• givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I’m still optimistic the lifers at HHS who stood firm and didn’t resign are just slowly teaching Lil Bobby what a vaccine is:

    While RFK Jr. recently shifted his stance to concede that vaccinations are actually pretty useful, he has still stopped short of urging skeptics to go and get it. And in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that aired Tuesday night, he appeared to still favor natural immunity through exposure to the virus.

    "It used to be, when I were a kid, that everybody got measles. And the measles gave you lifetime protection against measles infection,” he said, then taking a swipe at the vaccine. “The vaccine doesn’t do that. The vaccine is effective for some people for life, but for many people it wanes.”

    Like, he is damn close to understanding a measles vaccine is measles, just a hindered version that won’t be able to reproduce and cause harm. And real close to understanding the need for booster shots.

    He’s still not there, and it seems to be taking weeks for what can be covered in depth in 15 minutes.

    But eventually I hope they’ll win him over.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        That is not true.

        It’s not all sunshine and rainbows anywhere in the fed right now, but there’s always ways to fight and this is the biggest

    • leisesprecher@feddit.org
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      3 days ago

      I’m really confused about his statement.

      I mean, let’s assume he’s right, and let’s assume that a vaccine only protects you for, say, 20 years. Just measles induced encephalitis alone has a lethality of 0.1%. How many cases of anything more than a mild fever did any vaccine ever cause? He’s not even claiming it’s causing autism or death or transformation into Space Godzilla. So why not just vaccinate? It’s stupid even in his own world.

    • thesohoriots@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      This is how I feel RFK jr has always operated. He does/proposes/thinks progressive things right up until it really goes off the rails. Like, he argued there are medical biases against Black Americans (very much true and well researched), but then segued into the COVID-19 vaccines being medical experiments on minorities and tried to discourage vaccination that way. He usually starts with a good cause but inevitably drags it into conspiracy territory. Also someone is sanewashing his Wikipedia article because there’s a lot of his bullshit missing from a few months ago.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    We are in such a crazy timeline.

    This is the kind of shit you’d see on some forum. If the forum was moderated, they’d eventually get booted.

    When I was debating fucking morons like this, I never suspected that one of these assholes would be put in charge of our fucking health. It’s just so insane.

  • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
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    2 days ago

    I wonder if widescale immunity reset could lead to a resurgence of something like polio which we’ve almost eradicated.

  • Nougat@fedia.io
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    2 days ago

    “The measles gave you lifetime protection against measles infection,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Sean Hannity on Fox News.

    Wouldn’t it be great if there was something else that gave you protection against measles infection, without you actually having to have measles? If only …

    • blarth@thelemmy.club
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      2 days ago

      The measles vaccine is literally a weakened version of the measles virus. It’s just an attenuated measles infection that allows your body to build antibodies against it without a full on infection.

      This guy should have stayed off the raw meat.

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Some vaccines use target antigen production instead of the actual virus itself. This can be accomplished in a number of ways such as the bait and switch of using a specialized strain of a similar virus or by using a target antigen carrier to provide it. In the case of measles, Hemagglutinin protein is the target antigen.

      • kronisk @lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        As I said in a different thread recently, the only issue is that the name “vaccine” has been tainted in the minds of idiots. Rebrand it as “natural immune system therapy” or something, and market it as something the establishment is firmly against, and they’d be lining up to get it.

        None of these people understand what vaccines actually do.

  • farting_contest@startrek.website
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    2 days ago

    My father had measles when he was a little boy, sometime in the 1940s. It nearly killed him. Measles is no joke. Anyone trying to spread it around on purpose should get a bullet in the brain before they have a chance to harm others.

  • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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    3 days ago

    RFK Jr: “It used to be that everybody got measles. And the measles gave you lifetime protection against measles infection. The vaccine doesn’t do that … it used to be that very young kids were protected by breast milk. Women who get vaccinated do not provide that level of immunity.”

  • yesman@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Measles is the mot infections virus we know of. If not for the vaccine, we would all get infected. I guess that’s what he means.

    • The Pantser@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      No, don’t interpret the Pubelicans words. They mean exactly what they say. There is no hidden meaning or “what he really means”. For years the news and media did the “what he probably means” with Trump and it was not true, he literally meant what he said. Don’t do that for this piece of shit, if he can’t speak clearly and truthfully then he’s unfit for his position. We as a people should not have to read between the lines.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      chickenpox while is milder in children, like measles is, its severe in adults which requires hospital treatment.