In the absence of a safe and sane national wellness policy, form a West Coast Health Alliance with California, Oregon and Washington?
Yes, please.
And, breaking news. Hawaii says it’s in as well. Hawaiians are literally the healthiest people in the United States. Welcome, Islanders! E komo mai!
Why not invite British Columbia in, too? Oh — wait. Canada doesn’t need any more meddling from south of the border. But we’ll take your rational advice anyway, given the know-nothing medical insanity coming out of the White House.
When Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, Tina Kotek of Oregon and Bob Ferguson of Washington announced Wednesday the creation of the alliance to provide science-based recommendations at a time when the nation’s top public health agency is reversing long-standing vaccine guidance, they couldn’t quite have imagined the extent to which on Thursday Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would show just how patently nuts he is.
He spent three red-faced hours dismissing the concerns of senators, Democrats and Republicans, who grilled the longtime vaccine skeptic with zero medical training on why he has questioned the value of immunizations for America’s children; fired the Centers for Disease Controls independent advisers on vaccines; fired the centers’ director less than a month into the job because she wouldn’t oust her top officials and kowtow to the anti-vaccine advisers he has appointed.
Want a COVID booster during this late-summer surge in illnesses? Well, thanks to Kennedy’s recent edict, pharmacies in some states are requiring that even people who are at high risk get prescriptions for the shots. Those ones we used to be able to pop into the CVS and get for free within minutes.
“Effectively, we’re denying people vaccine,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana and actual physician, who voted to confirm Kennedy after the eccentric, entitled rich kid and longtime heroin addict lied to him about his stance on vaccinations.
And yet Kennedy yelled at Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-New Hampshire, for “just making stuff up” after she spoke the truth — that Kennedy had made it harder for Americans to get vaccines.
Kennedy canceled $500 million in mRNA research and continues to claim that the mRNA COVID shots, which have saved tens of millions of lives here and around the world, are the “deadliest” vaccines ever made.
He told Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, that he didn’t know how many Americans had died of COVID, when the answer — over 1.2 million — is perfectly easy to find. Nor did he know how many COVID-related deaths have been prevented by the fine work of Operation Warp Speed during the first Trump administration. “The problem is they didn’t have the data,” Kennedy said. Yes, they do. A major study in Scotland showed the COVID vaccines lowered the risk of hospitalization by 91%.
To be charitable, Kennedy, feisty but not very bright, has a boss to please, and he does his best to do so. Earlier in the week, Trump had written in a crazy frenzy on social media that he too can’t find out if the highly effective vaccines work. “I want the answer, and I want it NOW,” he wrote. He complained that Pfizer had shown startling positive figures to him, but “they never seem to show those results to the public. Why not???” This is simply a lie.
“In your confirmation hearings, you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines. Since then, I’ve grown deeply concerned,” another Republican physician, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, told Kennedy at the hearing. “I’ve been hearing from many of my medical colleagues, and there are real concerns that safe, proven vaccines like measles, like hepatitis B and others, could be in jeopardy and that would put Americans at risk and reverse decades of progress.”
And RFK Jr. just kept yelling.
Why is this troubled, obtuse conspiracy-monger in charge of health care in America?
West Coast, best coast.
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.