Report: RFK Jr. And Trump to Pull Covid-19 Vaccines ‘Within Months’ + More
Source: Children’s Health Defense
Report: RFK Jr. And Trump to Pull Covid-19 Vaccines ‘Within Months’
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaxxer allies are pulling for him to destroy the COVID-19 shots once and for all. A purported close ally of the health secretary has claimed that Kennedy and President Donald Trump are preparing to imminently shelve the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
British cardiologist and RFK Jr. advisor Aseem Malhotra was interviewed by the Daily Beast for an article published Monday morning. In it, Malhotra states that the Trump administration will attempt to pull the mRNA-based vaccines from the U.S. market “within months.” Though the likelihood of such a decision is unclear, it’s perhaps an indication of just how confident the antivaccination movement has become in the wake of Kennedy’s ascension to leading the country’s public health system.
As the Daily Beast reports: [Malhotra] told the Beast that many of those closest to RFK Jr. have told him they “cannot understand” why the vaccine continues to be prescribed, and that a decision to remove the vaccine from the U.S. market pending further research will come “within months,” even if it is likely to cause “fear of chaos” and bring with it major legal ramifications.
Army Drops COVID-19 Vaccine Requirement for Child Care and Youth Program Staff
COVID-19 shots are no longer required for employees or children in Army child care centers, youth programs and school support services. A memo announcing the end of the coronavirus immunization mandate was posted online Monday after being signed earlier this month by Anthony Tata, defense undersecretary for personnel and readiness.
It applies to all youth program staffers, child care providers and volunteers, as well as children enrolled in the programs. All other age-appropriate vaccinations, such as the one for measles, are still required, according to the memo. The Army’s Child and Youth Services programs range from day care to sports and fitness programs.
The service employs about 11,000 people and serves more than 200,000 children, according to the Army. The directive is meant to align with a 2023 executive order by former President Joe Biden saying that there was no further need for a government-wide COVID-19 vaccination requirement, according to the new memo.
Canadian Court Allows Cull of 400 Ostriches That RFK Jr. Hoped to Save
A federal appeals court in Canada has upheld an order to cull about 400 ostriches at a British Columbia farm where dozens of birds died amid an avian flu outbreak last year — ostriches that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mehmet Oz have asked Canadian authorities to spare. The three-judge panel ruled on Thursday to dismiss the appeal of Universal Ostrich Farms, a 65-acre, family-owned operation located about 55 miles north of the U.S. border.
The farm’s owners, Karen Espersen and Dave Bilinski, have been fighting to keep their ostriches alive since December, when several ostriches started falling ill and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued a cull order for the remaining flock. A total of 69 ostriches died over the course of 36 days, according to the owners, about 15% of the original flock. Tests were conducted on two of the dead ostriches, with positive results for avian influenza.
Espersen and Bilinski have argued that their ostriches are special, with the couple halting their production of ostrich meat in 2020 to shift their focus to studying the antibodies found in the ostriches’ eggs. According to court documents, the owners said their flock suffered from a significant illness in February 2020 that led to the deaths of 10 birds. While laboratory tests determined the cause as bacterial infections, the owners speculated that avian flu may have contributed to the illness and that the surviving birds may have developed a natural immunity from future outbreaks, the court documents state.
As MAHA Turns 1, a Fired-up Movement Is Still Figuring out How to Fulfill Its Promises
Nobody knew what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was going to say. Inside Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Ariz., a crowd howled as he walked onto a stage sizzling with pyrotechnics, the Foo Fighters’ “My Hero” blaring. “I don’t think I’ve ever introduced anyone that got applause like he just got. I must tell you, it’s true,” said then-candidate Donald Trump.
Kennedy, a longtime Democrat, had ended his long-shot independent bid for the presidency hours before, and now here he was in the sweltering August heat, ready to make his endorsement of Trump official. “Don’t you want a safe environment for your children?” he asked, the crowd responding in agreement. “Don’t you want to know that the food that you’re feeding them is not filled with chemicals that are going to give them cancer and chronic disease?”
“And don’t you want a president that’s going to make America healthy again?”
In that moment, Make America Healthy Again was born. Branded T-shirts and caps appeared online within days. #MAHA spread on social networks. Suddenly, people were talking about beef tallow. Then Kennedy won confirmation as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary in February, and MAHA turned from a clever slogan into a mandate ruling the nation’s giant health agencies.
STAT spoke with nearly two dozen people within and outside of MAHA to assess the movement’s growth and measure its accomplishments against its grand promises. We found a movement still fired up, but struggling to maintain cohesion as the internal dissonance of its ideologies intensifies and as it butts against external critics.
