I have been critical about John Ioannidis over a number of his statements about the COVID-19 pandemic. Now he’s done it again, producing a poor-quality paper whose unwritten assumptions suggest that the Carl Sagan effect, in which scientists are penalized professionally by their peers for becoming popular science communicators, still holds considerable sway in science and medicine.
RFK Jr. has long been a leader in the antivaccine movement. Unfortunately, the pandemic has turbocharged his influence, and he’s cranked his antivax fear mongering to 11.
Increasingly, antivaxxers and antimaskers have been targeting state medical boards. In Tennessee, it has been political. In California, it has been more physical. The antivax war on state medical boards has begun.
NPR recently did a story about the alignment of the Republican Party and antivaxxers. Come for the freedom, stay for the antivax pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.
The FDA’s VRBPAC and the CDC’s ACIP are the two committees that approve vaccines in the US and issue recommendations regarding who should receive which vaccine and when. Predictably, after the recent recommendation that children 5-11 receive the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is portraying committee members as thralls of big pharma.
