RFK Jr. lets CDC vaccination data rot; dozens of databases frozen

gg555

Ars Scholae Palatinae
1,148
The Senate must impeach RFK Jr.
There is no other out, Trump doesn't care about RFK Jr's buffoonery.
So come on, Senate GOP: How many opportunities do you need to grow a spine and stand up to Trump for once in your fucking life.
Not going to happen, even with the razer thin margins the GOP currently has.
First, it's the House of Representatives that impeachs members of the administration or Justices, not the Senate. The Senate only subsequently holds a trial and convicts (or not) the person who has been impeached.

Second, Democrats in the house already today are drawing up articles of impeachment against Kristi Noem for the debacle of ICE thugs terrorizing communities and murdering people. There's no reason they can't do the same for RFK. They won't have the votes to pass these articles right now, but would if they win the midterm elections. There's no reason not to get the ball rolling now and start making the case against RFK (except maybe they think it's not politically popular enough).

If eventually the Democrats did impeach RFK, the Senate would be required to hold a trial. That might be worth it to draw attention to what he's doing, regardless of the outcome. You can't win a battle you're not fighting.
 
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GFKBill

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While it may sound harsh, and I AM in one of the most heavily affected groups (over 50), I applaud the unintentional suicide of the GOP. Stupidity on this level SHOULD be fatal And since the majority of those who will be detrimentally impacted by these morons are GOP supporters, it is literally suicide by ignorance of the political relevance of this party.
What makes you think diseases care how you vote?

And go look up Herd Immunity.
 
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Unclebugs

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Did the North Korean School for Communications have some sort of tuition deal with Trump U? Because across the board, each and every spokesperson for the Trump maladministration sounds like a complete fucking loon.
You should have seen Sec. Bessent make an ass of himself saying when I protested I carried a billboard blaming Pretti for carrying a firearm, as if guns are the problem.
 
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RZetopan

Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
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Need to be more specific. This is the part where the mischievous supernatural wish-granting entity would fulfill your request by striking RFK down with smallpox.

Maybe just shingles?
1769568618821.png
 
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pnellesen

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There's no reason not to get the ball rolling now and start making the case against RFK (except maybe they think it's not politically popular enough).
This is so depressing - I personally think RFK, Jr. has done more long-term damage to the United States than even Miller or Noem. The complete dismantling of what was one of humanity's greatest resources is something that won't be repairable for decades, almost definitely not in my lifetime.

I cannot put into polite (or near-polite) language my anger and disgust at what the Republican Party has managed to do in the 12 years Trump has been their Lord and Master.
 
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RichyRoo

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The America people need to take back the United States by mass rioting like they did in the sixties

No riots, that just brings overwhelming force.
The concept you're looking for is "general strike", a term you have likely never heard before! If you Google it make sure you're using a VPN or you'll be put on a list
 
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RunUpHill

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Why are you promoting that website? It has ties to “Breitbart News Network” and MalwareBytes actively blocks it as a hostile, untrustworthy website.

Actually didn't know of either of those details. Regardless, what I do know is that it has worked perfectly fine each and every time I wish to read information that's been paywalled. I've not been asked to create an account or share any information, nor am I prompted to install anything or click on any suspicious link.
 
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alxx

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This is so depressing - I personally think RFK, Jr. has done more long-term damage to the United States than even Miller or Noem. The complete dismantling of what was one of humanity's greatest resources is something that won't be repairable for decades, almost definitely not in my lifetime.

I cannot put into polite (or near-polite) language my anger and disgust at what the Republican Party has managed to do in the 12 years Trump has been their Lord and Master.

Not just the US unfortunately, nut job across multiple countries want to follow in the name of personal freedom.

Here in Australia some of the liberals (mix of liberals, US style conservatives, Thatcherites ) especially in Queensland (Australian equivalent of Texas)have started to roll back fluoridation by leaving it up to local councils and want to reduce vaccination even though a majority of the population doesn't want that.


The floor of the main/only vaccine warehouse in Queensland start to collapse in december but nothing has been done yet

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-20/brisbane-hit-by-vaccine-shortages/106247402
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-28/floor-collapses-at-brisbane-toll-warehouse/106272588
 
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mygeek911

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How is it possible that the entire medical/scientific community is so powerless? Physicians are not without a constituency.
Can a medical body revoke licenses of quack physicians that are cooperating publicly with Kennedy Jr.?

Politically it is a volcanic potato so there may not be the will to do so.
 
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Because smallpox has been eradicated, and we do not want to bring it back. With a death rate of 30% (might be lower now with the improved medical care we have, but even so), unleashing an epidemic of smallpox would be devastating; we haven't routinely vaccinated against it since the 1980s. That means that anybody aged below 46 (or so) would be vulnerable to the disease - a huge percentage of the world population.

I mean, hell, I'm fifty now. My parents insisted on my getting the smallpox vaccination; if they hadn't insisted, I wouldn't have been vaccinated. I'm also not sure just how long the immunity from the vaccination lasts, so there's that risk as well.

The satisfaction of seeing RFK jr and his ilk suffer from one of the worst diseases known to mankind would not be worth that price.
 
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RFK Jr. needs to be impeached and removed. This needs to happen to everyone in that administration.
Why?

They are literally doing what they said they would in the election campaign. They said they were going to do all the sheet they are doing now. They are living up to their promisses. And you Americans voted for this. The average American wanted all of ... ... this. ** points finger in every directions **

If you dont want crazy ... dont vote for crazy.
And if you did anyway, and don't like how it turned out ... vote more intelligently next time.
 
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DTurtle

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Why are you promoting that website? It has ties to “Breitbart News Network” and MalwareBytes actively blocks it as a hostile, untrustworthy website.
That is simply not true. Nobody knows who is behind archive.today. As for it being blocked, that doesn't surprise me, as it enables bypassing pay walls, which can be copyright infringement and thus illegal.

There was an article here on Ars Technica a few months back about the FBI trying to find out the owners of the site, probably because of copyright infringement.
 
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CommanderZulu

Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
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The objective is to destroy all organizations, institutions and infrastructure, including the UN, WHO and NATO, burn it to the ground, so that from its ashes the radical right can build a white supremacy dictatorship. Their plans have been known for years but no one believed they would succeed. It's not incompetence, RFK Jr. isn't crazy, this is all intentional.
 
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nivedita

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Did the North Korean School for Communications have some sort of tuition deal with Trump U? Because across the board, each and every spokesperson for the Trump maladministration sounds like a complete fucking loon.
Did you see the “Greenland is made of ice” justification for trump calling Greenland Iceland? 🙈
 
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What makes you think diseases care how you vote?

And go look up Herd Immunity.
Can we also look up “loss of herd immunity“ or “r-factor”?

With an r-factor of 1 the number of infections every year stays constant. If you had 100 measles cases this year, you would have 100 next year, the year after and so on.

Looking at the measles numbers, thr r-factor is much greater than 1 in some areas with lots of anti-vaxxers. Which means over ten years the numbers will become bad. Not “OMG 2000 cases” bad but “all the neighbours kids are sick” bad.

And that is when vaccines switch from giving herd immunity (gone) to protecting individuals. Because you will get measles if you are unvaccinated, or quite unlucky.
 
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The satisfaction of seeing RFK jr and his ilk suffer from one of the worst diseases known to mankind would not be worth that price.
What makes you think RFK jr would be so stupid to not get vaccinated? (Apart from the fact that he likely had all the vaccinations as a child). He doesn’t care about your and your kids’ lives, doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about his own.
 
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isidorem

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What makes you think RFK jr would be so stupid to not get vaccinated? (Apart from the fact that he likely had all the vaccinations as a child). He doesn’t care about your and your kids’ lives, doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about his own.

Although I have a morbid fascination/ terror in watching the current American government harm itself and its citizens in so many ways, (and almost as an afterthought the rest of us in the free world) I never understood why even Trump appointed RFK jr. to this post. Did he have dirt on Trump? Was it just that he was a symbol of anti-wokeness and added anti big government brownie points? I suppose looking for rational behaviour from this administration is really just a waste of time.
 
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Hyoubu

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I mostly avoid RFK Jr. articles lately, but this is REALLY bad. I am not sure if there is anything approaching a replacement to this, but I really hope universities or state governments can form some kind of coalition as I know they track it at the state level. Again, I think I avoid these because I already could tell RFK was a eugenicist, albeit a very stupid one, and so nothing he has done this past year surprised me.

I predict one of the next things he will do is make insurance stop covering vaccines altogether or make expensive even with insurance somehow. Anyway, my conclusion last time I commented is the same. There is nothing more to learn or to glean from this man, only send him to The Hague from crimes against humanity. Life in prison is the only thing he deserves.
 
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Callias

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While it may sound harsh, and I AM in one of the most heavily affected groups (over 50), I applaud the unintentional suicide of the GOP. Stupidity on this level SHOULD be fatal And since the majority of those who will be detrimentally impacted by these morons are GOP supporters, it is literally suicide by ignorance of the political relevance of this party.

If one thinks of this as a civil war (which in spirit seems to be, if not in act - yet), the side with the least casualties will win in the end, by eliminating those who gleefully thrown themselves on their swords in their attempt to pwn the libs.

Fuck 'em all. This is what everyone who voted for these fuckwits wanted, because they made it ABUNDANTLY clear this is what they'd do if handed the keys to the kingdom.

With any luck the conservative movement will die out completely. Then maybe we can have progress, instead of congress.
Not sure why you got downvoted; I’m in the exact same age bracket and I’ve had the exact same thoughts. These guys — and their current supporters — aren’t going to change, so Yes, a lot of innocents will go down with them, but when has that ever stopped fanatics, fools and the greedy? In the big picture, you are 100% right.
 
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kvndoom

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Although I have a morbid fascination/ terror in watching the current American government harm itself and its citizens in so many ways, (and almost as an afterthought the rest of us in the free world) I never understood why even Trump appointed RFK jr. to this post. Did he have dirt on Trump? Was it just that he was a symbol of anti-wokeness and added anti big government brownie points? I suppose looking for rational behaviour from this administration is really just a waste of time.
RFQuack relisted as a 3rd party candidate after the democrats shunned him. He was taking more votes from drump than from Biden (and then Harris).

Drump promised him the job if he dropped out of the election and endorsed him. And here we are.
 
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DarthSlack

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Not sure why you got downvoted; I’m in the exact same age bracket and I’ve had the exact same thoughts. These guys — and their current supporters — aren’t going to change, so Yes, a lot of innocents will go down with them, but when has that ever stopped fanatics, fools and the greedy? In the big picture, you are 100% right.

Again, for the hard of comprehending, infectious diseases don't check your voter registration before infecting you. Personally, I seriously object to throwing innocents into a pyre just to score political points. That's just ghoulish and you might want to bring your empathy to a licensed technician to have it checked.
 
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The Lurker Beneath

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Why are you promoting that website? It has ties to “Breitbart News Network” and MalwareBytes actively blocks it as a hostile, untrustworthy website.

Interesting. An archive site with enemies is probably one of the better archive sites, for some things anyway.

As somebody else posted, it's been around for years - it was previously called archive.is - and I've never had any issues with it either.

Russia and China block it, if anyone finds that reassuring.
 
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Sajuuk

Ars Legatus Legionis
13,237
No riots, that just brings overwhelming force.
The concept you're looking for is "general strike", a term you have likely never heard before! If you Google it make sure you're using a VPN or you'll be put on a list
We all know overwhelming force has never been used on strikers in America before, of course.
 
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It took two citizens getting shot on video for even the start of some changes to ICE tactics (the extent of which is still unknown and may be insufficient).

We need a publicity campaign for the terrible deaths this will cause before they start occurring en masse. Can we dig up old tapes and get the effects in the public view? Maybe add the soundtrack of blood curdling screams from some recent videos.
 
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Jozsi

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It's unfortunate that RFK jr. is exceptionally articulate because it obscures the fact that he has brain damage from the worm and is not the person he used to be. He still comes across as being intelligent but is incapable of comprehending information or weighing evidence. He attacks apparent adversaries and defends his beliefs and actions instinctively but can't actually think except in the most rudimentary way. This isn't sarcasm, BTW. His mind is toast and the present situation of him having the power that he has is clearly a catastrophe.
 
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Bob Dobilina

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Again, for the hard of comprehending, infectious diseases don't check your voter registration before infecting you. Personally, I seriously object to throwing innocents into a pyre just to score political points. That's just ghoulish and you might want to bring your empathy to a licensed technician to have it checked.
I agree we should not accept innocent casualties as a way to drive change. However, It’s hard to have any empathy when I see people displaying empathy getting 10 bullets into the back of their head. People are frustrated, maybe cut them a little…slack.
 
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Wheels Of Confusion

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It's unfortunate that RFK jr. is exceptionally articulate because it obscures the fact that he has brain damage from the worm and is not the person he used to be. He still comes across as being intelligent but is incapable of comprehending information or weighing evidence. He attacks apparent adversaries and defends his beliefs and actions instinctively but can't actually think except in the most rudimentary way. This isn't sarcasm, BTW. His mind is toast and the present situation of him having the power that he has is clearly a catastrophe.
His crusade against life-saving medicine before the alleged brain worm incident, which took place in 2010. https://theconversation.com/did-a-worm-really-eat-part-of-robert-f-kennedy-jr-s-brain-229696
By contrast, he's been on this fixation for more than two decades.
https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2...t-robert-f-kennedy-jrs-anti-vaccine-advocacy/
Kennedy’s opposition to vaccines is not recent. He has been campaigning against them for over 20 years, dating back to concerns about thimerosal in vaccines. An excellent Q&A with Paul Offit, an infectious disease physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and co-developer of the rotavirus vaccine, offers a thorough history of Kennedy’s entry into anti-vaccine advocacy, which has been the centerpiece of his health-related agenda for two decades. It recounts the conversation Offit had with Kennedy 20 years ago, which Offit wrote about last year.


As someone who has specialized in reporting on vaccines for about 14 years, I’ve also watched Kennedy’s career from early on and have interviewed him. I’ve seen how he is not influenced by power, money or fame but rather by zealotry. He genuinely believes he is saving children from the dangers of vaccines — to the point that he will tell strangers on the street or on hiking trails with babies not to vaccinate their children.

He had this blood on his hands regardless of what was squirming around in his head.
https://www.protectourcare.org/fact-check-rfk-jr-denies-deadly-role-in-samoa-measles-outbreak/
During his Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blatantly lied about his deadly trip to the island nation of Samoa in 2018 and 2019, where he spearheaded a campaign against the measles vaccine amid a deadly outbreak. He visited the island to spread anti-vaccination conspiracy theories – which led to the deaths of 83 people, primarily infants and children. To this day, Kennedy refuses to take responsibility and continues to oppose lifesaving vaccines. Read Protect Our Care’s report here: Misinformation Kills: RFK Jr’s Deadly Visit To Samoa.

THE TIMELINE

2018

  • Two children in Samoa died after receiving their MMR vaccine as a result of nurses improperly mixing the vaccines with a liquid muscle relaxant instead of water. The nurses were sentenced to five years in prison for manslaughter.
  • RFK Jr’s Children’s Health Defense posted on Facebook questioning the safety of all measles vaccines, but never informed the public about the true cause of the deaths.
  • The World Health Organization estimated that in 2018, only 31 percent of infants in Samoa received the measles vaccine, a drop from 60 to 70 percent in previous years.
  • RFK Jr’s Children’s Health Defense.

2019
  • While vaccination rates were dropping, Kennedy traveled to Samoa in June 2019, meeting with the Prime Minister and other government officials. The trip had been arranged by a prominent Samoan anti-vaccine activist, and paid for by Children’s Health Defense. RFK Jr. appeared with government officials and local anti-vaccine activists.
  • A measles outbreak in Samoa began in September 2019.
  • A state of emergency was declared in November 2019, closing all schools, keeping children under 17 away from public events, and mandating vaccines.
  • The anti-vaccine activists with ties to Kennedy used misinformation and harsh rhetoric to oppose the government’s efforts in containing the outbreak.
  • In November 2019, Children’s Health Defense shared a four-page letter offering “assistance” that Kennedy wrote to the Samoan Prime Minister, in which he encouraged officials to examine the MMR vaccine itself as a possible cause.
  • In December 2019, volunteers in Rotura, New Zealand prepared dozens of child-sized caskets to send to Samoa to help deal with the loss of so many infants and toddlers.
  • A compulsory mass vaccination campaign brought rates back up to 95 percent and the government introduced a new law in December 2019 requiring all children to be fully immunised before starting primary school. The door-to-door vaccination campaign is credited with bringing the months-long tragedy to a close.

2020
  • By January 22, 2020, 5,707 measles cases and 83 measles-related deaths were reported. 87 percent of the reported deaths were children younger than 5 years.
 
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