Doctor Answers Vaccine Questions

WIRED

Pediatrician Dr. Paul Offit joins WIRED to answer the internet's questions about vaccines. How are new vaccines developed? What are vaccination schedules based on? Does getting multiple vaccines at once affect the efficacy of each? Where in your body does the medicine go when you get an injection? Who began the fallacy that vaccines cause autism? Why have vaccines become a political flashpoint? And what is RFK Jr.'s whole deal? Answers to these questions and more await on WIRED Vaccine Support.  Director: Justin Wolfson  Director of Photography: Jay Miller Editor: Paul Tael, Graham Mooney Expert: Dr. Paul Offit Creative Producer: Lauren Zeitoun Line Producer: Jamie Rasmussen Associate Producer: Brandon White  Production Manager: Peter Brunette Casting Producer: Nick Sawyer Camera Operator: Brooke Riley Sound Mixer: Steve Sklarow Production Assistant: Annie Flowers Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin Post Production Coordinator: Stella Shortino Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo Additional Editor: Sam DiVito Assistant Editor: Ben Harowitz

Transcript

00:00I'm Dr. Paul Offit, pediatrician and professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania

00:04School of Medicine. I'm here today to answer your questions from the internet. This is Vaccine

00:09Support. HappyBrit17 asks, you do realize a lot of what we get vaccinated for our immune system

00:20could just fight off naturally. People love the word natural. There's nothing good about a natural

00:24infection. Mother Nature's been trying to kill us ever since we crawled out of the ocean onto land.

00:28I was a child of the 1950s. I had measles, I had mumps, I had German measles, I had chickenpox,

00:34and I survived every one of those infections. But not everybody did. Before there was a measles

00:39vaccine in 1963, every year, 48,000 children would be hospitalized with severe pneumonia or dehydration

00:45or inflammation of the brain, which could leave those children then blind or deaf. Mumps was the

00:50most common cause of acquired deafness. Rubella or German measles, when it infected pregnant women,

00:55would cause about 20,000 cases of congenital birth defects every year manifested as blindness,

01:01deafness, or permanent heart defects. I was lucky I wasn't one of those 75 to 100 children who died

01:06every year from chickenpox or the 10,000 who were hospitalized. So while many of us are able to

01:11survive a natural infection, some aren't. In fact, I actually don't like the term natural immunity.

01:16I'd prefer the term survivor immunity. RAVO93 asks, has herd immunity ever been achieved without a

01:23vaccine? Herd immunity means a critical percentage of people around you have been vaccinated and are

01:29protected, so much so that it's very hard for that virus or bacteria to get to you. Also remember,

01:34millions of people in this country can't be vaccinated because they're immune compromised.

01:38They can't be vaccinated because they have cancer. They depend on us to protect them,

01:42and they count. So herd immunity is important. But has a virus or bacteria ever been eliminated

01:48by natural infection? No. Smallpox, which was estimated to kill about 500 million people,

01:53was never eliminated until there was a vaccine. Polio in the United States would every year cause

01:58tens of thousands of children to be paralyzed and thousands to die. That was eliminated in 1979

02:03because of a vaccine. So only vaccines have the capacity to eliminate these viruses. Herd immunity

02:09won't do it. In 2014, 2015, there was a measles outbreak that started in Southern California

02:14that then spread to other states. It affected hundreds of people. Richard Pan was a state senator

02:19in California that was embarrassed that his state had been the epicenter of this outbreak. So he wanted

02:25to eliminate the philosophical exemption to vaccination in a state that never had a religious exemption.

02:30If he was successful, that would have meant that the only exemptions in California were medical

02:34exemptions. The anti-vaccine activists hated this, and they showed up in droves to cry this particular

02:40attempt to eliminate the philosophical exemption for vaccination. There was a little boy who showed

02:45up at those meetings. He had leukemia. And so he would stand up at those meetings, and they would have

02:49to put him on a stool because he didn't reach the microphone. And he would say his name. I have

02:53leukemia. I can't be vaccinated. I depend on you to protect me. Don't I count? And he stared right at

02:59these anti-vaccine activists when he said it. He was a brave little boy, and he had everything to do

03:03with how it came to be that California now only has a medical exemption to vaccinations.

03:09Only the children are brave. And women. Children are women. Forget us. Lefty Matty asks,

03:14how do you deal with anti-vaccine parents? First of all, I think it's reasonable to be skeptical of

03:18anything you put into your bodies, including vaccines. I think I would divide this group up

03:23into two. One are parents who just are scared. They've read things that are frightening on the

03:28internet. Are vaccines causing cancer or heart disease or autoimmune disease? Is that possible? And those

03:33people have questions, and you just try the best you can to answer those questions and not to in any

03:37sense deny their fear. Their fear is real, and you can't sort of deny it by just saying, well, that's

03:43silly. You have to accept that that is a real fear and that you have to try and provide them with

03:47information that calms that fear down. The second group of parents, and this is a much smaller crowd,

03:52are people who just think there's a conspiracy to sell vaccines. They think you're part of that

03:56conspiracy, and there's really nothing you can say to make them feel better about this because they think

04:01you're just an instrument for the pharmaceutical industry. I usually don't spend a lot of time

04:05talking to those folks because there's no point wasting their time in mine.

04:09Kirko asks, how was the smallpox vaccination campaign so effective that the disease was

04:14completely eradicated when the smallpox vaccine had very real side effects? So there are two different

04:20kinds of viruses. There's viruses that have short incubation periods, like two days, three days,

04:25four days. SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID, rotavirus, influenza, respiratory syncytrovirus,

04:31has short incubation period. Then there's the long incubation period diseases, German measles, or

04:36chickenpox, or smallpox. You can eliminate those diseases. You don't need antibodies in the circulation

04:42at the time you're exposed. All you need is memory cells, which have plenty of time to become

04:46activated and make antibodies well before you get sick because it's a long incubation period. So you can

04:51eliminate smallpox, which we did by 1980. You can eliminate polio from this country, which we did by

04:561979. You can eliminate measles, which we did from this country by 2000. You will never eliminate

05:01rotavirus or SARS-CoV-2 or RSV, respiratory syncytrovirus, or flu because they are short incubation period

05:08diseases. That's one critical difference. And I think we could have done a better job of explaining

05:13that actually regarding the COVID vaccine because while COVID vaccine will protect against severe

05:17disease, which is the goal, it's never going to protect against mild or moderate disease.

05:21So the smallpox vaccine certainly had real side effects. And smallpox vaccine could occasionally

05:27cause fatal side effects. It's true. But smallpox was a feared and devastating illness. One of the

05:33reasons we were able to eliminate it is there's no such thing as asymptomatic smallpox. Everybody who

05:38has smallpox will have lesions or blisters on their face. And with that, you can kind of put a moat

05:43around the virus, meaning not only the person who has it, but the person who they had contact with.

05:48And that's why you can essentially eliminate that. Umu Awe asks, to the doctors on the timeline,

05:53what is the purpose of all the vaccines babies are given? Polio, rotavirus, et cetera. Vaccines are

05:58given to prevent diseases that cause children to suffer or be hospitalized or die. And when they are

06:03introduced, those diseases are rampant. Polio, for example, in the 1950s caused as many as 58,000

06:09children to be paralyzed and 1,800 to die every year. Because of the polio vaccine, we eliminated polio in

06:141979. So you could ask, why do I still need this vaccine? Polio is gone from this country. Well,

06:19it's not gone from this world. And if you choose to lower immunization rates, it'll come back. And

06:24that happened in 2022 to a 27-year-old man in Rockland County, New York, who never left this

06:29country, who was paralyzed by polio. And that virus that paralyzed him really only paralyzes one in every

06:352,000 people that infects. So he was the tip of a much bigger iceberg. And indeed, you found the virus

06:41that infected him in wastewater samples where he lived, which is in Rockland County, New York. You

06:45found it in the surrounding counties. And if you looked in Philadelphia or you looked in Chicago

06:49and looked in the wastewater there, you would also find this virus. We eliminated measles from the

06:53United States by the year 2000. Eliminated it. Gone. Nonetheless, this past year, we've had thousands

06:59of cases of measles. We've had three people die, including two children die. So I think if we let our

07:03guard down, these viruses will come back. I think we ask a lot of parents in this country. We ask them to

07:09give vaccines to prevent 14 different diseases in the first few years of life. That can mean as many

07:14as five shots at one time to prevent diseases most people don't see using biological fluids most

07:19people don't understand. I think that people are pushing back against vaccine makes sense.

07:24I'm a child of the 50s. I had many of these diseases. I had measles. I had mumps. And for about

07:28six weeks, I was in a polio ward in suburban Baltimore. So I know what these diseases look like.

07:34But my children are children of the 90s. They don't see these diseases, and they didn't grow up with

07:38these diseases. And it's the same is true for young physicians. And so I think we have to be

07:42much better at compelling people for why it is still important to get vaccines. Because if we don't,

07:47these diseases will come back, as we're seeing with measles today. A Reddit user asks, who came up

07:52with the idea that vaccines could cause autism? There was a British gastroenterologist named Andrew

07:58Wakefield, who published a paper in a respected medical journal claiming that children who were

08:03otherwise healthy, got a combination measles, mumps, rubella, or MMR vaccine, and that they

08:08developed autism. Now, it wasn't really a study. It was really a case series of eight children who

08:13had received the vaccine and then developed signs and symptoms of autism. So he hypothesized

08:17that maybe the vaccine had done it. Now, he might as well have published a study of eight children who

08:22had eaten recently a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then developed signs and symptoms of

08:26autism. Because there really was no biological mechanism that made sense for why that would be true.

08:31Now, since that paper came out in 1998, there had been 24 separate studies costing millions and

08:37millions of dollars trying to answer the question, were you at greater risk if you had gotten the

08:41MMR vaccine of developing autism than if you never got that vaccine? And all the studies have shown

08:46exactly the same thing. The MMR vaccine doesn't cause autism. But he scared people. And while it's

08:51very easy to scare people, it's hard to unscare them. And I think still that false notion that vaccines

08:56could cause autism exists. So KDS Berner asks, why do we need boosters for some vaccines and not

09:03others? Well, some vaccines are better able to induce an immune response more quickly. The measles

09:08vaccine, which was first invented in 1963, worked very well actually as a single dose vaccine. There

09:14were outbreaks in the late 1980s that resulted in hospitalizations, about 160 deaths, and that

09:20necessitated then a second dose. But if you looked at those outbreaks, they were in people who never

09:24got vaccinated. I think if we just had had a single dose and everybody got it, we'd have been fine.

09:28Other vaccines, for example, like the hepatitis B vaccine, are just a single protein. And with that,

09:34you really need more doses to induce an immune response. So it really depends on the nature of

09:38the vaccine to determine whether or not you need a booster or not. Bees your uncle asks, where are

09:43vaccine memories stored? When you get a vaccine, you make antibodies. And those antibodies are in your

09:49circulation, your bloodstream. And they're there to protect you when you're exposed then to a virus or a

09:54bacteria. Usually four to six months later, those antibodies in your bloodstream fade. But you have

09:58memory cells called B cells, for example, that can make antibodies when stimulated. So when you're

10:03then exposed, even though the antibodies may not be there in your circulation, you still have these

10:07memory cells that often are lifelong. Those memory cells become activated. They make antibodies that can

10:13protect you. So memory is really what protects us. Funbox304 asks, vaccination is postponing bad. It's hard

10:21to watch a child get laid down and get five shots at once. And it's easy to understand how a parent

10:26could say, I'm happy with getting vaccinated, but just don't give them all at one time. Maybe have

10:30one or two, and we'll just delay it and space them out. All delaying a vaccine does is it increases the

10:36period of time during which you're susceptible to infections. Some parents could argue, but isn't it

10:40more stressful to get five shots than, say, just to get one shot? And the answer is no, actually.

10:45There were studies done showing that if you look at cortisol secretion in a child that gets one shot

10:49versus two shots or more, it's the same. Or said another way, you're maximally stressed out at

10:54one shot. So why just have more visits and delay it when you're not in any way helping a child?

10:59So CruxSucks asks, where does the medicine go when you get an injection or a shot? So when you get an

11:05injection, say, with the measles vaccine, what happens is the virus reproduces itself and then

11:11travels to a local draining lymph node under your arm, for example. And there it's taken up by immune

11:17cells that process it and present it to the immune system to induce an immune response.

11:23The broccoli offensive asks, ah, yes, the old, y'all gonna get microchipped statement. So you can

11:29inject microchips, but microchips are too big to fit through a needle that is used for vaccines. And

11:35there's a picture here that clearly shows the size of a microchip needle and compares it to the size of

11:41a vaccine needle. And you can see that it's dramatically different. Apathetic Onion asks,

11:46why does administering a vaccine to a sick person not cure an existing infection? Vaccines work to

11:52prevent infection, not treat it. Now, there are some vaccines that can be given after someone's been

11:57exposed to the virus. Some viruses have very long incubation periods. Incubation period means from the

12:03time when you're first exposed to the virus to when you develop symptoms. So for example, rabies. Once

12:08you've already developed symptoms, there really is no vaccine that then prevents further progression

12:13of that disease. When you're infected, the virus reproduces itself more and more and more. In

12:18response, your body makes an immune response. And so as the body makes an immune response, the virus

12:23starts to reproduce itself less and less. It's the immune response that causes the symptoms. So that by

12:28the time you already have those symptoms, it's really too late to do anything about the virus

12:32to make a difference. Parallel Payne asks, vaccines predate the germ theory. So how did

12:37doctors think vaccines worked? So the germ theory was born in the late 1800s when we realized that

12:43specific bacteria, in this case anthrax, could cause a specific disease. Robert Koch was the name of the

12:48person who did that. But nonetheless, if you look at the smallpox vaccine, that was developed before the

12:53germ theory. So how did Edward Jenner develop a smallpox vaccine when he didn't know anything about

12:58the germ theory? It was really just pure phenomenology. He noted that women who milk cows

13:02would get these blisters on their hands. He thought, okay, well, if these milkmaids are getting

13:06blisters on their hands and then they're not getting severe smallpox, then I'm going to just

13:10take that blister, drain it, and then inoculate it into people and see if it protects them as well.

13:15Edward Jenner would take a drop of this pus from someone who had cowpox, and then he would take the

13:19needle and he would inject that pus under the skin. Essentially, Jenner's vaccine, which was developed in 1798,

13:26is pretty much the same smallpox vaccine that we used up until today. We eliminated smallpox from

13:31the world by the year 1980. This was a virus that killed 500 million people. About one out of every

13:37three people who were infected with smallpox died, and many were left blind. White Lightning X have

13:42been told that the mRNA vaccine leaves the body completely after two weeks, leaving antibodies.

13:48My question is, where does it go? Do you pee it out and it ends up in the water supply? Just curious.

13:55The COVID vaccine was a messenger RNA vaccine. So we all have messenger RNA in our bodies. Those

14:01messenger RNA strands are used to make the enzymes and proteins necessary for life. Your messenger RNA

14:07is then translated to these proteins, and within a few days, the messenger RNA disintegrates and

14:12ultimately leaves the body primarily through the urine. The Divining Dad asks, why do so many people

14:18claim that the COVID vaccine killed people? The mRNA COVID vaccines could cause rarely about one in 50,000,

14:25something called myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart muscle. It was transient, it was self-resolving,

14:30it was short-lived. The virus itself, so-called SARS-CoV-2 virus, could cause severe and occasionally

14:35fatal myocarditis. So that wasn't the vaccine. I think people understandably have a distrust of the

14:41pharmaceutical industry, which has acted at times unethically and aggressively and illegally. But there is

14:47no hiding in the world of vaccines. If a pharmaceutical company, for example, misrepresented or omitted data

14:52to the FDA about their vaccine, you very quickly would know that because of something called the

14:56Vaccine Safety Data Link, which is a linked, computerized medical record system that involves

15:01about 10% of the U.S. population, about 500,000 children. So when a vaccine rolls out, you very quickly

15:07know who's gotten a vaccine and who hasn't. So if there is a side effect that's rare, you'll know it and

15:12you'll know it within weeks. Lost on of Pluto asks, the flu vaccine has been available as a nasal mist for

15:18some time now, but what's stopping other vaccines from becoming available via this method? It's

15:23certainly easiest to give vaccines as a shot. A flu mist is a vaccine that's given as a nasal spray.

15:28There are acids and proteases in the upper respiratory tract that can break down viruses, so it's not easy.

15:35The only oral vaccines that we had were for the polio vaccine, but polio is an intestinal virus.

15:40So polio normally reproduces itself in the intestine. It lives in sewage. Therefore, you can just give

15:46it by mouth and it survives the acids in the stomach. Same thing with rotavirus. Rotavirus is another

15:50intestinal virus, and so you can give that vaccine by mouth, and that vaccine has been given by mouth

15:54since 2006. Paxtacum8 asks, new question about virus, why there is no vaccine for HIV or any sexually

16:02transmitted disease? So there are two sexually transmitted diseases for which there are vaccines. One is the

16:08human papillomavirus vaccine, which is sexually transmitted and can cause anal, genital, and head

16:13and neck and cervical cancers. And then the other sexually transmitted disease is hepatitis B virus.

16:19That vaccine has been around since 1981. The problem with human immunodeficiency virus is it continues to

16:24mutate in your body during a single infection. So although you make antibodies to human immunodeficiency

16:29virus that could neutralize the virus, the virus is constantly moving away from your immune system.

16:33So even though HIV was recognized as the cause of AIDS in the early 1980s, and the hope was that we

16:38would be able to make a vaccine within a few years, it's been more than 40 years and we haven't been

16:43able to make a vaccine. That is a moving target, and that's why HIV has been so hard to conquer.

16:49Circle of Mamas asks, why is so much aluminum in vaccines okay? I don't understand how this gets a pass.

16:55Aluminum adjuvants have been in vaccines since 1926. By having an adjuvant in a vaccine,

17:01that allows you to give fewer doses of that vaccine and lesser quantities of the vaccine itself. And

17:06it's necessary for certain vaccines like the hepatitis B vaccine. So there are seven different

17:10vaccines that are given to infants and young children that contain aluminum adjuvants. Aluminum

17:15is the third most abundant element on the earth's surface. We encounter and manage far more aluminum

17:21in the food that you eat and the water that you drink than you ever get from vaccines. In fact,

17:25if you look in the blood of people who receive vaccines, you can't in any way correlate that with

17:30their vaccine history. They still have roughly the same amount of aluminum in their blood and in

17:34their hair. So assuming you live on this planet, you're going to be exposed to far more aluminum

17:38from living here and eating the food and water and drinking the water than you would ever get from

17:43a vaccine. I am here to bore you asks, so did the SARS-CoV-2 or COVID virus leak from a lab or not?

17:50The SARS-CoV-2 virus was an animal to human spillover event that occurred in the southwestern section

17:56of the Hunan wholesale seafood market. The reason that this notion that a lab leak exists is because

18:03the Chinese government basically killed all the animals in that seafood market very early on.

18:09Plus, they didn't allow for international scientists to come and evaluate what was going on.

18:15Now, SARS-1, on the other hand, which also was an animal to human spillover event that occurred in

18:19Foshan, China, they didn't kill the animals then. So people could come in and see that, for example,

18:24raccoon dogs could be that intermediary between a bat and a human that allowed the virus then to

18:29enter the human population. But the reason we know is because although they killed the animals,

18:35there was still genetic evidence for that virus in that stall. All the early cases really emanated

18:40from that central stall and then spread from there. The Wuhan Institute of Virology was nine miles away

18:46and had nothing to do with this virus spreading. The reason that this has survived is it's more

18:52interesting, it's more compelling, that there were evildoers, and it also makes it seem like it's

18:56more controllable because probably 70% of the viruses and bacteria that we're infected with were

19:01animal to human spillover events, which is much less controllable. And in fact, now with sort of

19:05deforestation, we live in closer and closer association to bats than we ever did before.

19:10King of Damnation asks, is it true that you get 72 vaccines? No, I'm not sure where the number 72 came

19:17from. Someone made it up. You get vaccines to prevent 17 different diseases in the first 18 years

19:23of life. That can mean typically as many as 33 inoculations during that period of time, depending

19:28on sort of your uptake of COVID vaccine or yearly flu vaccines. Marin1 asks, what does it take to develop

19:34a vaccine and why does it take so long? If you see a virus, for example, that's circulating, that's

19:40causing serious disease in this country, in this world, now you know that this is something worthy

19:44you're preventing. So the first thing you do is you work with experimental animals like mice,

19:49and you have an idea for how you want to make that vaccine. Let's say you want to take the virus and

19:53weaken it, or you want to take the virus and kill it. You're trying your strategy in these experimental

19:57animals to see whether it works. Then you go to phase one studies, where now you try your strategy

20:02in people to see whether or not it seems to induce an immune response which is protective

20:06and that at least it's safe in a few dozen people. Okay, so now you think you've got it. You think you know

20:12the number of doses, you think you've got the right strategy, you think you've got the right

20:16buffering agent, the right stabilizing agent, and so you go to phase two studies, which usually

20:21involves hundreds of people. If that works and you found at this point that at least the vaccine

20:26doesn't cause common side effects, then you go to the definitive trial, the so-called phase three

20:30trial, which is a prospective placebo-controlled trial typically of tens of thousands of people to

20:36show that the vaccine works and that it doesn't have any uncommon side effects. Then you submit

20:42that to the Food and Drug Administration, which usually takes about 10 months to license it. Then

20:46that goes to the CDC, which then recommends the vaccine or doesn't, and that takes time. So I was

20:52fortunate enough to be part of a team at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia that created the rotavirus

20:56vaccine. We did all of that, and it took roughly 26 years to do it. How come it took 26 years to make

21:02the rotavirus vaccine, but it took only 11 months to make a COVID vaccine? And the answer is Operation

21:08Warp Speed. It took the risks out of it for pharmaceutical companies. Now you could do phase

21:12one, phase two, phase three trials. You could build a building. You could make hundreds of millions of

21:16doses, and if it didn't work, then you could just throw it all away at no cost to the company. That

21:21doesn't work that way normally, and that's why it was so fast. Frankly, I think Operation Warp Speed was

21:26one of the greatest medical or scientific achievements in my lifetime. Ornery Blonde asks,

21:30what are vaccination schedules based on? Usually vaccines are given before someone would likely

21:35be infected with a virus or bacteria. So children are inoculated at two months, four months, or six

21:40months of age to protect them against diseases that would likely occur between six months and 24

21:45months of age. So for example, the human papillomavirus vaccine, which is designed to protect against a

21:50sexually transmitted disease, isn't given in infancy. It's given in adolescence at a time before

21:55people are likely to have sex. GeekSumsMe asks, curious minds want to know, how does getting

22:02multiple vaccines at once affect the efficacy? When a vaccine is added to the immunization schedule,

22:08you have to prove that if it's going to be added to the schedule, it doesn't interfere with existing

22:13vaccines and that those existing vaccines don't interfere with your vaccine. There are hundreds

22:17of these studies. They're called concomitant use studies. And so that's how you know.

22:21A Reddit user asks, when did vaccines become a political talking point and who started it?

22:27Public health is to some extent always political because it requires resources, but it doesn't have

22:33to be partisan. I think in the first year of the COVID pandemic, we didn't have anything. We didn't

22:38have antivirals till October. We didn't have monoclonal antibodies till November. We didn't have

22:43vaccines till December to try and prevent a virus that was being spread asymptomatically and could kill

22:48hundreds or thousands of people a day. So all we could do was limit human to human contact. So what

22:52do we do? We shuttered schools. We closed businesses. We restricted travel, quarantined, social distance,

22:58tested, tested, tested. And I think that was seen by a segment of the population as massive government

23:03overreach. And at some level, reasonably, I think we did shutter schools too long. I think we closed

23:08businesses too long. And it was done in a dictatorial, top-down fashion. I think we should have involved the

23:13business community, involved the educational community in those decisions, especially for children who were

23:17special needs children who probably suffered this the most. Then the following year, when we had a

23:21vaccine, you couldn't go anywhere without your vaccine card. And that too was seen as massive

23:26political overreach. And I think with that, we leaned into a libertarian left hook. And I think

23:30we're feeling the punch of that libertarian left hook now. When RFK Jr. says that he is in the position

23:36he's in because of the COVID pandemic, I think he's right. Because with the COVID pandemic, there was a

23:40segment of this population that was really angry. He represents that anger. He represents that disdain for

23:46these public health and government agencies. Razor Beams asks, is RFK Jr. anti-vaccine or has he ever

23:53been? RFK Jr. has been a virulent anti-vaccine activist, science denialist, and conspiracy theorist

23:59for about 20 years. For the last 10 years, he's been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by an

24:04anti-vaccine group called Children's Health Defense. And by anti-vaccine, I mean someone who

24:09consistently puts out misinformation about vaccines that causes people to put themselves or their

24:14family members in harm's way. For 20 years, he's been shouting from the sidelines, putting out his

24:19misinformation about vaccines, scaring people about vaccines. And now he is Secretary of Health

24:24and Human Services, and he's making public policy. As a consequence, what we're seeing is that vaccines

24:29are going to become less available, less affordable, and more feared. 2025 has been a rough year. We've had

24:35more measles cases in this country than we've had in the last 30 years. We've had three people die from

24:40measles this year. We've had about 290 children die of influenza this year. We haven't seen a number

24:45that big since the influenza pandemic in 2009. And what has Robert F. Kennedy Jr. done about this?

24:51Not a thing. He could use his bully pulpit, his famous name, and stand up and say, vaccinate your

24:57children. But he doesn't because he doesn't believe in vaccines. He believes that vaccines have merely

25:02replaced infectious diseases with chronic diseases, and he will do everything he can to try and lessen

25:07vaccine uptake in this country. All right, that's it. That's all the questions. Hope you learned

25:12something. Until next time.

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