This week, Secretary of Well being and Human Providers Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — the person entrusted with safeguarding the well being of 330 million People — posted a 90-second video of himself and Child Rock doing shirtless calisthenics in blue denims, using a stationary bike within the sauna, doing a slow-motion chilly plunge and toasting glasses of entire milk within the pool. The web responded with memes and mockery. I sat in my workplace at UCLA, the place I’ve practiced pulmonary and important care medication for greater than 40 years, and I didn’t snicker.
I felt the anger, actual anger.
As a result of right here’s what was not in that video: the greater than 2,200 People who contracted measles in 2025, in a rustic that successfully eradicated the illness in 2000. The three who died. The greater than 900 confirmed circumstances already reported within the U.S. in 2026. The youngsters in South Carolina — totaling almost 1,000 circumstances from a single outbreak — whose dad and mom had been persuaded by rhetoric this secretary spent many years amplifying about how the MMR vaccine was extra harmful than the illness. It’s not. Many years of rigorous science have proven it’s not.
When the absurd reaches a sure pitch, mockery is a pure protection. However I fear we’ve turn into so numbed by spectacle, so conditioned to deal with governance as leisure, that we’ve misplaced our capability for the emotion this second calls for: real outrage. The true factor. The sort that mobilizes physicians, dad and mom and legislators to say, “This isn’t acceptable.”
Let me be exact about what Kennedy has achieved in his first 12 months as HHS Secretary, as a result of the shirtless antics are designed to distract you from it.
He fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — the skilled panel that has guided nationwide vaccine coverage for many years — and changed them with vaccine skeptics. He compelled out Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention Director Susan Monarez. He reduce Nationwide Institutes of Well being funding, gutting most cancers analysis and dependancy remedy applications. He stopped federal help for mRNA analysis — one of the crucial vital advances within the historical past of immunology, being developed for vaccines towards a number of sclerosis, influenza and sure cancers. When the FDA initially rejected Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine this month on what specialists known as ideological grounds, solely public backlash compelled a reversal — throughout one of many worst flu seasons in fashionable historical past.
Then, final month, Kennedy gutted the childhood immunization schedule, lowering universally really helpful vaccines from ages 11 to 17. Hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus and influenza had been relegated to “shared scientific decision-making” — a bureaucratic euphemism for abandonment. Routine suggestions set off automated prompts in digital medical data and permit nurses to vaccinate below standing orders. Shared decision-making requires a doctor at each vaccination resolution, creating bottlenecks that may scale back uptake among the many greater than 100 million People with out common major care entry.
Throughout Kennedy’s 2025 affirmation hearings, he informed senators below oath: “I help vaccines. I help the childhood schedule.” Sen. Invoice Cassidy, a Republican doctor from Louisiana, voted to substantiate Kennedy explicitly on these pledges. Each pledge has been damaged. The lone Republican who voted towards him — Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a polio survivor — warned his colleagues. They didn’t pay attention. Belief within the CDC has since plummeted from 66% to 54%. Confidence in MMR vaccine college necessities amongst Republicans has fallen 27 factors in simply six years.
These usually are not ballot numbers. They’re harbingers of future outbreaks, future hospitalizations, future deaths.
I’ve seen this earlier than. I used to be an intern at UCLA within the early Nineteen Eighties when the primary circumstances of what we’d come to name AIDS appeared on our wards — younger males dying of infections we had by no means seen in beforehand wholesome sufferers. I watched an establishment and a authorities fail to reply with the urgency a nascent epidemic demanded, and I watched folks die due to that failure. The lesson was not refined: When public well being management falters, when ideology supplants science, when the folks in cost determine that politics issues greater than medication, folks die. Not within the summary. In beds. In hospitals. In Los Angeles.
I’m watching it occur once more. The US is poised to lose its measles elimination standing — an achievement that took many years to construct. Kennedy’s newly appointed CDC deputy Ralph Abraham responded to this prospect by calling it “simply the price of doing enterprise.” Three folks died of measles on this nation final 12 months. The price of doing enterprise.
So, once I see the secretary of Well being and Human Providers consuming entire milk in a pool with Child Rock, I don’t see comedy; nor ought to the response be memes or sarcasm. I see a person who bears direct accountability for the resurgence of vaccine-preventable illness in probably the most medically superior nation on Earth, performing a grotesque pantomime of wellness whereas kids get sick. That isn’t a joke. It’s a scandal. And it’s long gone time we handled it as one.
Robert B. Shpiner is a scientific professor of medication at UCLA David Geffen Faculty of Medication, with over 40 years of ICU expertise at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Middle.
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Concepts expressed within the piece
The writer argues that Secretary Kennedy’s public relations actions, akin to filming shirtless calisthenics with Child Rock, function a distraction from consequential coverage selections that threaten public well being. The performative nature of those actions obscures the substantive hurt being triggered to vaccine confidence and illness prevention infrastructure.
Kennedy has systematically dismantled the scientific basis of vaccine coverage by firing all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and changing them with vaccine skeptics, in keeping with the article. This has immediately contributed to a dramatic resurgence of measles, with greater than 2,200 circumstances in 2025 and over 900 circumstances already reported in early 2026, together with almost 1,000 circumstances from a single outbreak in South Carolina.
The writer contends that Kennedy broke express commitments made throughout his 2025 affirmation hearings, when he pledged help for vaccines and the childhood immunization schedule. As a substitute, the secretary gutted the childhood immunization schedule by transferring routine vaccines like hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, and influenza from common suggestions to “shared scientific decision-making,” a change that may scale back vaccination entry for over 100 million People with out common major care entry.
The writer emphasizes that these coverage modifications have demonstrably eroded public belief in public well being establishments, with CDC confidence dropping from 66% to 54% and Republican confidence in MMR vaccine college necessities falling 27 factors in six years. These declining belief metrics usually are not merely statistical however signify precursors to future illness outbreaks, hospitalizations, and deaths.
Totally different views on the subject
The administration frames the management reorganization as an effort to streamline administration and advance well being coverage priorities, quite than undermine vaccine security[1]. The White Home has characterised the modifications as strengthening deal with Kennedy’s “Make America Wholesome Once more” agenda forward of midterm elections[1].
The administration’s said priorities for these organizational modifications embody drug pricing reforms, dietary guideline changes, elimination of synthetic meals dyes, and initiatives to extend healthcare affordability via Trump’s most-favored-nation drug pricing insurance policies[1]. These reforms are positioned as addressing broader well being system effectivity and accessibility quite than vaccine coverage modifications.
Kennedy’s defenders level to his expanded emphasis on regulatory reforms and price controls as reflecting a special method to federal well being administration[1]. The reorganization locations leaders with roles in drug worth negotiations and Medicare Benefit price oversight in expanded positions, suggesting a deal with healthcare economics and systemic effectivity[1].
