Reactions to a Snippet from Day 1 of the RFK, Jr. Confirmation Hearing
I support his nomination but not his or anyone's efforts to 'restore' trust in public health
During yesterday’s confirmation hearing, RFK, Jr. said:
“I’m for radical transparency. The reason people don’t trust public health agencies is because they haven’t been trustworthy. And you —example of COVID. At the beginning of COVID, everybody was rushing to get the vaccine. We had over 90% vaccination uptake. CDC’s most recent recommendation is that Americans take the ACE booster. Only 23% of Americans are complying. That means 77% of Americans no longer trust the CDC, and that is a problem.”1
I voted for RFK as President in November because, of the three candidates on the ballot in my state, he was the only one who did not hold an elected office as of March 2020. Despite his stance on the pandemic and his ‘Next Pandemic’ perspective, I am fine with his nomination2
I also believe in “radical transparency”. For me, that starts with the events in New York City that were used to justify the pandemic declaration and persuade the populace a shot was needed.
On RFK’s other comments:
I never trusted public health agencies per se and didn’t give them a second thought until they and the rest of the federal government broke multiple laws by issuing illegal mass quarantine orders; closing businesses, schools, and houses of worship; barring third-party witnesses from healthcare settings to facilitate execution of democidal directives; and sorting workers into essential and non-essential categories. To my knowledge, no executive-branch official or U.S. Senator holding office in March 2020 has apologized for or expressed regret for supporting “15 Days to Slow the Spread.”3
As I’ve said before, I don’t want faith in public health agencies restored. They muscled their way into my consciousness and exposed themselves as morally bereft and perfectly willing to lie about a new cause of death, restrict freedom of movement, and push for violations of bodily autonomy. Pre-2020, I associated public health with tracing sources of food-borne illness, not with vaccination, and I mostly did what doctors said to do. I’ve come to realize that there have been decades of misleading information about vaccine efficacy and that doctors are as susceptible as anyone else to ethical lapses and groupthink. I now believe “public health” as a construct is questionable. Anyone advocating for the CDC, of all agencies, to be established as necessary or trustworthy is, at best, misguided. It should be disbanded or its functions reduced to their absolute legal minimum—if such a minimum even exists.
“At the beginning of COVID” there was not a vaccine for the public to take, so I’m not sure what RFK is talking about there. The timeline for when the COVID Event/Operation began is debatable, but the latest possible starting point in the U.S. is March 13, 2020—the day a National Emergency was declared over an invisible, unproven viral threat. Clearly, no one could rush to get a vaccine before one even existed (though the announcement of vaccine development for nCoV-2019 was made in January 2020).
Where is the statistic about 90% uptake of the COVID vaccine coming from? Is RFK talking about the general population? If he means HHS employees, that’s still a very high number, and I would be interested in seeing the source for that figure.
“Radical transparency” should include HHS releasing all data for every hospital in the U.S. going back to 1999, at least—preferably in daily time series format, though I’d settle for weekly. For five years now, HHS has withheld critical data that is essential to understanding what happened in hospitals during the spring of 2020.
HHS and CMS are also hiding the number of nursing home residents who die each week, regardless of where the death occurred. This matters because, in some places, these residents were unnecessarily transferred to hospitals, where they were often killed, and used (then and now) to sustain the narrative of sudden viral spread.
I haven’t yet read the entire transcript of the hearing. h/t
for the article that prompted me to seek out the segment. | https://www.c-span.org/program/senate-committee/hhs-sec-nominee-rfk-jr-testifies-at-confirmation-hearing/6548563:31:32 - Responding to a question about his view on infectious disease priorities and management of bird flu, RFK said, “I intend to devote the appropriate resources to preventing pandemics. That’s an essential part of my job.” From my perspective, the best way to prevent pandemics (i.e., pandemic declarations) is to adopt a skeptical position about whether they occur - and whether one occurred in 2020.
Yes, Ron Johnson and Rand Paul supported the initial two-week “lockdown” and subsequent 30-day extension.
There is no trust left to restore. Agree 💯, public health agencies need to be disbanded, as much as is possible.
💯. No way am I suggesting by my support that everything goes. In fact, more vigilance required. These inaccuracies and contradictions indicate that an about-face from this "trusted" source could very well be awaiting us, once confirmed. Calling them out absolutely required, so we are not caught flat-footed again, over and over.