Zeal
The U.S. will no longer contribute funding to Gavi, a global alliance that helps buy vaccines for the world’s poorest children, because it ignores safety, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Wednesday, without providing evidence.
In a video statement seen by Reuters and shown at a Gavi fundraising event in Brussels, Kennedy – a long-time vaccine skeptic – also accused Gavi of making questionable recommendations around COVID-19 vaccines, and raised concerns about the DTPw (diphtheria-tetanus-whole cell pertussis) vaccine.
Gavi said in a statement that safety was key, and that it acts in line with World Health Organization recommendations. It has full confidence in the DTPw vaccine, which has contributed to halving child mortality in the countries it supports since 2000, the statement continued.
Well Kennedy wants it to double.
Kennedy said in the video that he admired much of Gavi’s work, particularly its efforts to make medicines affordable worldwide. “Unfortunately, in its zeal to promote universal vaccination, it has neglected the key issue of vaccine safety,” he added.
No you are.
Several key figures also defended Gavi’s commitment to safety in speeches at the summit, including its board Chair Jose Manuel Barroso and Bill Gates, chair of the Gates Foundation, which is hosting the summit alongside the European Union. “Gavi prioritizes saving lives, and it’s done with incredible scientific rigor,” said Gates. “We’re constantly looking at safety.”
The Trump administration has previously indicated that it planned to cut its funding for Gavi, around $300 million annually, as part of a wider pullback from international aid.
As part of a wider pullback from saving children from death and disability.
I wonder when we’ll see the press call flat-Earthers “round-Earth skeptics.”
Or gravity-skeptics “floaters.”
Not to be confused with those gas-filled lumps of excreta that cause problems in sewerage farms; where Kennedy would likely blend in rather well.
I was reading a post by Nicholas Grossman over lunch. His point was that skeptics can be persuaded by evidence, they can change their minds. ideologues and conspiracy theorists cannot. They start with a conclusion and push it no matter what, even if they have to distort the evidence. RFK Jr is the latter. He is, and always has been an anti-vaccine activist, not a skeptic. I agree with Grossman.
When I heard floaters, I instantly thought of those things in the eye, where you see odd shapes, often looking like sperm.