Kennedy says COVID vaccines no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women
In a 58-second video posted on the social media site X, Kennedy said he removed COVID-19 shots from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations for those groups. No one from the CDC was in the video, and CDC officials referred questions about the announcement to Kennedy and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
U.S. health officials, following recommendations by infectious disease experts, have been urging annual COVID-19 boosters for all Americans ages 6 months and older.
A CDC advisory panel is set to meets in June to make recommendations about the fall shots. Among its options are suggesting shots for high-risk groups but still giving lower-risk people the choice to get vaccinated.
https://apnews.com/article/covid-vaccine-pregnant-women-children-70c358cad726e57d680234c3ecdec926Open linkView original on sh.itjust.works481
Comments100
At least he is making these changes based on the recommendation of the scientific community, right? He is basing this off the recommendation of the scientific community, right guys? GUYS? IS HE??!
I remember seeing a while ago that his deputy resigned because Kennedy didn't actually want to look at dissenting research and points, but just wanted to find evidence to what he already believed
That's the entire playbook for someone in Trump's cabinet.
A parrot would make a better leader. In fact, a dead bear would make a better leader.
The worm was the source of RFK's morality and sanity, until it died from starvation.
*Anakin stare*
I don't think so, Jim.
Narrator: He forced people to take his medical advice.
Our public health is being limited by a conspiracy theorist.
Conversely, healthy people have (mandated) health insurance at minimal cost to the insurance companies.
Or someone who just like making people sick. After Madagascar and other mass fatalities he was involved with, it might just be that he is an old fashioned psychopathic killer whose weapon is germs?
Samoa?
And, with other outbreak. He has been busy. Personally I think he killed hundreds already as practice for his big encore
Screw that guidance. I'll be getting the new COVID shot as soon as its available (in whatever country I have to travel to to get it).
What this really means is that if you want a COVID shot, you'll have to pay out-of-pocket because insurance will now say its not necessary for health.
It looks like the list of at-risk groups eligible for the vaccine will be pretty extensive so you might be able to get it in the US with a bit of creativity.
Just be wary of how you do that.
There are a lot of rules in the ACA (which... is totally gonna be a thing once the trump administration remembers it) against it, but if you get it put down that you are in an at risk group that can have some long term monetary implications.
I'm at the point where I'm wondering if Americans will be able to get the shot at all
People are going to die because of his ignorance. He's a murderer.
"I don't think people should be taking medical advice from me.". RFK Jr, Health and Human Services Secretary, May 14, 2025
I wish hell was real.
Where do you think you are right now?
"Even Jason figured it out?!"
Somewhere worse.
Hey how’s that measles outbreak going
Noted - healthy children and pregnant women should still get the shots.
Insurance companies will likely take their cues from him.
Which means you'd be able to get your vaccine...but if it's not "necessary", you'll have to pay cash.
Excellent point I hadn’t thought about.
Wouldn’t it be in their best interest to cover it though, because Covid would be much more expensive? (Like how the flu shot is covered)
Why would they cover a preventable disease?
They would cover a portion of any doctor’s visits and prescriptions, similar to the flu I’m guessing. Same reason they cover flu shots and a portion of the costs related to diagnosing and recovering from the flu.
Plus they don't cover "sick visits" at all until you meet your deductible anyway.
Let's be honest...how many "healthy" (relatively speaking) Americans in these groups actually meet their deductible each year?
Mine does - I have a copay, but they do pay for some of it.
I can’t comprehend how they can still be salty about the pandemic vaccines.
Sure, lots of things went wrong in the pandemic, but those who got the jab went on with their lives, no health issues.
A lot of people made an ass of themselves and now have to pretend for the rest of their lives that vaccines don’t work.
So many of our problems literally boil down to people refusing to ever admit they were wrong about anything
They've built not only their political career on lies and misinformation, but also their personal lives. If they did admit they were wrong, they'd not only lose their jobs but it would force them to questions every aspect of themselves, and they're far too afraid of what they're going to find to ever do that.
It's very sad, especially when it's family. How do you ever learn anything unless you can admit you're wrong (or simply don't know) about something?
They hated so many things about the pandemic. I don't think the Venn diagram of the various idiotic pet peeves and conspiracy theories is exactly one circle, but there seems to be a lot of resentment for many things coming from the same basic set of people, clustered in the Republican Party. They hated so many things.
The government stepping to help people in need with stimulus checks. This seemed to enrage a lot of them, even if they cashed that check themselves.
The notion that there was a safe and effective vaccine seems to have really driven them up the wall. I don't know if it's because they saw lots of people not relying on "thoughts and prayers" when it came to a pandemic? They really hated being laughed at about the horse dewormer stuff, let me tell you that much.
I think what drove some of them the craziest is that many of them have a need to be in-person to bully someone and Covid probably denied them a lot of that. I noticed the people wanting people "back to work" the most were these types. I think Joe being able to "campaign from his basement" as donnie failed to get re-elected and do the most basic of things to be popular during a pandemic really just drove them to total incoherence. Many of them were already marginal with the Pizzagate and Qanon shit, but Covid drove them right off a cliff. I think Obama getting elected, then Covid drove a large portion of our population into batshit insanity.
I was reading the/r/conservative response to this last night and they see themselves as persecuted and are unable to grasp why people who were unlikely to die from COVID should still take precautions against it. To you and me the story is plain and simple; we do it to hopefully slow the spread and help keep the most vulnerable as safe as possible. Hooray that worked (mostly). Now they say "see it was nothing, the vaccine was and is fake." They've completely forgotten about the literal truck loads of corpses and that COVID couple have been magnitudes worse if more variants had surfaced.
It's awful but I kinda wish we did let it get that bad, if enough of those halfwits died the whole world would be better off.
Many of them will never get over vaccine mandates.
And many of them literally think that Fauci should get the death penalty for some supposed transgression. Nothing they say is even remotely rooted in reality and it's all quite incoherent, but boy are they mad.
My husband and I got Covid last week. Probably the new variant. Our latest booster was 6 months ago. This variant KICKED OUR ASS. We are on week 2 of coughing, wheezing, and feeling extremely tired. Lost a bunch of income from our respective businesses because we were not able to do any work at all.
This was a stark reminder of how important it is to keep up with boosters. I hope that we can find a way to keep getting them, even if that means paying out of pocket or lying.
That is just not a proper headline... You are missing critical context? More like, "Kennedy, who recently willingly swam in literal shit with his own grandchildren, says..."
"Kennedy, who's brain was 'partially' eaten by a worm, says..."
i dont actually trust Kennedy to know anything about health though...
lol y'all elected the dude from men in black to lead the fucking health department. bobbly looks like an insect crawled inside him, took over, and is now trying its best to pass as human.
oh, wait
It is not an elected position. We just elected the dumbass who appointed him.
And the fucking morons who confirmed him.
i knew that. i think my brain just skipped a beat. must be my worm
Hey now, no need to insult my boy Edgar.
Private Pyle would probably shoot you for that
Didn't he just say not to take health advice from him a couple weeks ago?
But this announcement means your aren't taking health advice from him, it is now the official policy of the government.
"Its not me saying it, its the CDC!" ugh
This is what happens when the Health Secretary is someone who never actually studied medicine, practiced as a doctor, or even spent time as a nurse.
Good news, the Secretary of Defense thinks the same!
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47201923
There are public health and epidemiology degrees that would be more useful for this role than studying medicine (although doing both would be helpful, and many do). Brainworm doesn't have any qualifications so it's immaterial, of course.
That could be advantageous, but not really necessary for an administrator position.
It wouldn't be so bad if he was relying on experts for his information. But he's balls deep in conspiracy theories, spreads disinformation, and seems to be completely unqualified to speak on any matters of public health.
He's causing more harm than good, and his duty is supposed to be to benefit public health!
They need to understand the materials they are provided.
It is necessary. Calling the head of HHS just an administrative position is part of the problem here.
Depends what materials they are provided.
In terms of technical understanding the administor should just see
"My expert in X recommends A, B or C"
"My expert in Y recommends D, E or F"
"I have resources Z"
"I choose B and D"
They don't necessarily need to know anything about X or Y. In fact it would be preferable if they didn't have any half baked ideas about X or Y formed from conspiracy theories.
They need to understand the implications of what each expert is recommending.
They absolutely need to be capable of understanding the materials.
Edit: Missing letters, thanks android keyboard
Maybe an example will help illustrate my point. Leslie Groves was the administrator of the Manhattan Project without needing to know any science.
I dont think I'd put a man with decades of corps of engineering experience in the category of being without any knowledge or understanding. He had a pretty significant hand in the Manhattan project because of his experience (including the creation of the pentagon), and specifically contributed to the Manhattan project in terms of raw materials, site selection, even making selections on isotope separation based on his prior experience and the requirements around it.
I don't think you're giving him enough credit. He is precisely the kind of person who understood the implications of different resources being used, how different methods would impact progress, etc.
He's a great example of understanding the issues around the decisions being made, not just making a selection from a menu of options.
Thats the knowledge being discussed. Calling it "just administrative" is ignoring huge amounts of what Groves had in-depth knowledge of.
Man, RFK really wants the US to just die out, make sure the next generation is dead or fucked up.
Let's not go to the US, it's a silly place
Yep, the world will soon belong to China and the EU, thanks to the self destructive actions of Rusia and the US.
I believe this is the american reichs version of Aktion T4
His latest proclamation is he wants anyone with an NIH grant to be required to publish in a gov run journal instead of, say, Lancet or Nature. He feels they are "corrupt" without providing a shred of evidence, never mind they are peer reviewed. So he'd prefer a gov system where papers could be rejected because they don't align with his conspiracy views and they wouldn't be allowed to publish elsewhere.
So many women about to be arrested for murder when their body spontaneously aborts a fetus due to a preventable COVID infection
It's slower than Hitler's gas chambers, but they don't have to deal with the bodies.
Bodies of Covid-19 victims are still stored in refrigerated trucks in NYC
Eeehhh, may 2021, 4 years ago. No need for misinformation
I'm not saying it's happening now.
badelf intimated there wouldn't be any dead bodies to deal with, but there were during the pandemic ... and if we get hit with a variant that kills more (or quicker) there will be again.
You are right of course. I was thinking of normal endemic die off. Now that they defunded all vaccine research, the probability of another sh1t show like COVID is extremely likely.
I clicked that article fully prepared for it to be dated 2025, and immensely relieved when it was dated 2021 😷
Oh the CDC said this?
What do doctors and scientists in respectable EU nations say?
EDIT: Sorry, this is poop river diver Kennedy saying this, not the CDC. I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe I have a brain worm.
No the CDC did not say this. RFK Jr did, I'm not going to be surprised when the CDC panel has different recommendations. Which shouldn't really happen with the HHS secretary since the CDC falls under the HHS but we haven't had someone as wildly unqualified as RFK Jr in that position (at least not that I know of) so normally the CDC and HHS leadership are in lockstep.
You're right. I guess I read "Kennedy" and interpreted "CDC."
I hope someone inside has the guts to speak out.
I wouldn't say I'm right and you're wrong per se just that I don't think the rest of the agencies/people in the HHS necessarily signed off on or agree with RFK.
You're right though that the person who is head of the organization (Health and Human Services) the CDC belongs to did say that stuff, which is scary because it gives it credence.
I'm just trying to frame it ... more ... positively? Or at least trying to hush the part of me yelling RED ALERT 😕
Germany's RKI doesn't recommend the vaccine for anyone below 60 except people at risk or working in medical fields, same with the flu vaccine.
Our public health insurances do not cover non-recommended vaccines as the board members are personally held liable if they cover what isn't necessary or economical. Not if they cover too little though.
As such, only a small minority of Germans have received COVID boosters since ~2022.
That’s interesting to know. Thanks!
Much as I hate to sound like I'm defending Kennedy... The WHO doesn't recommend routine vaccination for healthy adults under 50 beyond the first dose.
Already trying to rebrand rfk jr?
Thank goodness we have the stupid conservatives in power so they can politicize everything.
Agreed. This is not even a political decision. Europe is doing exactly the same
(1) That link is for the Danish Health Authority, not all of Europe. (2) The Danish Health Authority recommends pregnant women get vaccinated, whereas RFK said it will NO LONGER be recommended for pregnant women to get vaccinated. So they are opposite. They align on saying healthy children and under 65 are not being recommended to get vaccination. (3) RFK made it political by making this recommendation BEFORE the public scientific review panel made its analysis of vaccine recommendations for the year. i.e. a political appointee made a decision for a scientific community without their input.
Same in UK including no pregnancies. I'm not going through every country in Europe. The point is that the US rules are not out of step with the rest of the world.
RFK and US medical insurance rules may be crazy, but the science is pretty standard.
Kennedy just needs to let the worm run things.
This about sums up our collective future...
He'll ban the diagnosis of Autism next, then declare that it's cured.
Then HitlerPig will take credit for it, and tell the world that he cured Autism all by himself.
I think this makes as much sense as saying you don't need to disinfect surfaces anymore, because a "surface" is immune from infection.
A few things to get out of the way
I don't disagree with this policy though. (...and that is this post obliterated).
We already take a conservative approach with medical treatments and pregnancy, including some forms of vaccination which we do not give to pregnant women. I have absolutely no problem being conservative with treatment which work in a different way to previous treatments.
With young children, I don't think the benefit / harm calculation for the individual ever supported giving it to them. The probability that catching COVID would cause you serious harm was always lower the younger you were. Whereas the probability for side effects was always there. The only rationale to vaccinate children was to limit transmission in the population which is something it utterly failed to do.
The role out of the COVID treatments was (IMHO) a high risk strategy but arguably necessary because of the situation we were in. We're now in a different situation. We should be re-evaluating the decision made in a time of crisis to see if they still hold up.
I thought they've always been very conservative about pregnant woman and very young kids for vaccines (and other treatments in general).
Gotta keep the ambrosia to the elites.
258 million. That is the death count they are looking for.
I'm glad this story is finally getting traction.
Could we maybe not use ableist slurs?
Mm... he's an antivax loon but I'd like to remind people that other respected organizations (e.g. WHO) don't recommend it for healthy children who have had at least one dose. I'm not sure about 2025, but that was the guideline at least back in 2024.
Pregnant women are suggested to have at least a booster, once per pregnancy, though. At least, according to WHO.
That's actually true:
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/covid-19-vaccines/advice
Yes, that's what I was referring to but wasn't in a good position to search up for the post. Thank you for sharing it!
🇩🇪 likewise.