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Trump and RFK Jr. to Ban COVID-19 Vaccine ‘Within Months’

The Daily Beast reports:

A close associate of the HHS secretary claims the U.S. government will soon pull COVID-19 mRNA jabs from the market.

The Trump administration will move to pull the COVID vaccine off the U.S. market “within months,” one of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s closest associates has told the Daily Beast.

Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who has repeatedly claimed in the face of scientific consensus that the vaccines are more dangerous than the virus, told the Daily Beast that Kennedy’s stance is shared by “influential” members of President Donald Trump’s family. Like Kennedy himself, no Trumps hold any scientific qualifications.

Malhotra is a leading adviser to the controversial lobby group Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Action, which is seen as an external arm of Kennedy’s agenda as Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary.

He 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.

“It could [happen] in a number of stages, including learning more about the data,” said Malhotra, who said there was an ongoing review into so-called “vaccine injuries” by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). “But given the increased talk of vaccine injuries in the past few weeks among the administration, it could also come with one clean decision.”

Malhotra said skepticism among Kennedy’s circle of the COVID-19 jab is driven by a 2022 paper by a group of physicians and university professors and researchers, which appeared in the journal Vaccine.

The peer-reviewed paper examined secondary analysis of “serious adverse events reported in… clinical trials of Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in adults,” and said that those given the mRNA vaccines had a 16 percent higher risk of “excess serious adverse events” than those in the placebo group.

However, the study has been dismissed by large parts of the medical community, who say it underestimates the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines and overstates risks due to methodological flaws, biased data selection, and ignoring broader public health impacts.

Malhotra was not among the authors of the study, but said that he presented its findings during a MAHA Action team video meeting on July 9 which was attended by senior aides to Kennedy. He claimed it caused a “holy s--t” moment among many of those present.

Malhotra is known to have the ear of RFK Jr., having first drawn his attention in September 2022, when he published a paper in the Journal of Insulin Resistance on what he described as “misinformation about the COVID mRNA vaccine,” which led to a television interview.

After he walked out of the studio, Malhotra said the first person to call was RFK Jr. “He said, ‘I want to thank you for your courage,’” Malhotra said. The pair have since become close.

Malhotra helped fundraise for Kennedy’s doomed presidential campaign, and the two hiked together in the Los Angeles hills close to Kennedy’s home that he shares with his actress wife, Cheryl Hines, in October 2023.

Malhotra is now expected to meet Trump himself in September to push his anti-COVID-19 mRNA vax views, during a trip to meet Kennedy and other HHS aides.

“I think [Trump will] get it, because it’s in his interest to,” Malhotra said. “This information is only going in one direction, and there’s something really terribly wrong with the system. I think once [he] understands the situation… that will encourage him to act to change the system. He’s in a position to fix it. He can create a lasting legacy by doing so.”

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before the House Appropriations Committee on May 14, 2025 in Washington, D.C.

The prediction of a drastic move against the COVID vaccine comes after Kennedy canceled $500 million in funding for the development of mRNA vaccines. Such vaccines use a copy of a molecule called messenger RNA (mRNA) to provoke an immune response against certain diseases. They have received much attention since the COVID-19 pandemic, where they served as the basis of the most widely used SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.

Days after canceling the funding, the HHS secretary—criticized for describing the COVID shot as “the deadliest vaccine ever made”—stated during a press conference his belief that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine was dangerous and can cause “injuries” including myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart that can lead to health issues ranging from fatigue to cardiac arrest.

At the same time the scientifically unqualified Kennedy scion wrongly claimed there is no evidence football leads to brain damage.

Vaccine skepticism took a sinister turn earlier this month when an anti-vaxxer opened fire on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), killing a police officer. Investigators believe the man targeted the CDC over his hatred of the COVID-19 vaccine, apparently convinced he was sick—or would become sick—because of it.

On Wednesday, more than 750 current and former staff members from the CDC, HHS and National Institutes of Health (NIH) accused Kennedy of spreading dangerous misinformation that fueled mistrust and contributed to the CDC HQ shooting, demanding by Sept. 2 that he stop, affirm CDC scientific integrity, and guarantee workforce safety.

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee Health Subcommittee in the Rayburn House Office Building on June 24, 2025 in Washington, DC. The committee met to hear testimony on the FY2026 Department of Health and Human Services budget.
They also argued Kennedy had jeopardized Americans’ health and undermined the nation’s readiness for public-health crises.

In a letter to Congress and Kennedy, which was posted on the Save HHS site, they wrote: “Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information.”


HHS, in response, said Kennedy was “standing firmly with CDC employees” to ensure their safety and well-being, adding: “In the wake of this heartbreaking shooting, he traveled to Atlanta to offer his support and reaffirm his deep respect. Any attempt to conflate widely supported public health reforms with the violence of a suicidal mass shooter is an attempt to politicize a tragedy.”

The Daily Beast contacted the White House, the HHS, Pfizer, and Moderna for comment.

Only the White House responded. Its spokesman, Kush Desai, said: “The Administration is relying on Gold Standard Science and is committed to radical transparency to make decisions that affect all Americans. Unless announced by the Administration, however, any discussion about HHS policy should be dismissed as baseless speculation.”

My comments:

Bolded sections were my added emphasis.

Just as “misery loves company”, so does demented thinking. tRUMP, Kennedy, and Malhotra are three demented fools encouraging each other to further express and impose their dangerous, deadly, and completely unfounded demented beliefs on others with the greatest impact on children, pregnant women, and the elderly.

Remove tRUMP and his entire incompetent misadministration. It’s long past time.
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COVID rising fast in California, fueled by new ‘Stratus’ variant tied to Omicron

Los Angeles Times reports:

“ COVID-19 is once again climbing to troubling levels in California — a worrying trend as health officials attempt to navigate a vaccine landscape thrown into uncertainty by delays and decisions from the Trump administration.

Public health departments in Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties have reported jumps in the coronavirus concentrations detected in wastewater in recent weeks. L.A. County also has reported a small increase in patients hospitalized with COVID.

“There is a lot of COVID out there,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at UC San Francisco. “COVID is coming a little bit later than last year.”

The rate at which COVID lab tests came back positive in L.A. County is 12.6% for the week that ended Aug. 16, up from 7.6% a month earlier. In Orange County, it’s 14.4%, up from 8.1%.

“We are seeing outpatient cases increase,” said Dr. Elizabeth E. Hudson, the regional physician chief of infectious diseases for Kaiser Permanente Southern California. “With back-to-school season in full swing ... we are expecting to see an uptick in COVID in children over the next few weeks and this is already being seen in some parts of the country.”

In a blog post, Dr. Matt Willis, former public health officer for Marin County, wrote that “California’s in the middle of a COVID-19 wave, and statewide rates are among the highest in the nation.”

Among senior-age residents in Orange County, emergency room visits for COVID-like illness, as well as hospitalizations for COVID, are also on the upswing, said Dr. Christopher Zimmerman, a physician with the Orange County Health Care Agency’s Communicable Disease and Control Division, and Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, the county’s health officer.

Hudson said the coronavirus subvariant XFG, nicknamed Stratus, accounts for the vast majority of variants seen in wastewater.

“This is another Omicron subvariant, so previous infections with other Omicron variants may offer some residual protection, but, as we know, that protection is not complete, so you can certainly be reinfected,” Hudson said.

It does seem that this summer, COVID season has been less intense than last year.

In L.A. County, for instance, current COVID hospitalizations for the week that ended Aug. 16 are about half the level seen during the same week last year. And in Orange County, emergency room visits related to COVID-like illness are less than half what they were last summer.

“Last summer’s COVID surge was the largest since 2022, so this year’s surge is more on par with our less-severe summer surges,” Hudson said. “People are definitely getting COVID this summer, but the intensity is much less than in 2024.”

The rise in COVID comes as the Trump administration has delayed the rollout of the updated vaccine for the fall. Last year, the federal government had fully green-lighted the annual reformulation of the vaccine by June, in time for a rollout that began in September.

This year, however, the Department of Health and Human Services led by vaccine skeptic Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has in effect delayed the rollout of this fall’s COVID shot.

“Updated COVID-19 vaccines have been delayed this year due to federal policy changes, and we are awaiting [Food and Drug Administration] licensure of this season’s products,” the L.A. County Department of Public Health said in a statement to The Times. “This means availability in September may be later than what people experienced last fall.”

County health officials noted that the FDA could further revise or limit who can get an annual COVID shot — as the agency signaled in May — “though current evidence continues to show that the vaccines are safe and effective across all ages.”

The California Department of Public Health also warned that because the federal government hasn’t made decisions on licensure approvals and recommendations, “availability and timing of specific COVID-19 vaccine products may be more limited and occur on a later schedule.”

“We’re in an unfortunate limbo, created by an administration that’s uncommitted to vaccines, between the slow shutting down of ’24–’25 vaccine availability and access to the ’25–’26 version,” Willis wrote in the Your Local Epidemiologist in California blog.

Chin-Hong said that the timing of the vaccine rollout is in such flux and he recommends anyone at risk for severe complications from COVID who hasn’t been vaccinated in more than a year to get inoculated now.

People at severe risk for COVID illness include those 65 and older, those who have compromised immune systems, those who are pregnant, and all infants and children age 6 months to 23 months. (Children age 2 to 5 are also at greater risk for complications from COVID compared with older children.)

“If they haven’t gotten it in a year, just go ahead, maybe, get it now,” Chin-Hong said. “Because also, the vaccine that’s being proposed [for this fall] is relatively the same formula as last year. ... It’s less important to wait.”

It might also be easier to get the COVID-19 vaccine now ahead of potential changes in federal recommendations and approvals later this year.

Chin-Hong called the delay in formulating a COVID vaccine game plan for this fall “just weird,” as “usually in public health, preparation is everything.”

At this point in previous summers, health officials typically already would be urging people to make plans to get a fall COVID vaccine.

But this time around, “Nobody knows details about who’s going to be eligible, exactly,” Chin-Hong said, except for those age 65 and up and younger people with chronic health conditions.

“We have a whole new discussion, like, ‘When is it coming? Who is it going to be eligible for? ... Do kids have to talk to their pediatrician first? Would pharmacists actually allow them to get it? ... Would healthy pregnant people [be able] to get it?” Chin-Hong said.

It’s as if officials are talking about a new vaccine and a new illness, but the COVID-19 vaccine has been around for more than four years, Chin-Hong said.


But the federal government’s treatment of COVID shots is not happening in a vacuum. Kennedy has maligned mRNA vaccine technology — the basis for the most commonly administered COVID shots — and ordered the firing of all 17 experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s influential vaccine advisory committee.

One person who will lead a committee to review the safety of COVID vaccines for the CDC has described the shots as “the most failing medical product in the history of medical products,” the New York Times reported Friday.

COVID-19 vaccinations averted 2.5 million deaths globally from 2020 to 2024, according to a report published in the journal JAMA Health Forum in July.

The vaccine-skeptic leadership of Kennedy over the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA and CDC, has prompted such a split in the medical community that mainstream organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics are issuing their own recommendations concerning vaccines.

The CDC, for instance, earlier this year asked that parents talk with a healthcare provider before getting the COVID vaccine for healthy children. That’s an extra step parents may need to take to get their children vaccinated, and could end up being a “super big barrier” for vaccination, Chin-Hong said.

Previously, the CDC recommended everyone 6 months and older get an updated COVID vaccine in the fall.


The CDC also recently offered “no guidance” as to whether healthy pregnant women should get the COVID vaccine.

On Friday, by contrast, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommended that people “receive an updated COVID-19 vaccine or ‘booster’ at any point during pregnancy, when planning to become pregnant, in the postpartum period, or when lactating.”

Dismissed members of CDC vaccine committee call Kennedy’s actions ‘destabilizing.’

“The COVID-19 vaccines are particularly effective at reducing morbidity from COVID-19 complications in pregnant patients and their infants,” the organization said. “Data also support the benefit of vaccination in reducing pregnancy complications, such as severe maternal morbidity, preterm birth, and stillbirth.”

And the American Academy of Pediatrics on Aug. 19 recommended that infants and children age 6 months to 23 months get the updated COVID vaccine, since they “are at high risk.”

The group also said that children ages 2 and older should be offered the latest COVID vaccine if their parent or guardian wishes.

“The COVID vaccine situation is unsettling. ... Differences in guidance from the CDC and other medical professional groups will be challenging for the public,” the Orange County communicable disease control team said.”
supersnipe · 61-69, M
I thought this was a spoof to begin with.
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@bijouxbroussard While I can certainly understand and to a certain extent emphasize with the sentiment, Kennedy is both psychiatrically and neurologically severely impaired and he has a long history of IV drug abuse.

He has no medical training and no knowledge of Public Health, Virology, Vaccine Technologies, Epidemiology, Communicable Diseases, how to conduct valid clinical studies, how to read & interpret clinical studies, etc.

In a word, he is: unfit!
So people will start dying en masse again, like they did before the vaccine was available. 😞

 
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