Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg railed against Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday, using his opening remarks at a public health conference to warn that Kennedy would be “beyond dangerous” as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and putting him in charge would be “medical malpractice on a mass scale.”
Speaking during the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg American Health Summit in Washington, Bloomberg said he wanted Senate Republicans to convince President-elect Trump to “rethink” Kennedy’s nomination.
“If the president-elect doesn’t reconsider the nomination, the Senate has a duty to our whole country, but especially to our children, to vote no,” Bloomberg said.
Bloomberg noted that Kennedy has attacked Operation Warp Speed, the program that fast-tracked a COVID-19 vaccine in record time. Bloomberg said it could be considered Trump’s biggest first-term accomplishment, yet Kennedy has called the shot the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”
“If RFK Jr. had been in office during Trump’s first term, would Operation Warp Speed have even happened? And if it did, how long would the vaccines have been delayed? How many fewer people would have gotten the shot? How many more people would have died?” Bloomberg asked.
Kennedy has a long history of vaccine skepticism, including spreading the false and discredited claim that the measles, mumps and rubella shot can cause autism.
If he’s confirmed as Health and Human Services secretary, Kennedy would oversee the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration, the agencies in charge of reviewing and approving new vaccines and recommending which shots people should get.
“Parents who have been swayed by vaccines skepticism love their children and want to protect them, and we need leaders who will help them do that, not conspiracy theorists who will scare them into decisions that will put their children at risk of disease and even death,” Bloomberg said.
Bloomberg added that he and Kennedy share a desire to promote healthy eating and fight the use of processed foods. But that’s where their similarities end.
“I’ve heard a few Democrats express some sympathy for Kennedy because he has been critical of the junk food and processed food industries, but we don’t need to choose between someone who is healthy food and pro vaccine,” Bloomberg said. “Americans deserve both.”
Another speaker at the conference, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) also sounded the alarm about Kennedy and his desire to shift the health agencies’ focus away from infectious diseases.
“There could not be a more dangerous idea. If we cut back key research programs and lose our progress on innovative therapies, then plain and simple, people will die,” DeLauro said.
DeLauro, the ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee, said Kennedy’s “record of disinformation and death is long and global.”
She criticized Kennedy for discouraging vaccinations in Samoa, where a 2019 measles outbreak killed 83 people, mostly children.
“This is where we are at. The stakes of this fight and the stakes behind every decision that the Health and Human Services Secretary has to make are deadly serious,” DeLauro said.
