Comment by ceejayoz

Maybe? I wouldn't think that changes the point much.

RFK is absolutely right on a few things, but that doesn't make him an automatic force for good.

> How, exactly, are they causing that to come about?

By spreading rumours and falsehoods about vacines. Which reduce vacination rates and leaves an opening for diseases like polio to spread.

Which part of that are you having trouble believing? Just so we can chat about those parts.

People affiliated with RFK's orbit are advocating for removing approval for the polio vaccine because it wasn't validated with double-blind studies. There's some obvious reasons why that is problematic.

It's really obvious how poorly this stuff plays out, you look at New York. When you read a news story about polio/measles/whopping cough etc, from New York, it will say "it was detected in New York City (or Brooklyn), Orange, Rockland and Sullivan counties".

That's often indiciative of a specific sect of orthodox Jewish communities whose charismatic leader is against vaccination. It's a tight-knit community that tends to live in densely populated environments. (So more viral spread than similar relgious sects like the Amish) People tend to follow the guidance and don't vaccinate. Fortunately, while polio virus has been detected in samples, as far as I know there are not any cases. Measles and whopping cough cases are fairly common.

This isn't a "left" and "right" issue. It's an authoritarian issue where seeding mistrust of institutions is important. Polio hasn't been eradicated to the point that eliminating vaccination is smart. Smallpox was -- and we don't vaccinate the general public anymore. (We do vaccinate soliders as the Soviets/Russians/USA weaponized it)

While the US uses an inactivated polio vaccine, many countries still use a polio vaccine created using an attenuated virus. This virus can revert to a dangerous form. This happens if you have a partially vaccinated population.

This means that unvaccinated people can be infected with a strain of polio that can cause paralysis. This is extremely rare in the US (there was one case of one affected person in 2022).

Currently, the polio vaccine is recommended in the US, and vaccination rates in different US States are between 86% (Idaho) and 99% (Mississippi). If the vaccination rate decreases, it is possible that polio cases will become more common, or even that polio might become endemic again.

RFK has said conflicting things about the polio vaccine. Aaron Siri, a lawyer affiliated with Kennedy, petitioned the FDA to revoke polio vaccine's approval, but RFK said that he supports the polio vaccine in response. I think it's fair to be skeptical, though, given his general position on vaccines.

If RFK's actions cause polio vaccination rates to fall, there is a real reason to be concerned. I don't think this is scaremongering, this is a plausible possibility based on what we know about polio, and about RFK's position on vaccination.

It’ll come back like whooping cough has.

RFK is anti-vaccine. It's a pretty short, straight line. No conspiracies needed, no mental hoops to jump through.

It seems like the Philippine government and WHO are at fault here, rather than Sanofi

That looks like a successfully investigated case? With an appropriate mitigation found and implemented? And a worst-case scenario of “still 12x fewer hospitalizations than without the vaccine”?

> No it's not - the topic is healthier food.

The topic is also RFK and his views, which include quite prominent anti-vaccine activism.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9577438/

> On July 21, 2022, the USA witnessed the first case of poliomyelitis after 3 decades of its eradication.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/13/health/polio-vaccine-outb...

> Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic who may become the secretary of health and human services, has said the idea that vaccination has nearly eradicated polio is “a mythology.”

> The virus that paralyzed the young man had been circulating for months, and it was later detected in the sewage of multiple New York counties with vaccination rates hovering around 60 percent, prompting the state to declare an emergency.