Notes of a Bobby Watcher IV

And here we go again with The Secretary off-base.

It's difficult to keep up with everything happening at HHS under Secretary Kennedy’s watch. I will try to keep it straightforward.

He has a way of foisting himself on me, perhaps because in my desire to find right, all I can see is him skiing down the wrong trail, and then off trail.

His manner is irritating. No not because of his dysphonia. It's because he is wrong so often that I want to shake myself first, then him. Now a few weeks along the path of following him closely, I'm sliding into a state of melancholy.

His history to date speaks of high drama; unjustified, uninformed drama.

Even though he seems awash in scientific doubt, his capricious arrogance is like a truant schoolboy. I saw a picture of him cavorting with a softball team last week. Unenlightened leadership.

At the NIH, everyone is on edge as they brace for deep cuts and more centralized control. Up to 5,000 positions are targeted at premier science agencies. And the leadership has been given little information on how the cuts will be made. Scientists, administrators, and other employees at the nation’s premier funder of biomedical research are reeling, afraid, and confused.

That speaks of poor leadership.

The Secretary has ‘flat-out’ mishandled the measles outburst. In my opinion, because he is an anti-vaxxer, he has NOT come out with a STRONG stance recommending vaccination --- the ONLY way to stop the spread. Instead, he has foisted cockamamy ideas about treatment, ideas so disconcerting that I won't mention them again.

Suffice it to say that in an atmosphere of misinformation, people become more insular, and more suspicious, especially of the government, now the enemy. I cannot criticize their stance. I only hope they might see the light.

Per Dr. Jetelina . . .

As of Friday, the U.S. has reported 326 measles cases—more than the annual total in 12 of the past 15 years, and it’s only March.

Measles cases surge every five years for reasons we don’t fully understand. Pair that with declining vaccination rates in the U.S. and worldwide, and you get the perfect storm. Last year, Europe saw its highest measles case count in 25 years.

In the Texas/New Mexico outbreak, measles cases continue to climb—and estimates suggest the true count could be 4 times higher than reported. The outbreak is spreading beyond the Panhandle to East Texas, Oklahoma, Mexico, and possibly Kansas. The vast majority of cases are in unvaccinated, school-aged children.

And here we go again with The Secretary off-base.

“There are adverse events from the vaccine,” Kennedy said in a March 11 interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity. “It does cause deaths every year. It causes — it causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes, encephalitis and blindness, et cetera. And so people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves.”

NO, NO, Secretary. You are wrong . . . again!

The Infectious Disease Society of America says there have been “no deaths related to the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in healthy individuals.”

“The MMR vaccine has never been found to cause a death in an immunocompetent individual,” Daniel Griffin, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Island Infectious Disease Medical in New York said, echoing that conclusion. “If you’ve got someone who has a compromised immune system, and someone doesn’t know any better and gives them an active vaccine, which is what you are not supposed to do, then, you know, that could result in a death.”

And measles can be a long-term devastating disease.

PLEASE, Secretary, get on your horse and suggest in the strongest words possible that people get vaccinated!