Antivaxer, but with "plausible deniability"

RFK Jr. innovates, creating the out-of-context alibi to cover for his lies about vaccines

Many politicians, when caught saying something silly, stupid, false or offensive, fall back to the “out-of-context” defense. The plea is that, if one reads the offending passage in its proper context, one will see it doesn’t mean what the critics say it means. Last Sunday, in an article published (where else?) in the Fox News Website, President Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr) inverted this logic. Amidst a tessiture of blatant lies and dangerous innuendo, there is planted one lonely sensible statement:

“Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons”.

It is there, I am certain, so that RFK Jr. and his cronies can point to it in the future and say that those who accuse the Health Secretary of being a rabid antivaxer are exaggerating, at best, or being deliberately dishonest, at worst. Also, in an era dominated by sound-bites and one-liners, this single, isolated sentence may lead those who don’t have time to read the whole piece to imagine that this guy RFK Jr. is not so dangerous as those public health nuts say.

But to anyone who takes the trouble to read the op-ed from beginning to end, that passage stands out as a sore thumb. It's like an endorsement of Coca-Cola, coming out from nowhere, popping up in the middle of a Pepsi commercial.

Mr Kennedy's writes about the Texas measles epidemic and the tragic — and shameful — death of a child who contracted the disease. In the wealthiest and most scientifically advanced country in the world, there's really no excuse for anyone dying of a disease that is easily preventable with a vaccine that has been around for more than 60 years. If it weren’t for the lies propagated by people like Mr Kennedy and his ilk in the last decades, today there wouldn’t probably be one single case of measles in the whole developed world. A death would be unthinkable, something out of a dystopian sci-fi novel.

The Texas situation put the Secretary on the spot, and the Fox News op-ed is his purported defense. But it's really a passive-aggressive restatement of the old antivaxer discourse we all came to know and despise, just couched in a more weaseling language. There is the lying with numbers:

Tens of thousands died with, or of, measles annually in 19th Century America. By 1960 -- before the vaccine’s introduction -- improvements in sanitation and nutrition had eliminated 98% of measles deaths.

The data is true (12,992 deaths from measles in 1919, 380 in 1960, a drop of 98%), but it doesn't mean what the Secretary wants you to think it means. Let's look at it in the proper context: it took 40 years for this first drop of 98% to happen. After the vaccine was introduced in 1963, the next drop of more than 90% took only four years — from 1964 to 1968. More: In the ten years from 1950 to 1960, the yearly average number of deaths by measles in the US was more than 530. In the decade after the introduction of the vaccine, from 1964 to 1974, this average fell to 170, a drop of almost 60%.

Oh, by the way, the drop in the pre-vaccine years was mainly due to the invention of antibiotics, used to fight bacterial infections that took advantage of the weakening of the immune system caused by the measles virus, not to nutrition, sunlight, herbal supplements, homeopathic potions or whatever.

And let's now talk absolute numbers, not percentages: it’s quite comfortable and reassuring to think about a drop of 98%; it gives the impression that we were already so close to zero, why bother with vaccines at all? But the truth is, in the pre-vaccine year that clocked the “elimination” of 98% of measles deaths, more than 300 people, mostly children, were killed by the disease. You can think of the loss of 300, mostly young, lives as negligible if you want, of course.

For more data on the delights of Mr Kennedy's utopic pre-measles-vaccine world you can (at least for now, before Trump’s censors get there) check the website of the CDC.

After subtlely lying with numbers, RFK Jr. brings on a bald-faced, not subtle at all, unapologetic lie:

Good nutrition remains a best defense against most chronic and infectious illnesses. Vitamins A, C, and D, and foods rich in vitamins B12, C, and E should be part of a balanced diet.

This is unqualified bullshit. You can't prevent an infectious disease with good nutrition. Malnourished people may be more vulnerable, but viruses and bacteria can kill top-form athletes and health-diet, supplement-munching nuts as easily as anyone else. The only real defense against an infectious agent is a good vaccine.

(Mr Kennedy also spoured bullshit about Vitamin A. This vitamin seems to be useful for malnourished kids who get measles. Still, it isn't a cure or even a preventive, and excess of Vitamin A in people who already have enough of it in their bodies can be dangerously toxic.)

Besides the lies, the article brings some disingenuous double-talk about vaccines:

As healthcare providers, community leaders, and policymakers, we have a shared responsibility to protect public health. This includes ensuring that accurate information about vaccine safety and efficacy is disseminated. We must engage with communities to understand their concerns, provide culturally competent education, and make vaccines readily accessible for all those who want them.

From a public health and public communication perspective, this is jaw-dropping, and not in a good way. Vaccines only deliver their full benefits if a great number of people receive them, establishing community-level (or “herd”) immunity. This fact demands that responsible health authorities work to promote and push vaccination, devising proactive campaigns to bring the hesitant around and resolving any fears and doubts in a positive way. A passive attitude of just laying back and saying, “If you want it, we have it. If you have any doubts, take this leaflet and don't forget your Vitamin A,” is tantamount to prevarication.

But who cares, right? JFK Jr. got his “vaccines are nice, maybe” soundbite out. Its main goal is to establish plausible deniability and perhaps, just perhaps, to appease the conscience of some people in high places who supported Mr Kennedy's nomination to his present position, and who now may be feeling the weight of the tragic preventable death in Texas.