RFK Jr's COVID-19 vaccine rollback will kill people — including kids.
Revoking vaccine guidance is a public health failure with deadly, costly, and avoidable consequences.
This newsletter is free, but it’s able to sustain itself from support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. If you value science-based information, consider upgrading to a paid subscription:
RFK Jr is at it again.
MAHA doesn’t mean “Make America Healthy Again” —it means Make America Hazardous Again.
Every single thing RFK Jr. does doesn’t just harm us in the present, but it will cause generational damage. He’s spent decades undermining public health for profit, even though media outlets have continued to sanitize this history. He has had a lucrative legal career targeting scientific innovation. You can find my prior takedowns on his wars on agriculture science, vaccines, and general “chemicals” here, his latest atrocities may be the most dangerous yet.
This time? He posted a video on Twitter (no, I will not call it X) with fellow pseudoscience charlatans Marty Makary and Jay Bhattacharya by his side, announcing that the CDC will no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for children (anyone under 18) and during pregnancy.
Why? Not because of scientific evidence. Not because of a new revelatory study.
Because RFK Jr. supposedly “reviewed” the data and the FDA and NIH recommendations. That is like me saying I “reviewed” an Airbus manual and am now equipped to pilot your next transatlantic flight. Spoiler: I’m not. And he is not equipped to speak on ANY science topics.
He claims the risks of COVID vaccines outweigh the benefits in kids, and that there isn’t enough data in pregnancy to justify their use.
He is objectively, provably, and dangerously wrong. On all accounts.
COVID-19 vaccines save lives. They reduce complications. They protect the most vulnerable. And now, thanks to RFK Jr., fewer people will have access to them, especially those already at the highest risk. His actions will cause even more preventable illness and death now that he has control of our Federal health agencies.
Let’s unpack how egregiously wrong he is.
Pregnancy increases the risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes.
That’s not opinion—it’s an objective fact, backed by years of data from around the world. That doesn’t change no matter how much RFK Jr lies.
It’s literally why the CDC has pregnancy and recent pregnancy listed as a conclusive risk factors for severe COVID-19 outcomes, based on global systematic reviews, cohort and case control studies, and epidemiologic analyses.
But I guess RFK Jr. has decided that he knows more than, literally every credible scientific expert, right?
Even a textbook pregnancy is a medically risky condition. Pregnancy is 14-40 times more dangerous than an abortion.
In the U.S., 33 out of every 100,000 pregnancies end in maternal death—and that rate has increased in recent years. Black women are three times more likely to die during pregnancy than white women, with mortality rates of 69.9 per 100,000 (can we finally have universal healthcare?)
Pregnancy complications like preeclampsia, hypertension, ectopic pregnancy, anemia, hemorrhage, placental issues, and cardiovascular strain kill people. COVID-19 can exacerbate many of these complications—and conversely, having any of these conditions during pregnancy can increase your risk of severe COVID-19. Severe COVID-19? Increased risk of death.
COVID-19 complications during pregnancy include increased risk of preeclampsia, hypertension, cardiovascular issues, as well as impacts on fetal development resulting in preterm birth, low birth weight, spontaneous abortion (this is colloquially called a miscarriage) and stillbirth.
The risk of COVID during pregnancy?
70% increased risk of death
3x higher risk of ICU admission
2.4x more likely to need ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation)
RFK Jr.’s COVID-19 vaccine policy will kill more pregnant people—especially low-income and Black Americans, all while he claims he wants to make America healthy.
COVID-19 vaccines during pregnancy are safe—every data set says the same thing.
RFK Jr claims that the risks of COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy are unknown. That’s code for “I’m an anti-science activist that profits off lies.”
Rates of adverse pregnancy outcomes such as miscarriage, preterm birth, low birth weight after COVID-19 vaccination do not differ from baseline population-level rates. That’s how we know COVID-19 vaccines are safe during pregnancy.
Here’s the data:
Preterm birth occurs in 8–15% of all pregnancies. In vaccinated people? 9.4%.
Miscarriage (spontaneous abortion) occurs in 10–26% of pregnancies. In vaccinated groups? 12.6%.
Congenital anomalies affect ~3% of births. Among vaccinated? 2.2%.
So what changed? Nothing. That’s the point. COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy does not increase baseline risks, which has been replicated in US data (including through CDC’s V-Safe), European studies, and multi-country analyses.
A population-based study from Norway and Sweden looked at neonatal outcomes after COVID-19 vaccines. They also conclude that mRNA vaccination during pregnancy did not increase risk of any adverse events for the infant.
Even better:
People who were not vaccinated during pregnancy had higher rates of strokes, Bell’s palsy, heart attacks, and seizures than those who were vaccinated during pregnancy.
And adverse effects people who were vaccinated during pregnancy did experience? Fever, fatigue, and swollen lymph nodes, which are known and expected reactogenicity symptoms that are signs your immune system is responding to a vaccine.
Every single data set to date has found that COVID-19 vaccines are safe among all groups, including during pregnancy.
COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy saves lives.
COVID vaccines don’t just protect the pregnant person—they protect the fetus and newborn. Contrary to RFK Jr’s lies, we have lots of data to this effect, too.
The INTERCOVID-2022 study across 18 different countries found that being unvaccinated during pregnancy increased risks of maternal morbidity and mortality as well as perinatal complications (including fetal or infant death). Vaccination was 74% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19, including severe illness and associated complications (ICU, ECMO, mechanical ventilation, preterm or stillbirth, and death).
A study from Norway and Sweden found lower risk of brain bleeds, intracranial hemorrhage, cerebral ischemia (oxygen deprivation) and resulting brain damage, and neonatal death among infants born to mothers who were vaccinated during pregnancy.
A multi-site US study (New England Journal of Medicine) also published in the CDC’s MMWR (do you think RFK Jr is going to make them delete this?) showed that mRNA COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy was 61% effective at preventing COVID-19 hospitalization in infants 6 months and younger. (This group is not eligible to be vaccinated and are at high risk of complications due to all infections as a result of their immature immune system)
Vaccination later in pregnancy (from 21 weeks to 14 days prior to delivery) showed the biggest impact, with 80% effectiveness at preventing COVID-19 hospitalization in infants under 6 months. This is because of the nature of transplacental transfer and immune system development during gestation.
RFK Jr. is peddling policies that will kill babies too.
Kids shouldn’t be dying of preventable infectious diseases.
RFK Jr and other anti-vaccine activists love to diminish the impact of infectious and vaccine-preventable illnesses on kids. People love to say kids are “low risk,” while not understanding how to assess risk.
I can’t tell you how often I hear some version of “well only 1 in 1000 cases among kids cause death, which means they aren’t really high risk, so why should we vaccinate?”
This rhetoric can be applied to pretty much every infectious disease we have a vaccine for: COVID-19, measles (1 in 1000 is the actual mortality rate of measles in developed nations which is why I used that), whooping cough, you name it.
This logic, that a few kids are expendable to preventable disease in order to “get one over” on actual experts is really grotesque.
These people do not care about kids’ health. Do not ever waver in understanding that. They love to say “well I just want safe vaccines” — while not understanding a drop of the scientific rigor and safety scrutiny that goes into vaccine research, development, manufacturing, and clinical studies, and simultaneously ingest (and feed to their children) all manners of unregulated wellness concoctions with zero safety data.
Low risk isn’t no risk, and kids who would be categorized as “healthy” do die from COVID-19.
Children are the demographic that should be dying the least, yet COVID-19 is one of the leading causes of death among kids. Somehow, this fact is lost among the MAHA crew. If we can prevent pediatric deaths with a simple (and tested) medicine, that should be celebrated by everyone, right?
During the pandemic:
COVID-19 was the #1 infectious cause of death among kids, causing 2% of all deaths among kids 19 and younger, with a mortality rate of 1.0 per 100,000. For context, perinatal complications cause 12.7 deaths per 100,000.
COVID-19 was the 8th leading cause of death among children. (The leading cause of death is perinatal conditions, often complications shortly after birth).
Kids under 1 had the highest death rate: 4.0 per 100,000
COVID-19 causes more deaths among children than other infectious diseases like influenza and pneumonia, yet RFK Jr. thinks preventing those deaths with a safe and effective vaccine isn’t worth it?
Vaccination prevented serious outcomes due to COVID-19.
Vaccinated children had a 74% lower risk of developing multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) from COVID-19.
COVID-19 vaccines were over 90% effective at preventing hospitalization among kids, and even during the Omicron surge, when 10 out of every 100,000 kids under 5 were hospitalized from COVID-19, vaccines reduced hospitalization risk by 68–82%.
We don’t recommend polio vaccines because kids die every day from polio—we recommend them because kids could die, and we want to prevent that.
That same logic should apply to any vaccine-preventable disease, including COVID-19.
RFK Jr. is turning preventive healthcare into a privilege.
Some folks have asked, “So what if the CDC recommendation is gone? The vaccines are still available, right?”
Sure. But available doesn’t mean accessible.
This is why this matters:
When our government health agencies make policies and recommendations, it impacts what our for-profit health insurance companies decide to cover—and what you have to pay for out-of-pocket.
Private insurance companies are legally required to cover preventive health measures with no copay, deductible, or coinsurance costs that are recommended by specific health agencies, based on Section 2713 of the Public Health Service Act. For vaccines, that is the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
When ACIP no longer recommends a vaccine, like RFK Jr is directing them to do for kids and pregnant people, insurance companies are no longer legally required to cover their cost.
I’ll give you one guess as to what will happen then? Yep. Vaccine rates will decline more than they already have.
A COVID-19 vaccine will run about $200 out of pocket.
That’s one hell of a health barrier for low-income families, who already experience health inequity in the US. That means health disparities will widen and the most vulnerable members of our society will have worse health outcomes, because they literally will not be able to afford even the most basic preventive health measures.
I have personally paid out of pocket for vaccines for international travel because they are not recommended by ACIP, like yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis. They are $$$ (the 2-dose series for JEV was $1200, btw), but I am fortunate to have financial means to be able to invest that—in my health.
Vaccines are literally life-saving medicines. The COVID-19 vaccines are no exception.
But many Americans are not in that position: that’s why health insurance coverage is life or death for many.
Remember the uproar about the United Healthcare CEO murder? People online were cheering for the shooter, right? Many felt that he was justified because of the for-profit, seemingly heartless insurance industry. The insurance industry and what it chooses to cover is directly influenced by politicians and political appointees, like RFK Jr., a multimillionaire grifter, who thinks nothing of causing suffering and death.
If you wonder why US has lower life expectancy than other developed nations, think about how increased mortality rates may drag life expectancy down. And then think about people that control that. It’s not physicians or scientists. It’s politicians.
The MAHA movement is financial privilege masquerading as “health.” In this world of affluent grifters, individuals are responsible for their own health, let social determinants of health be damned! The rescinding of COVID-19 vaccine recommendations is a perfect example.
When COVID-19 vaccine rates drop, healthcare costs go up, for all of us.
Increased cost for vaccines means fewer people will get vaccinated. You know what happens when vaccination rates drop?
More infections and illness.
More illness means more hospital visits.
More hospital visits means more medical costs.
More medical costs means more expensive health insurance—for all of us.
In the US we have a for-profit cost-sharing insurance structure. This means when individuals use more healthcare, the cost of that medical care doesn’t just impact the healthcare facility and the person who is sick—it’s distributed to everyone in the form of our monthly insurance premiums, co-pays, and deductibles.
Health insurance premiums are set based on estimates of how many people will need medical care and what cost of care will be. If more people submit claims to insurance companies for health coverage, that means everyone’s premiums will go up the following year. It’s fun, right?
When it comes to COVID-19:
Severe COVID-19 (and death) occurs more among unvaccinated people, which increases emergency department visits, hospitalizations, intensive care demand, and so on. That’s more healthcare costs shared among all of us. That doesn’t even mention ongoing care for PASC (colloquially, long COVID), which also occurs more frequently among unvaccinated individuals—as a result of damage caused by the virus or the immune system trying to eliminate infection.
So even if you do the scientifically-recommended interventions, get your vaccines, health screenings, annual exams—all the low cost but high reward preventive health measures—you’ll still be paying for those who have high healthcare costs. The 6-8% increase in healthcare premiums has been driven by pandemic-related healthcare.
That’s why it’s so weird that all the people who say they vote for the economy and the money in their bank account frequently choose to ignore public health initiatives. Because preventive health measures like vaccinations are financially smart too.
Prevention costs a fraction of what healthcare treatment does.
What does COVID-19 care cost? A hell of a lot more than a $200 vaccine.
A non-ICU COVID-19 hospitalization ranges from $11,000 to $24,000.
An ICU admission adds between $13,000 to $45,000 depending on invasive procedures needed.
A NICU stay for COVID-complications during pregnancy or preterm birth runs you $5,000 to $60,000.
Overall societal cost of NICU hospitalizations due to preterm birth in the US exceeds $13 billion every year.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Avoiding vaccines today guarantees higher healthcare costs tomorrow—and worse health overall. This isn’t about “freedom” and “medical choice” because real freedom means we save lives, money, and protect health. That comes from using science we already have.
RFK Jr is waging a war on science, public health, and health equity.
This isn’t just a rollback of vaccine policy. It is erasing the tenets of scientific and medical development at the highest level. A singular person, with zero qualifications, is making sweeping country-wide decisions that are in direct opposition to the body of evidence.
The CDC’s removal of vaccine recommendations won’t just impact vaccine uptake, health clinic protocols, or clinical guidance. It legitimizes misinformation.
RFK Jr’s “decision” wasn’t based on new data, a rare safety signal, or new risk-benefit analyses. It was based on his lucrative anti-vaccine grift that has been given a global megaphone now that he leads HHS.
Everyone is being bombarded with headlines daily. We are all exhausted, overwhelmed. When people see these headlines, they start to believe the falsehoods.
“Well, if CDC isn’t recommending it, maybe it is unsafe.”
“If I have to pay for it, maybe it isn’t worth it.”
Science-backed health guidance has been replaced with anti-science disinformation. The confusion this will cause will cost people their lives.
Silence from all scientific institutions is complicity. Silence from your elected politicians is complicity. When health agencies kowtow to disinformation, they are endorsing the lies.
Who benefits from this? It isn’t pregnant people. Or kids. Or lower income families. Or really, any of us who are trying to stay alive while politicians and for-profit health insurance companies make dangerous decisions about our livelihoods.
This policy failure will have serious and real consequences: worse health outcomes, higher medical costs, and preventable harm.
RFK Jr. isn’t making America healthy. He’s making it sicker, poorer, and more vulnerable to preventable death.
Now, more than ever, we all must join in the fight for science.
Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.
More science education, less disinformation.
- Andrea
ImmunoLogic is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below:
Didn't he JUST testify words to the effect that "no one should be taking medical advice from me?"
Thank you, Dr. Love, for this urgent and courageous piece. RFK Jr.’s decision to remove COVID-19 vaccines from the recommended schedule for pregnant women and children is not just misguided. It’s dangerous. The data are clear: vaccination saves lives. This move will cause unnecessary harm, particularly to the most vulnerable. We need more scientists willing to speak truth to power. I applaud your clarity and resolve.
As a practicing neurologist and physician, I’ve seen firsthand how misinformation costs lives. Your voice is critically important right now.