RFK Jr. Targets the Amish: Part II

On July 31, 2021, RFK Jr. traveled to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. His goal in the heart of the COVID pandemic was to scare the Amish away from lifesaving vaccines.

On February 13, 2024, National Geographic published a book I wrote called, TELL ME WHEN IT’S OVER: AN INSIDER’S GUIDE TO DECIPHERING COVID MYTHS AND NAVIGATING OUR POST-PANDEMIC WORLD. For the next few months, I’ll be writing about issues discussed in that book.

During what was arguably the worst pandemic in United States history, when thousands of people were dying every day, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. traveled to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Speaking to a crowd of about 1,500 people, most from the Plain community, RFK Jr. talked about the dangers of vaccines.  

First, RFK Jr. explained that vaccines aren’t tested for safety. “It’s important that we understand that because vaccines are not a drug, but are considered a biologic for immune therapy, they’re the only medication that never has to be tested for safety against a placebo.” With this blatantly false statement, RFK Jr. was trying to scare these trusting families away from the COVID vaccines, which were subsequently estimated to have prevented more than 18 million hospitalizations and saved more than 3 million lives in the United States. On December 10, 2020, seven months before RFK Jr. had misinformed his audience, Pfizer presented data to the FDA on a placebo-controlled, 40,000-person, prospective study showing that the vaccine was about 95 percent effective at preventing severe disease. All participants were followed for at least two months after the last dose to make sure that the vaccine was safe. One week later, on December 17, 2020, Moderna presented data to the FDA on its 30,000-person, placebo-controlled, prospective study showing virtually identical results with the same safety follow-up. Surely, RFK Jr. knew about these studies, which were described in every news outlet in the United States and the world. Surely, he knew that they were safe, that they worked, and that they had been tested against a placebo-control group. Why, then, did he feel compelled to lie about them to people who trusted him? Sadly, he didn’t stop there.

RFK Jr. then explained that the United States government was not to be trusted. His example of government overreach was the hepatitis B vaccine. “You get hepatitis B from sharing needles as a drug addict or from unprotected sex with a prostitute or promiscuous gays,” he explained. “There are only three groups who are at risk of hepatitis B.” Following RFK Jr.’s logic, why then did the CDC recommend the hepatitis B vaccine for all newborns in the early 1990s. “Well, as it turns out,” RFK Jr. explained, “the prostitutes and the drug addicts and the promiscuous gay males didn’t want to buy the vaccine. So, Merck and Glaxo went back to the CDC and said, ‘We can’t sell any of these vaccines, and we put all this money into our factory.’ The CDC said, ‘Don’t worry. We’ll recommend it for babies.’ That’s how it got on the schedule. And suddenly SIDS began appearing…crib deaths. I never heard of crib deaths when I was a kid.”

Before the hepatitis B vaccine was recommended for all infants, every year the virus infected about 18,000 children less than 10 years of age. Worse, infection early in life dramatically increases the chance that hepatitis B virus can cause liver cancer or chronic liver disease. While it is true that hepatitis B virus can be transmitted through sexual contact or needle sharing, that isn’t how the virus is transmitted to young children. Babies are infected with hepatitis B while passing through a birth canal of a mother who is infected. And young children contract hepatitis B when living in the home with someone who is infected and sharing items like toothbrushes. Also, studies have clearly shown that the hepatitis B vaccine does not cause sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) or crib death. The most common cause of crib death occurs when babies sleep face down. For that reason, in the early 1990s, at the same time that the CDC recommended the hepatitis B vaccine for babies, the American Academy of Pediatrics launched its “Back to Sleep” program, encouraging parents to lay their babies on their backs at bedtime. As a result, while the percentage of babies vaccinated with hepatitis B vaccine increased, the incidence of SIDS declined, dramatically.   

On October 9, 2023, RFK Jr. announced his intention to run for president of the United States. This will allow him an even larger platform for his disinformation campaign against vaccines.