agriculture decided that “Don’t ask don’t tell” was a better policy for the dairy industry.