By Steve Levy
The fiery exchange between Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. and senators from both sides of the aisle raises a very important question as to the future of that department.
It’s no secret that Kennedy was appointed to this plum gig after pulling out of his presidential race and throwing his support behind then-candidate Donald Trump.
It was a no-brainer for Trump because he received a large chunk of support from the Kennedy faction, given that they were turned off by the COVID policies espoused by the deep state.
The anti-vax contingent tended to be more libertarian and Republican-leaning in the first place.
There is another huge swath of the population that sees Kennedy as a hero for being a lone wolf decrying the deleterious impact that American food products and their additives have had on the nation’s health. They see him as a beacon of light for, at the very least, bringing this issue to the forefront of discussion when no one else would.
But, of course, Kennedy has his detractors. He has long led the charge against mandatory vaccines, not just for Covid, but for measles, whooping cough, and other vaccines issued to American children before they enter school.
To be fair, Kennedy responds that he is not looking to ban any vaccine, but simply to provide adequate information for people to make their own choices. And, he has not sought to end mandates other than those related to COVID.
Given Kennedy’s intensity on this issue in the past, there is reason for many health officials to be concerned about where the country will go with the non-COVID vaccines.
Kennedy brings both great potential benefit to long-term American healthcare, while also posing potential risk with some of his more extreme policies. So the answer for President Trump — who came out strongly in favor of non-COVID vaccines this past week — is to keep Kennedy focused on food additives, diabetes, and obesity, which is becoming an epidemic in America, and place Dr. Marty Makary, the well-respected physician, in charge of the entire department.
But like him or not, Kennedy has blown the lid off the arrogance in the deep state healthcare establishment. He was absolutely on point when he responded to the condescending senators attacking him that they had stood by silently as Americans became far less healthy over the last few decades.
Kennedy is absolutely correct in noting that, while we spend far more on healthcare than European democracies, the results are not as good. We have more obese people, more diabetes, and even a lower lifespan. Intense analysis for this is obviously needed.
While some of the lower lifespans could be attributed to more motor vehicle accidents, drug overdoses, and shootings in America, that cannot explain all of it, especially with the higher diabetes and obesity rates here. That is almost certainly caused by the environment, and Kennedy is the guy trying to shine a light on it.
Kennedy is also correct that the healthcare establishment had its credibility vaporized during Covid. There was enormous misinformation that came out of the healthcare leadership that we once looked up to. Some of it, as spouted by Dr. Anthony Fauci, were deliberate lies. Others were just old-fashioned good-faith mistakes.
Fauci lied about the need for everyday folks to purchase masks, only to turn around and say you needed to wear not only one, but two, masks.
Then the experts said that everyone needed to social distance by six feet. It was later acknowledged that there was no scientific basis for this announcement. Though it would certainly make good sense and could be defended as wise policy, the healthcare officials should not have pretended that this was a hard evidence-based policy.
Then there were their inaccurate statements that getting the Covid shot would protect you from getting the virus or from spreading it. This inaccurate description of reality was the basis by which the government mandated the shot.
If indeed the vaccination could inhibit the spread of the virus, then, by all means, there would have been a very reasonable basis to make it a mandate. But even after it was known that the shot did not prevent the spread, the authorities continued to mandate that everyone get the shot.
What purpose did this serve since getting the shot would not prevent me from getting it from someone else and would not prevent me from spreading it to someone else?
And why was it perfectly fine for healthcare and political officials in blue states to ban indoor Mass, but not close strip bars or liquor stores? The American Medical Association showed it to be infected with liberal political bias and destroyed its credibility by claiming that it was a bad policy to allow outdoor religious services, but it was perfectly fine to allow for protests in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder.
As a person within the vulnerable age bracket, it made sense for me to get the shot and I eagerly sought it out. Even though the shot would not prevent me from getting it or spreading it, there’s no doubt that the evidence showed that for those in these vulnerable categories, having the vaccine would significantly mitigate your chances of being hospitalized or dying.
But if you were not within these vulnerable categories, it was a far different situation. Children had a near-zero chance of dying from COVID. Yet many young males were seeing increased incidents of heart inflammation. It was not a tremendous hike, but it was enough to make one pause and weigh the risks and benefits of getting the shot. If you had little to no chance of dying from COVID, yet a much greater chance of getting heart complications from the shot, it would leave you with a difficult decision to make.
But, ultimately, shouldn’t that decision be made by the individual and not through government mandate? This is where the health officials lost their credibility, and this is why Kennedy had cause to clean house with many of these white jackets who spoke with such an elitist condescension during the pandemic.
They not only often misled the public, they destroyed the lives of those who tried to speak truth to power. We’re talking about doctors Scott Atlas and Jay Bhattacharya and others who said early on that mandating made sense for those in vulnerable groups, but not for children and others where the risk was extremely minimal. They also objected to closing our schools and the economy. But, for telling the truth, they were blacklisted and denied grants from Fauci‘s deep state.
And then we all know Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins from the National Institute of Health perpetrated a likely false narrative that Covid did not come from the Wuhan Lab, the most obvious commonsense origin, but rather through a wet market, even though there was no evidence to suggest that was the case. We found out later they were lying to cover their backsides, since it was Fauci who helped fund the gain-of-function research in Wuhan over the objections of the Obama White House.
Indeed, we need accountability for all of this disinformation from the discredited healthcare elite. But that doesn’t mean we should fill that void with those seeking to end all vaccination mandates, as now being proposed in Florida.
We need a balance that widens the conversation. Until this week, I was unaware European nations do not mandate vaccines, even for measles, and yet they’ve not had epidemics. Notwithstanding that, the vaccine requirements in our schools for these type of diseases have kept them at bay.
So let’s keep an open mind as to what is causing America’s healthcare crisis. Certainly, processed food products in America have something to do with it. And even though studies show vaccines have nothing to do with autism, but something within our environment certainly does. Shouldn’t we be engaging in a type of Manhattan Project via massive investment to find out what it is?
Kennedy is leading the charge on that and we should not stand in his way to do so. Let’s keep him focused on that and let Dr. Makary oversee the rest.
Steve Levy is President of Common Sense Strategies, a political consulting firm. He served as Suffolk County Executive, as a NYS Assemblyman, and host of “The Steve Levy Radio Show.” He is the author of “Solutions to America’s Problems” and “Bias in the Media.” www.SteveLevy.info, Twitter @SteveLevyNY, steve@commonsensestrategies.com