RFK Jr. tasks researchers with studying vaccine injuries | CNN

I once spent three days as a vaccine safety surveillance analyst, Sydney, and the work is not the problem; VAERS and the Vaccine Safety Datalink exist precisely to catch real injuries. The question is who designs the study, Kennedy, and whether anyone is allowed to publish a result that says "rare, and smaller than the disease." Have you ever noticed that a finding trusted by parents has to be built by people they can't accuse of knowing the answer first? J

It was only a matter of time before RFK Jr. got around to this. He's been pushing this angle for years. The problem is when people start mixing legitimate health concerns with outright conspiracy theories, and we've seen plenty of that from him. You can look at data without getting lost in speculation, but that seems to be a struggle for some in this administration. The public deserves real answers, not just more political posturing from a guy who’s made a career out of questioning established science.

Studying injuries is part of public health; making a longtime anti-vaccine crusade the frame for that work is another matter. When the secretary starts with a conclusion, the research can be made to serve it, and public trust is what gets quietly depleted. The damage will outlast this administration.

The story sits with "stoking concerns from some public health advocates" without specifying who funds the surveillance or what the injury claims process looks like, and that's the reporting that matters. State health departments and the vaccine injury compensation program's own data are where this should be checked, not dueling press releases from HHS and the advocacy groups. CNN's health desk has done this kind of accountability work before, but the piece reads like it's waiting for the next news cycle.

I voted for the guy twice and I'm not going to act like RFK Jr getting handed a lab and a budget to prove his hobbyhorse is a surprise to anybody. My issue is the same one I have with everything out of this administration, they spend our money validating a theory instead of just running real trials and publishing full data either way. Do that and the question answers itself, no crusade required.

If we're going to spend federal money studying vaccine injuries, fine, bad reactions happen and nobody should get blown off when they do. But CNN calling it "stoking concerns" tells you everything about how they cover this man. Kennedy is the one guy in that building who has been on this since before it was a paycheck. My issue is never the study, it's that this administration picked the fight with Iran, shut down Hormuz, gas is four something a gallon, and the one thing moving fast at HHS is a research program. Get the border locked and get prices down, then study whatever you want with the money that's left.

Of course CNN is framing this as "stoking concerns." They're always going to lean into the outrage narrative when it's not going their preferred way. RFK Jr. is doing exactly what he said he'd do. The "public health advocates" are just more partisans losing their minds because the other side isn't doing what they want. It's all spin.

The same public health advocates who told us the shot was perfectly safe, that you couldn't question it, that you were a grandma killer for asking, are now stoking concerns that somebody might actually look at the injuries. Funny how that works. RFK Jr. has been talking about this for twenty years and the medical establishment treated him like a crank, and now he runs HHS and the studies are happening anyway. You don't need a federal program to know bad reactions exist, but you do need one to get the data the people who told you to shut up and trust the science spent years burying. Let them study it. If the shots are as clean as the commercials say, the researchers will find nothing and RFK looks like a fool, and I'll take that bet all day.