This is an adapted excerpt from the Aug. 27 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
The entire country, if not the world, is united in mourning the loss of Dolly Parton, who died at 80 years old on Tuesday. It is the kind of unity that I was not even sure a public figure was still capable of inspiring in red states and blue states and beyond.
Murals honoring the country music legend immediately popped up in Nashville, in Parton’s home state of Tennessee. In New York, the Empire State Building lit up pink in tribute. And across the country, flags are flying at half-staff at the order of President Donald Trump.
You cannot spend five minutes on social media without encountering all sorts of tributes and memorials. Eminem, Mariah Carey, Sen. Ted Cruz, Barack Obama, Turning Point USA and the Democratic Socialists of America all posted publicly in memory of Parton. As The New York Times put it, “In an age of division, Dolly Parton was one person everyone loved.”
But no, not everyone, it seems. There was one notable exception in the outpouring of love: a post from an organization called Children’s Health Defense that read, “How many people did Dolly Parton kill pushing vaccines?” It was a baffling reference to Parton’s support for vaccine research, and of course they pulled it down almost immediately.
This isn’t just some small group. For years, Children’s Health Defense was run by none other than Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I will admit there have been times, especially during the first Trump administration, when the most dire warnings of what this president might do did not come to pass. We have, in some instances, avoided the worst-case scenario.
But Kennedy’s handling of public health is not one of those situations. It is exactly as bad as his most ardent critics warned it would be. The only silver lining is that we have not seen another massive pandemic like Covid-19 under his watch (yet).
We are, however, seeing a variety of other catastrophes come to bear. This week the Pennsylvania Department of Health announced two measles-related deaths in Lancaster County, including an infant. (On Thursday, a Lancaster County coroner said he disagreed with the health department’s assessment and that while the infant did test positive for measles, he did not believe the disease was a contributing factor in their death, concluding that the baby died of a ruptured spleen. The death is under investigation.)
In either case, Pennsylvania has its first measles death in 35 years, because we had eliminated the virus in this country until anti-vaccine cranks like Kennedy got involved. And lest you think that is an unfair connection to draw, Kennedy literally went to Lancaster County back in 2021 to laud them for their low-vaccination rates and to downplay the severity of the disease, telling the crowd that the “cure for measles is chicken soup and vitamin A.”
People have died because of that sentiment, which Kennedy has dedicated his life to promoting. Now he serves as the nation’s top health official and principal adviser to the president on health matters.
Kennedy was Trump’s gift to the anti-vaccine members of his base, something of a mea culpa for promoting the Covid shots back in 2020, which was one of the only good things he ever did as president.
But Kennedy’s completely unscientific and dangerous views did cause some minor headaches during his confirmation process. He had to insist, for example, that his trip to Samoa back in 2019, which preceded a deadly measles outbreak there, had absolutely nothing to do with vaccines.
On Thursday, The Associated Press and The Guardian published a letter reportedly sent from Kennedy to the prime minister of Samoa ahead of that trip, in which he wrote, “I would propose my team conduct [a] detailed health informatics assessment in Samoa of what happened with your [measles-mumps-rubella] vaccines.”
Even when Kennedy isn’t actively promoting an ideology that can kill children, his sheer incompetence is making everyone less safe. Have you noticed the influx of headlines about foodborne illnesses across the U.S.? That the bread has pieces of metal in it, the blueberries have E. coli, and lettuce is giving folks diarrhea?
Guess who oversees food safety in this country? Kennedy.
This is a guy who is completely unqualified to hold this position and who is putting the entire country’s health in danger. You have him to thank for the state of public health in this country.
Allison Detzel contributed.
The post Dolly Parton’s legacy is a rebuke to RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine crusade appeared first on MS NOW.
