The Toilet Seat Challenge Test

RFK Jr. snorted cocaine off toilet seats without suffering infections. He’s no longer scared of germs.

On February 12, 2026, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on a podcast called The Past Weekend with comedian Theo Von. “I’m not scared of a germ,” said RFK Jr. “I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.” If you can get past the fact that this statement was made by the nation’s leading public health official, let’s discuss whether it makes sense.

We’ll start with the toilet seat, by which I assume he means the toilet seat cover, which is where the snorting normally takes place. Toilet seats are wrongly considered to be a place where people can be infected with sexually transmitted germs such as HIV, gonorrhea, syphilis or chlamydia. These pathogens require warm, moist surfaces; all will die almost instantly when exposed to the cold, hard surface of a toilet seat. RFK Jr. was right not to be concerned about them. Surprisingly, other items in the bathroom are more dangerous than toilet seats or toilet seat covers. For example:

• Faucets: More than 300 different types of bacteria can be found on faucet handles, far more than would be found on a toilet seat cover.

• Soap and Paper Towel dispensers: Refillable dispensers are often heavily contaminated with bacteria when replaced.

• Hand Blowers: Hand blowers take in air from the restroom and blow bacteria directly onto your hands. Levels of bacteria on hand blowers are 27 times greater than those found on paper towel dispensers.

• Money: I’m going to assume that RFK Jr. snorted his cocaine through a rolled-up dollar bill (or $100 bill). Money is highly absorbent and contains bacteria from tens of thousands of people who previously touched it. Of interest, one study found that 79% of paper currency in America contains traces of cocaine, more than any other country in the world.

In summary, RFK Jr. shouldn’t have been terribly scared of the toilet seat. But what about other germs? RFK Jr. and I were both born in the early 1950s. If his parents cared about him as mine did about me, he would have received the smallpox, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis, and polio vaccines as a child. Neither RFK Jr. nor I need to worry about polio. Like most children born in the early 1950s, RFK Jr. probably suffered measles, mumps, rubella (German measles), and varicella (chickenpox). Surviving those infections provides lifelong protection. So, RFK Jr. and I don’t need to worry about them, either.

However, RFK Jr. and I should worry about vaccine-preventable diseases for which men in their 70s are at highest risk. For example, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) causes as many as 160,000 hospitalizations and 10,000 deaths every year in the United States, primarily in those over 65. Pneumonia caused by the bacterium pneumococcus causes 150,000 hospitalizations in the elderly with as many as 1 in 4 dying within a year of hospitalization. Influenza causes at least 470,000 hospitalizations and 28,000 deaths every year; those over 65 are disproportionally infected. Lastly, COVID caused about 270,000 hospitalizations and 32,000 deaths last year; again, the elderly suffered the most.

RFK Jr.’s successful snorting of cocaine off toilet seats doesn’t protect him against any of these vaccine-preventable diseases. Were he a responsible Secretary of Health and Human Services—and not a comic actor in a bad Saturday Night Live skit—RFK Jr. would use his considerable platform to urge all elderly Americans to vaccinate against RSV, pneumococcus, influenza, and COVID instead of reassuring us that if we can survive snorting cocaine off toilet seats, we have nothing to worry about.