Thread by @han_francis

Here's how @RobertKennedyJr got it all wrong with the #vaccines on his @joerogan podcast. A thread dealing with his entire interview would be endless, so this is sticking to his statements on vaccines.

1. "why is it that CDC and every state regulator recommends that pregnant women do not eat tuna fish to avoid the mercury, but that CDC is recommending mercury-containing flu shots with huge bolus doses of mercury, I mean, massive doses, that pregnant women in every trimester..."

This sentence is simultaneously, wrong, misleading, and pulling on the emotional heartstrings. As a chemistry graduate I can see through his first lie, which is to conflate all types of mercury with each other. Ethyl mercury 🚫methyl mercury🚫mercury metal.

Everyone could get behind banning all mercury pollution of the ecosystem, antivaxxers and provaxxers alike. However, what RFK didn't tell you is that the form of mercury in old vaccines is thiomersal, which degrades into ethylmercury, which is substantially less toxic ...

than methylmercury (chop.edu/centers-progra…). Vaccines need preservatives of some kind to prevent from spoiling. The next thing he conveniently didn't tell you is that Thiomersal has been removed from most vaccines for a long time.

The only vaccine with the thiomersal now is the multi-dose flu vaccine, which can be declined in favor of a preservative free vaccine. So effectively, you can reduce your vaccine mercury exposure to zero already (which is far less than what you get from a tuna sandwich).

BTW, @RobertKennedyJr kind of proves himself wrong later in the interview when he says "Methyl mercury from the tuna fish was there two months later, two months later."

Other principle violated here: even water and air in large doses are toxic. Thiomersal has never been shown in vaccine doses to be significantly toxic to people. who.int/teams/health-p…

2. Thiomersal is an adjuvant - no, with basic Googling, thanks to @Voices4Vaccines , we can see the molecules present in modern vaccines which are used as adjuvants voicesforvaccines.org/science/vaccin… . An adjuvant is something used to enhance the immune response.

Failure of very simple fact checking on RFK Jr's part.

3. "That's why most of the polio today, 70% of the polio today is vaccine polio that came from the vaccines." This statement ignores the huge contribution polio vaccination made to decreasing global cases of polio. Multiple national and international health agencies ...

in decreasing polio cases (there is a 💉reason your children's hospital doesn't regularly see polio, but the ones in Afghanistan and Pakistan certainly do). The @GlobalPolioEI and @WHO dislike vaccine derived polio as much as anyone else, but there are logistical, biochemical,

and ecnomical reasons the oral polio vaccine was distributed in the way it was. Now, there is an explicit plan in place to help in the efforts to eradicate both polio and vaccine derived polio. All information RFK Jr conveniently left out polioeradication.org

4. "The dead virus vaccine, however, will not produce a durable or robust immune response enough to get a license"
How do you suppposed the inactivated polio vaccine was licensed in the US? 😉Failure of simple googling again.

5. "A vaccinologist figured out that if you add something horrendously toxic to the vaccine, that your body confuses that toxic product, you add it with the dead antigen, which is the viral particle".Way to pull the emotional strings again @RobertKennedyJr , but that doesn't fly.

Many different vaccines need adjuvants to produce a usable immune response (just a fact of life of our really complex immune system). No need to ask someone to commit to a meaningless injection - and adjuvants even enable reduction of vaccine doses sometimes.

Citation for that one:
amazon.com/s?k=janeway%27…

6. With the implication that it is "too much", he says "When I was a kid, I only had three vaccines. My kids got 72 vaccines."
Today, vaccines are able to actually provide you more protection with less antigens than before . media.chop.edu/data/files/pdf…

This number is also inflated by reporting the same vaccine being given multiple times, as separate instances. Vaccines scientists have always been looking for ways to decrease undesirable immune responses (example: replacement of DTwP with DTaP).

7. "None of the vaccines are ever subjected to true placebo controlled trials." This statement is thinly veiled call for saline placebo in all vaccine trials. Here's why that's both problematic and sometimes unethical:

https://twitter.com/dfreedman7/status/1200561196035969024?s=20

BTW some of the initial COVID vaccine trials, had saline in them, just like RFK Jr wanted ;)
jamanetwork.com/journals/jaman…

8. "They went to the Reagan administration in 1986 and they said, you need to give us full immunity from liability for all vaccines or we're going to get out of the business" Yes in part, businesses do not want to be relentlessly sued.

Vaccines are one of pharma's least profitable products before the advent of the COVID vaccines. However, people who experienced adverse events genuinely deserve to seek medical care and financial compensation. hrsa.gov/vaccine-compen…

Even a provax legal professional, @doritmi, agrees that the current vaccine adverse event compensation program has its downsides barrons.com/articles/serio… .

9. "How many are reported? And they said fewer than fewer than one in 100 are ever reported."
No this is a misinterpretation of a notorious study explained in detail by a different legal professional. rickjaffeesq.com/2021/02/19/wha…

10. "Nutrition is absolutely critical of building immune systems. And so what was really killing these children was malnutrition."
No, you can't paleo/ rolled oat bowl your way out of a meningitis infection that is causing seizures and the destruction of your fingers/ toes.

11. "And it was and that study also said that fewer than 1% of the decline in infectious mortality deaths could be attributed to vaccines."
This is another classic antivax tactic of ignoring the damage that occurs that isn't death.

Yes, vaccine preventable diseases generally don't kill large swaths of the population, otherwise their vaccines might get more praise. However, this ignores the seizures, wiping of immune memory, loss of limb, brain damage, paralysis and many other things...

That vaccine preventable diseases are capable of doing other than killing.

So again, if a presidential candidate is willing to lie about all this even before getting to the campaign trail, what else is he willing to lie about? Vaccines are a big piece of the actual health of our children, who are our future generation.

RFK Jr is not the one coming to your aid if your baby is hospitalized for hemophilus influenza, your hospital physician is going to do that. RFK Jr has products to sell.
amazon.com/s?k=robert+f+k…