by Paul Bean
Vermont Sens. Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch have both continued their efforts and pressures calling on Health and Humans Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr to step down from his appointment for what they are calling vaccine misinformation and a destruction of public health.
“This is what happens when we have a Health and Human Services Secretary who undermines the importance of vaccines during a growing measles outbreak and the rise of a new COVID-19 strain,” wrote Peter Welch on X yesterday evening in response to an Associated Press article titled, “Florida plans to become first state to eliminate all childhood vaccine mandates.” Welch continued, “This isn’t making America healthy, it’s moving us toward a health crisis.”
AP says that Dr. Joseph Ladapo, the Florida Surgeon General, announced the state’s decision to eliminate all childhood vaccine mandates on Wednesday, describing existing school and other mandates as “immoral” violations of personal rights that restrict parents’ ability to make healthcare choices for their children.
Tuesday morning Sept. 9 Sanders hosted a Live press conference with the American Public Health Association, Doctors for America, and the National Medical Association to “highlight the lifesaving importance of vaccines.”
“We are now witnessing a full blown war on science, public health, and on truth itself,” said Sanders at the joint press conference. “At this unprecedented moment in American history it is important to share the facts as clearly as we can. So I will take this opportunity to make a simple point, it could not be simpler…Vaccines work! Period.”
“We need an HHS Secretary who respects science and does not make policy based on conspiracy theories,” Senator Bernie Sanders wrote in an X post last week (4/4). “Vaccines are safe and effective. Kennedy is threatening the health of our kids and all Americans. He must resign.”
To back up his statement he shared a study by Lancet that concludes that since 1974 vaccination has averted 154 million deaths, including 146 million among children younger than 5 years of whom 101 million were infants younger than 1 year.
“Despite all of the evidence, again, not only in the United States, from scientists and Doctors all over the world, we now have a Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary Kennedy, who continues to sow doubt about the efficacy of vaccines,” said Sanders.
Secretary Kennedy recently has pointed to emerging data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showing rare instances of myocarditis and pericarditis linked to mRNA vaccines, with an incidence rate of approximately 1-5 cases per 100,000 doses, particularly among young males.
Back in April, Kennedy pledged to identify the causes of autism by September 2025, as announced during a cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump.
When asked by President Trump in August how this was going, Secretary Kennedy said “We’re finding interventions that are clearly, almost certainly, causing autism, and we’re going to be able to address those in September.”
Yesterday, President Donald Trump posted to his social media Platform, Truth Social, a video of what appears to be doctors and researchers explaining the dangers and side effects thiymersol, a mercury-containing compound that has been used as a preservative in multi-dose vials of some vaccines since the 1930s. They claim in the video that one of the side effects of thiymersol is neurological diseases amongst children, especially autism.
As shown on Trump’s post, the video showed the text “They’re ALL Poison, Every. Single. One.”
Many Vermonters saw last week’s clash between Senator Bernie Sanders and Robert Kennedy Jr in the Senate Finance Hearing on vaccines.
Following the clash, Robert Kennedy told Fox News, “I’ve come to realize those hearings are preformative theaters…. All of those senators are taking hundreds of thousands of dollars, including in some case millions of dollars from the pharmaceutical industry.”
Earlier this year, During a Senate confirmation hearing for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination as Health and Human Services Secretary on January 29,, Kennedy accused Senator Bernie Sanders of accepting $1.5 million from the pharmaceutical industry in 2020. ”So they don’t want to hear the answers to the questions they ask me,” finished RFK Jr.. “They want to make a little speech and then shut me down.”
A post by the Independent Medical Alliance claims that Sanders leads all senators in Big Pharma contributions, Welch also has accepted contributions totaling $176,917.