His claim is contradicted by scientific evidence. Countless studies show that vaccinated individuals fare far better against COVID-19 infections than those who are unvaccinated, while others have estimated that COVID-19 vaccines prevented millions of deaths during the global pandemic.

Although mRNA vaccines saved millions of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. incorrectly argued they are ineffective to justify the Department of Health and Human Service’s recent decision to cancel $500 million in government-funded research projects to develop new vaccines using the technology.

The longtime vaccine critic said in an X video posted Tuesday evening that mRNA vaccines do not adequately prevent upper respiratory infections such as COVID-19 and the flu, advocating instead for the development vaccines that use other processes.

COVID-19 is the only virus for which real-world data on mRNA vaccine effectiveness is currently available, as mRNA vaccines for other diseases, including the flu, are still under development. The two scientists whose discoveries enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 won a Nobel Prize in 2023 for their work.

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      3 days ago

      What you take away from my message is up to you.
      The sad reality is that a large portion of the country is very conservative and there’s only so much you can do within the system to stop the system from expressing the will of the people in it.
      That the system failing people seems to make people move towards an ideology that makes the system fail more people is frustrating.
      Most people aren’t in favor of fascism, but a slow drift into fascism is preferable to every systemic reform that could do anything to stop it in most people’s eyes. “Of course someone in Wyoming shouldn’t get more votes than someone in California, but if we actually do that then politicians might pay more attention to the place with more people to the detriment of the place with less”.

      If I had a magic word that would solve everything and make people wake up and remember that our biggest prosperity has always come when we’ve invested the most into science, infrastructure and our society at large I promise you I’d tell you.

        • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          2 days ago

          It’s definitely worthy of severe remorse. I can’t go so far as to hope for failure though, because too many perfectly good people would be ruined by that.