RFK JR.—THE NEXT ONE OUTTA HERE! PART 1

BACK IN NOVEMBER 2024, I WAS ASTOUNDED AND DISMAYED when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was named to be in charge of public health: “darkly satirical given his brain-worm, whale-head, bear-corpse, and anti-vaccine proclivities, not to say other batshit conspiracy craziness.” And it hasn’t gotten any better since then.

Image by Alex Brandon/Associated Press from the Los Angeles Times via SimanaitisSays, December 23, 2025.

Here, in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow, are tidbits gleaned from several of RFK Jr.’s most recent assaults on medicine, science, arithmetic, and rationality. 

How many more deaths shall we ascribe to his ideologies?

Measles. Rebecca Archer, a mother in Salford, England, offers a Guest Essay “Measles Took My Daughter. This Is What I Want Everyone to Know,” The New York Times, April 21, 2026: “Because both Britain and the United States are confronting outbreaks, I am sharing my story. Parents should know just how dangerous this disease is.”

“This was 2013,” Archer describes, “and Manchester, England, where we lived, was experiencing a measles outbreak that resulted in more than 1,000 suspected cases. A 1998 study by a British doctor, Andrew Wakefield, linking the measles mumps and rubella vaccine to autism had caused vaccination rates to plummet. The study [see SimanaitisSays] was later retracted and Mr. Wakefield stripped of his medical license, but the damage had been done. In 2013, most of the cases were among school-age children whose parents had refused to give them the vaccine, which is not compulsory in Britain, or among babies too young to be vaccinated, like my daughter. (The first measles vaccine is usually given at 1 year of age.).”

Her daughter Renae, 5 months old at the time, caught measles from an unknown source (its infection rate is very high). 

“While I was concerned about Renae,” Archer recounts, “I wasn’t panicked by the diagnosis…. Renae would feel poorly for a bit, and then get better.” 

Archer continues, “What I didn’t know was that measles can cause long-term complications. A child can seem fine while the virus slowly replicates in her brain, poised to exact a terrible toll years later.”

Photo illustration by Amy Friend for The New York Times based on a photograph of Renae provided by her mother.

Alas, a decade later, Archer relates, “Renae had subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, a rare complication of measles. The doctors told me it was fatal, and there was nothing else they could do.” Renae died, nine days before her 11th birthday, on September 25, 2023.

Measles 95-Percent Vaccine Target. Archer observes, “In January of this year, Britain lost its measles elimination status. Our national M.M.R. vaccination rate hovers at 84 percent, far below the 95 percent target set by the World Health Organization.”

Consider: Trump withdrew the U.S. from the WHO on January 20, 2025. The White House website touting this action has the audacity to state “Welcome to the Golden Age.”

Also, Archer observes, “In the United States, where schoolchildren are required to be vaccinated against measles, the national vaccination rate is 92 percent. Many states also allow for exemptions to vaccine requirements, and as a result, U.S. vaccination rates are uneven. Last year, the United States saw its highest rate of measles cases in more than three decades and the country may soon lose its measles elimination status as well. Despite this, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he doesn’t think the government should be mandating vaccines, and that they should be a matter of personal choice.”

One might think that a Secretary of Health and Human Services would be helpful in people making such a choice. One would be wrong.

In Part 2 we’ll see more evidence of this ideology over common sense. 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2026