If public health indicators indeed go south, it will be because Democrats kept modifying the weather.
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They’re eating the dogs.
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With relish.
Obama, naturally.
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Nah, it’ll be women and “low T males”. This is the kind of sh1t Elon Musk finds insightful, or interesting. He’s literally getting his information from 4chan bots, trolls and fascist psychopaths:
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Here is what RFK said on X after his nomination of head of HHS:
Thank you Donald Trump for your leadership and courage. I’m committed to advancing your vision to Make America Healthy Again. We have a generational opportunity to bring together the greatest minds in science, medicine, industry, and government to put an end to the chronic disease epidemic. I look forward to working with the more than 80,000 employees at HHS to free the agencies from the smothering cloud of corporate capture so they can pursue their mission to make Americans once again the healthiest people on Earth. Together we will clean up corruption, stop the revolving door between industry and government, and return our health agencies to their rich tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science. I will provide Americans with transparency and access to all the data so they can make informed choices for themselves and their families. My commitment to the American people is to be an honest public servant. Let’s go!
So he’s suddenly switched 180 degrees? Do you really believe that?
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I suspect that his concept of “evidence based” is to cherry pick and misrepresent “data” like the way he recently misled people concerning placebo testing.
The onus will be on those of us who can speak with authority on these subjects (I cannot - this is not my field - I am a layman interloper) to inform the media of this world (interviewers, etc.) with information that helps them to directly confront and correct whenever he is wrong.
This may be one helpful resource:
Wow he said words that sound nice? That’s it, now all his demonstrable lies about vaccines are forgiven? Forgotten?
You haven’t a care in the world? He just has to say stuff and you’re on board.
Meanwhile, the worm and the bear carcass have separately filed lawsuits against RFK, the former for unlawful confinement and defamation, and the latter for kidnapping and transport across state lines. RFK Jr. has already countersued the worm for damages as he alleges reduced mental capacity—but legal experts expect the judge to dismiss that suit with prejudice due to an obvious and well-documented pre-existing condition.
As to the whale carcass which RFK Jr’s children claim that he brought home from a family vacation strapped to the roof of his car, the statute of limitations has long ago expired. (The smell in Kennedy’s garage has not.)
(A few weeks later a police officer came to investigate after multiple complaints from neighbors. Due to the distinctive smell, the officer knocked on the door, talked to the maid, and asked her if there was whale blubber being processed on the property. She said, “No, I keep telling the process servers that he went to Hyannis Port for the weekend.”)
As to the legal ramifications, I would certainly defer to attorney @Puck_Mendelssohn et al.
Oh, and Puck will appreciate my latest legal groaner: The most famous cannibalism prosecution in U.S. history is popularly known as “Donner et all.”
(When I was a young and cocky Assistant Professor, I booked a steak restaurant for the annual Department Faculty & Staff Christmas luncheon. I told the hostess my last name was “Donner” simply so that I could hear her say over the P.A. system, “Donner party, your table is ready. Donner party, your table is ready.”)
[This entire post is sort of a Dave Berry tribute. I guess he is long retired but still around.]
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Which lies? When answering this question, please consider the following document:
Note of course that RFK may be wrong here and there sometimes (who is immune to error?), but that doesn’t mean that he lies?
Are you fckin kidding me? That document calls it a pyramid scheme when a new vaccine is tested against another. Haven’t you already had it explained to you why this is some times done, instead of testing against a placebo? The answer is yes. You have.
And the previous vaccines have themselves either been tested against other established vaccines, and when we go back far enough, these were initially tested against placebos. The document is thus misleading, and doesn’t get RFK Jr. off the hook for any of his lies.
I said it already in my second post in this thread. When RFK implies vaccines aren’t tested for safety, he’s lying.
Oh okay, I suppose he could be literally insane instead of lying. Great, let’s hire him for minister of health.
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Yes. It is rather difficult to find a bright side with either alternative: liar or idiot. Here’s a novel idea: Let’s find an expert who has spent a lifetime in understanding the human immune system. Perhaps even somebody who has actually studied vaccines for years—and even helped pioneer their development. Nah. I suppose such people don’t exist. That’s why we have to look for volunteers out on the street. Or somebody loud who happens to walk by. Yeah. It’s the American way. (And we all know that the goal is to make America great again. Ya know, like back in the days when polio was conquered by finding some opinionated person whose grandfather was a rum runner and boot legger. Real expertise. After all, he’s rich and I ain’t.)
Yes, do we want an actual expert? Or simply, “I played an expert on TV.”
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What I don’t get is this strange almost pathological need to defend RFK Jr. even when he is so obviously a bad pick for the job.
Even if you think there is a need for some sort of shakeup in american healthcare, why of all people pick someone with no expertise in health and medicine, and who has such crackpot views of the whole subject?
If you’re conservative, or religious, are you somehow contractually obliged to follow the party line and defend the Dear Leader whatever he does? Does the designation of group-loyalty as a high virtue really come at the expense of truth?
Can Trump not make mistakes? Is it not possible he’s made a mistake here, and taken a poor deal (RFK endorses Trump in exchange for RFK getting an important cabinet position)? Can he not back out on it and change his mind? Is an anti-vaxxer really the best person for the job that conservatives can get on board with? Why defend him when he so obviously isn’t.
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There’s been some interesting commentary describing how Trump knows full well that RFK Jr. is an ignorant nut----but to Trump obviously outrageous picks like RFK Jr and Matt Gaetz are simply “FU, everyone!” gestures. It is yet another way to say, “I don’t care what makes sense. I’m powerful. I can do anything I want. I don’t even care if many Republican leaders are horrified at this.”
I think it is similar to a 5-year-old acting up just to get attention. To the 5-year-old, it’s fun—especially if there are zero consequences.
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Somebody needs to play keepaway with “the football.”
Shorter Gilbert Thill:
Kennedy and ICAN say it, I believe them, that settles it.
I took a quick look at the ICAN “no-placebo” file. The first entry: “Placebo? NO” – however the “package insert” it cited for this claim cited the following study:
Beasley, R.P.; Hwang, L.; Stevens, C.E.; Lin, C.; Hsieh, F.; Wang, K.; Sun, T.; Szmuness, W.: Efficacy of Hepatitis B Immune Globulin for Prevention of Perinatal Transmission of the Hepatitis B Virus Carrier State: Final Report of a Randomized Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial, Hepatology 3: 135-141, 1983.
This alone would be sufficient to dismiss them as an unreliable source, even if I didn’t already have the following information on ICAN:
The Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) is one of the main anti-vaccination groups in the United States. Founded in 2016 by Del Bigtree, it spreads misinformation about the risks of vaccines and contributes to vaccine hesitancy,[1][2][3] which has been identified by the World Health Organization as one of the top ten global health threats of 2019.[4][5] Arguments against vaccination are contradicted by overwhelming scientific consensus about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.[6][7][8][9]
Given the evidence that has been presented against Kennedy’s claims, and Gil’s inability to provide anything other than further Kennedy claims, and ICAN’s blatant misrepresentation of the evidence, there seems to be nothing here beyond my above summarisation of Gil’s view.
[Parts of this post stricken, per below. I still do not consider ICAN to be credible, but I no longer have evidence immediately to hand demonstrating this.]
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And the placebo is saline:
@Giltil why do you keep quoting, citing, and defending the indefensible? What compels you to keep protecting these frauds?
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The trial you are referring to is not about a vaccine but about a preparation of human immunoglobulin.
I understand full well that if some time ago vaccine V1 against a pathogen successfully passed the test of a long-term placebo-controlled safety trial, then the next generation of vaccines against this pathogen need not be tested against a placebo, for by virtue of transitivity, if V1 is safe, then V2 can be tested for safety against V1, and if it passes the test, V3 can be tested against V2, and so on. Okay. But among the vaccines listed in the ICAN document I referred you to, the safety of how many of them can be traced back by transitivity to an initial long-term placebo-controlled safety trial?