Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Infectious diseases party planned. Banners to read: RFK Jr. anti-science YAY!

Related: Infectious disease cases are on the rise in USA ..
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=infectious+diseases+upsurge+usa+

From yours:

“It’s absolutely perplexing why this is happening,” said Jeff Coller, a professor of RNA biology and therapeutics at Johns Hopkins University who has studied mRNA for more than three decades. “You have to sort of scratch your head to wonder why the secretary is directing these sort of actions against probably one of the most powerful platforms in medicine that has come along in the last 20 years.”

Six scientific and medical experts said Kennedy and HHS offered misleading assessments of mRNA technology as they announced the termination of research.

Here are the issues they flagged with some of the statements:

“The data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu,” Kennedy said in a statement.

It’s true that mRNA vaccines can be ineffective at preventing coronavirus infections, although data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows they still offer some protection. But several scientific experts noted the primary purpose of vaccination is to prevent hospitalizations and death, which the mRNA vaccines have effectively done, according to CDC data.

The FDA has not approved an mRNA flu vaccine, so experts said it was premature to make sweeping claims about its potential efficacy.

“One mutation and the vaccine becomes ineffective,” Kennedy said in a video.

The coronavirus keeps evolving in a way that makes it easier to infect people who have some immunity from vaccination or prior infection. But medical experts said the mRNA vaccines have been resilient in maintaining protection against severe outcomes. Manufacturers have also been able to update formulas annually to better target new variants.

“That is actually one of the most powerful aspects of mRNA vaccines: that you can, in real time, develop new mRNAs against the virus as the virus changes,” Coller said. “I’m not sure why that would be considered a bad thing.”

“We’ve seen now these epidemics of myocarditis,” Kennedy said at a news conference.

Coronavirus vaccines designed using mRNA carry a very small risk of myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart, from the coronavirus vaccine, particularly in young men. However, medical experts said the data shows there is not an “epidemic” of the condition; in fact, the rates of myocarditis and other heart illness are much higher from the virus instead of the vaccine.

Jessica Malaty Rivera, an infectious-disease epidemiologist, said this rhetoric was part of the pandemic revisionist “revenge tour.”

“Calling it an epidemic is absolutely misleading,” she said.

“Technologies that were funded during the emergency phase but failed to meet current scientific standards will be phased out in favor of evidence-based, ethically grounded solutions – like whole-virus vaccines and novel platforms” — HHS statement

Scientific experts said a variety of vaccine types are often required to fight emerging infectious diseases. In some cases, whole-virus vaccines have been known to have serious side effects.

Peter Hotez, a physician and co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, said he was surprised to hear HHS tout whole-virus vaccines because China had used a whole-virus vaccine for coronavirus that was “pretty mediocre,” Hotez said.

Kennedy is “pushing a technology that is actually probably the most problematic of all vaccines we could pick,” Hotez said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/08/06/rfk-jr-mrna-vaccine-criticism/