OPINION | RFK Jr. A Danger to Himself or Others?

By Alec Pruchnicki, M.D.

Although Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is described as a “…Hero of the Hudson…” (WestView News, May 2023, Kelly Gallagher) his most common description is as the nation’s most prominent anti-vaxxer and a believer in countless conspiracy theories. In Kennedy’s long speech about why he should be president, he left a few things out. He took a swipe at the lockdown during the early stage of Covid, but did not mention vaccinations at all. Why not?

But, in Kennedy’s speech and in his book “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health” reviewed by Thomas Connally (WestView News, June 2023), he starts to expand on his views concerning various conspiracies and responses to the Covid epidemic. Although the mistakes, distortions, misstatements of facts on various issues are too numerous to cover in this article, I will address two of them; lockdowns to control Covid and vaccinations. Kennedy takes aim at both and states that lockdowns did more harm than good as did vaccines. He is wrong. For the sake of this article, I won’t depend on Connally’s review but on information available in the general mainline media and in medical literature. That is, legitimate sources of information. 

First, The New York Times in the last few months has had several front-page articles on the volumes of misinformation that he spews out. I will let their articles speak for themselves. 

Second, according to standard medical statistics, on the international level, countries that used Non-Pharmacological Interventions (NPIs) like shut downs, quarantines, masking, isolation, hand washing, limits on international travel, and social distancing and enforced them aggressively had much lower Covid death rates than the U.S. When they relaxed them, the rates started to go up.

Third, states in the U.S. which enforced NPI restrictions and vaccinations had lower rates than those that did not use them or enforced them inconsistently.

Fourth, at the assisted living facility where I work, rigorous enforcement of NPI rules and eventually extensive compliance with vaccinations brought down the initial rate of infections to close to zero, and those cases which did occur were about as severe as a moderately bad cold. NPIs and vaccines work, and work very well. They save lives.

Although Kennedy may really believe what he preaches about Covid and other vaccines, there is a common thought process that occurs in both true believers, however delusional, and outright con artists, like former President Trump. You start with a real fact and then somehow expand or twist it to “prove” your statement. For example, Kennedy states that big Pharma has been involved in many sleazy actions over the years. No kidding! Health care activists have been complaining about this for decades. But then he makes the jump to use this fact to prove any theories he has about any disease, including Covid and HIV. He also uses guilt by association to slime Dr. Anthony Fauci in an unwarranted, despicable, and inexcusable manner.

The misinformation we have gotten from him in the popular press, in this book, and in the support of his minions such as Thomas Connally and Kelly Gallagher is an immediate danger as we attempt to recover from Covid and prepare for the next inevitable virus. The long-term danger is that they will take this nonsense to the election of 2024, split the Democratic vote if only by a little bit, and hand the election to Trump. In fact, speaking of conspiracy theories, there have been implications in the popular press that maybe the Silicon Valley and Wall Street billionaires who are supporting him might want this outcome. Who knows? But if an anti-vaxxer, him or anyone else, gets anywhere close to being elected to anything, then that is a vote for death.