RFK Jr. Opposed Critical Covid Vaccines; Risked American Lives
As Americans were dying, RFK Jr. pushed the FDA to remove authorization for Covid-19 vaccines

With the incoming Trump administration, there is no shortage of conspiratorial and downright dangerous individuals crawling their way to power. Whether it is the unqualified and allegedly sexually predatory Pete Hegseth seeking to be the Secretary of Defense or the contrarian Putin-sympathizer Tulsi Gabbard seeking to be the Director of National Intelligence, the incoming Trump administration seems inclined towards dysfunction rather than good governance. 1 2 However, neither of these figures threaten public health quite like RFK Jr., who, in a recent report, was outed for trying to block life-saving COVID-19 vaccines as Americans were dying from the virus.
Denying Critical Healthcare
Yesterday evening, The New York Times reported that RFK Jr., Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, had formally requested the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to withdraw its authorization for COVID-19 vaccinations. 3The request, which came six months after they were lauded by then-President Trump as a “miracle,” was filed through his anti-vaccine organization, the Children’s Health Defense (CHD). 4 5
The petition, which argued for the revoking of the emergency authorization of the COVID-19 vaccination, asserted that:
“Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data reveal unprecedented levels of deaths and other adverse events since the FDA issued Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAS) for three COVID vaccines. As of May 10, 2021, VAERS reported 4,434 deaths of people who received at least one COVID vaccination.”
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, AKA VAERS, is not a mechanism for determining the causation of alleged injury. The VAERS website notes that it doesn’t determine the causality of vaccines as it is "a passive reporting system.”
In other words, there is no mechanism for making this claim whatsoever. RFK Jr. has no basis for making these claims of so-called excess death because the very system he is trying to cite doesn’t even try to do what he is saying it does. Mind you, this is not simply some niche error that only experts can find. This disclaimer is on the About page of VAERS itself. RFK Jr. and the CHD went out of their way to misrepresent data to persuade the government to deny Americans critical healthcare as they died.

The Danger of Anti-Vaccine Activism
As I noted before, the reality of RFK Jr.’s activism is that it is based on nothing. In my article “RFK Jr. is Dangerous” (2024), I noted that RFK Jr. was part of a larger effort of anti-vaccine activists in Samoa to blame the tragic death of two children who received the MMR vaccine. RFK Jr. promoted anti-vaccine activists who argued that the vaccine killed the children despite the actual culprit being a muscle relaxant that was negligently mixed with the vaccine.
As I explained:
It is worth noting that the vaccines didn’t kill those two children, the muscle relaxant did.13 14 RFK’s presence, therefore, was an attempt to spread the idea that vaccines kill when they don’t. Even in the blog post that Kennedy wrote, he continues to spread the lie that the MMR vaccine killed two children by implication. It is worth noting that it was established that the deaths were caused by medical error via the muscle relaxant two years before Kennedy post about his Samoan trip. The nurses responsible were also jailed two years before RFK Jr. made that post.15 He had plenty of time to mention that the vaccine didn’t kill those children and plenty of time to research the issue. He chose not to.
Regardless of his post, Kennedy’s continued presence in Samoa in 2019 was part of a larger effort to promote the idea that vaccines are dangerous. According to Mother Jones, Kennedy, in the middle of a measles epidemic, sent a letter to the Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa, encouraging the Prime minister to:
“… determine, scientifically, if the outbreak was caused by inadequate vaccine coverage or alternatively, by a defective vaccine.” 16
By the time the epidemic was over, 83 people were dead, most of whom were children.17 While RFK Jr. may not have directly caused the epidemic, he certainly contributed to its continuation and openly opposed emergency efforts by the Samoan government to stop anti-vaccine propaganda from spreading even as said lies were killing its people, especially children. 6
This may seem like a simple matter of frustration with bogus, anti-scientific claims, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The request was sent on May 15th, 2021. By this point, the Covid-19 pandemic had killed over half a million Americans and was on track to keep killing.

By August of that year, the science journal Health Affairs reported that the Covid-19 vaccine rollout saved an estimated 140,000 people.7 If RFK Jr. had his way, that would never have happened, and even more people likely would’ve died. Mind you, an estimated 1.2 million Americans died, and an estimated 7 million died globally. 8 In a meta-analysis, the medical journal Cureus found that unvaccinated people were 2.46 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than vaccinated people. 9
The simple reality is that vaccines save lives, and people like RFK Jr. foolishly risk public health when they downplay their importance. The Senate must reject him if they are serious about protecting the public.
Edith Lederer et al., “Gabbard’s Sympathetic Views toward Russia Cause Alarm as Trump’s Pick to Lead Intelligence Services,” AP News, November 17, 2024, sec. Politics, https://apnews.com/article/gabbard-trump-putin-intelligence-russia-syria-a798adaf9cd531a5d0c9329f7597f0f6.
Conor Kelly, “Pete Hegseth’s Senate Hearing: A Disaster Without Consequences,” Substack newsletter, The Progressive American (blog), January 14, 2025,
Christina Jewett, “RFK Jr. Sought to Stop Covid Vaccinations 6 Months After Rollout,” The New York Times, January 17, 2025, sec. Health, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/health/rfk-jr-covid-vaccines.html.
Shannon Bond, “Inside RFK Jr.’s Nonprofit’s Legal Battles over Vaccines and Public Health,” NPR, December 4, 2024, sec. Untangling Disinformation, https://www.npr.org/2024/12/03/nx-s1-5198506/rfk-jr-anti-vaccine-chd-lawsuits.
“Remarks by President Trump at the Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Summit – The White House,” WhiteHouse.Gov, December 8, 2020, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-operation-warp-speed-vaccine-summit/.
Conor Kelly, “RFK Jr. Is Dangerous,” Substack newsletter, The Progressive American (blog), November 20, 2024,
Sumedha Gupta et al., “Vaccinations Against COVID-19 May Have Averted Up To 140,000 Deaths In The United States,” Health Affairs 40, no. 9 (September 2021): 1465–72, https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2021.00619.
Alisa Slisco, “How Many Lives Were Lost to COVID-19? A Look Back Nearly 5 Years Later,” Newsweek, December 19, 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/covid-death-update-2024-virus-chart-2003132.
Anderson E Ikeokwu et al., “Unveiling the Impact of COVID-19 Vaccines: A Meta-Analysis of Survival Rates Among Patients in the United States Based on Vaccination Status,” Cureus 15, no. 8 (n.d.): e43282, https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.43282.