Perhaps no vote has been distressing for Senator Bill Cassidy, the Republican and doctor of Louisiana, of his vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the health secretary of President Trump. Mr. Cassidy wondered out loud for days like Mr. Kennedy, the most vocal and powerful critic of the nation vaccinations, could manage a crisis of infectious diseases.
Now, while a morbillo outbreak rages in western Texas, Mr. Cassidy discovered it. Everything goes down, he told the “gestalt”.
On Monday, days after the Texas epidemic killed an unvaccinated child, Mr. Cassidy, the president of the Senate Health Committee, was carving out a Capitol corridor when he was asked of Kennedy. He indicated a piece of digital opinion of Fox News in which Kennedy advised parents to consult their doctors on vaccination, calling it a “personal” decision.
“That Fox editorial has been encouraged people to vaccinate a lot,” he said.
He recalled that Mr. Kennedy had described him as a personal choice, Mr. Cassidy thought for a moment. “If you want to like you, analyze it to the line, you can say” discuss with your doctor, “said Cassidy.” He also said: “We are making the vaccinations available. We are doing it for vaccination. We are doing it for vaccination.” So if you take the gestalt, the Gestalt was: “Let’s have vaccination!” “
The evaluation of Mr. Cassidy-What the entire message of Mr. Kennedy was more than the sum of his-part-parts as the measles epidemic highlighted on how the non-orthodox choice of Mr. Trump to manage the best health agency of the country has brought a perspective once attractive in the political mainstream, creating discomfort for some Republicans.
As founder and president of his non -profit organization, the defense of children’s health and subsequently as presidential candidate, Kennedy repeatedly minimized the benefits of vaccination. He also repeatedly suggested that measles, parotitis and the rosolism vaccine cause autism, despite a vast research that has not found any bonds.
Since he won the Trump’s nod at the head of the tentacular Department of Health and Human Services, Kennedy has traveled a careful line on the matter. Some of his recent statements, in which he stops denouncing the vaccines, made some of his supporters angry. But its approval of vaccination less than full of vaccinations and its promotion of alternative remedies for the treatment of measles, have angry traditional scientists who say that the only way proven to prevent measles is the vaccine.
“This, I would say, is the minimum of the minimum that can be done in the middle of a measles outbreak,” said dr. Adam Ratner, a Pediatrician from New York City who has just published a book, “Booster Shots”, which warns a rebirth of measles.
But Del Bigree, former director of communications by Mr. Kennedy and one of his closest allies, said that Mr. Kennedy was doing exactly what he said he would do: put all the options on the table and let the parents decide alone.
He used the word “balance” to describe the approach of Mr. Kennedy and said that the media were “incredibly deceived and somehow alarmist and dangerous by creating a panic for a death from measles”.
When asked about Mr. Cassidy’s “Gestalt” observation, Andrew Nixon, spokesman for the department, referred to the piece of opinion of Fox. He said that the comment of the Secretary to Health could speak alone: ”Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to the immunity of the community, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated for medical reasons”.
Cassidy, a liver specialist, has made her career in medicine by treating patients not insured as a doctor in the Louisiana charity hospital system. He is a ferocious supporter of vaccines.
But he is also facing a republican primary challenger in 2026 and voting against Kennedy he risked causing Mr. Trump to support his opponent-and by arousing a potential recovery between an increasingly unfavorable Gop electorate.
Mr. Kennedy’s “Medical Freedom” movement, who calls “Rende America Healthy Again”, is now deeply rooted in the Republican Party. The Pandemia del Coronavirus has transformed many conservatives against the mandates of vaccines, also for children attending school. Throughout the country, almost 1,000 candidates, almost all republicans, ran for an elective office in November with the support of Stand for Health Freedom, a non -profit organization of Florida who prompted to make it easier for parents to give up the requirements of school vaccines.
For Mr. Cassidy and other republicans who were uncomfortable for Mr. Kennedy, the situation in Western Texas is forcing a showdown, said Whit Ayres, a republican strategist who is also a member of Rotary International, an organization that has set the goal of putting an end to polio to promote vaccination all over the world.
“His position on vaccines was extremely known when he was appointed and when he was confirmed by the United States Senate,” said Ayers. “Everyone, with their eyes open, knew that his positions could lead to a rebirth of measles.”
Since vaccination rates have decreased across the country, public health experts have warned that measles would be the first infectious disease to return. But the Texas measles epidemic cannot be blamed by Mr. Kennedy. The disease began to spread within the Mennonita community, an island Christian group that settled in western Texas in the 70s; Many mennonites are not vaccinated and vulnerable to the virus.
Kennedy minimized the situation in Texas during a cabinet meeting with Mr. Trump last week, stating that measles outbreaks in the United States are not “unusual”. His piece of opinion of the fox has promoted the use of vitamin A, which studies have shown is useful in the treatment of measles in malnourished children.
He followed a preregilated interview of the Fox News broadcast Tuesday, in which he said that parents and doctors should consider alternative approaches, including cod liver oil, for the treatment of measles. He also recognized that the vaccines “prevent infection”. But once again, Mr. Kennedy did not urge the Americans to be vaccinated.
The Texas Health Department issued a health notice on January 23, reporting two cases of measles. Since then, almost 160 people have contracted the disease and 22 have been hospitalized. The centers for the control and prevention of diseases have declared Tuesday that they had sent some of its “Texas Investigators” to support local officials in the response.
On Wednesday, while Mr. Cassidy seemed satisfied with the management of the matter by Mr. Kennedy, the senator was pushing another candidate for key health on measles, vaccines and autism issues.
He wanted to know if dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who appears in front of the Senate Health Committee for his confirmation hearing as a choice of Trump to guide the National Institutes of Health, intended to spend dollars of fees for research on discredited theory that the vaccines cause autism. Mr. Cassidy had repeatedly and successful, he had tried to convince Mr. Kennedy to reject that theory in his confirmation hearing.
Dr. Bhattacharya told the Senator that he was “convinced” that there is no link between the measles and autism vaccine. But like Mr. Kennedy, he said he supported further research, even just to relieve the fears of nerve parents.
Mr. Cassidy was annoyed, stating that the question had already been resolved by years of large research. New studies, he said, would waste dollars of taxpayers and would take away money from studies that could discover the true causes of autism. He fed his punch on the table.
“If we are pissed off the money here,” he said with a wave of hand, “it is less money that we must actually follow the real reason.”
And in any case, said Cassidy, further research will not change their mind. “There are people who do not agree that the world is round,” he said, adding, “people still think that Elvis is alive”.
To ensure the vote of Mr. Cassidy last month, Kennedy made a series of concessions, which Mr. Cassidy outlined in a speech on the Senate’s floor. They included the commitment not to dissolve the Committee of experts who recommend the centers for the control and prevention of vaccine diseases and to leave intact declarations on the CDC website by stating that vaccines do not cause autism.
Kennedy has also promised to have an “unprecedented collaborative employment relationship” with Mr. Cassidy and to meet or speak with him “several times a month” and to give a notice to the congress of any changes to vaccine policy.
“I will carefully look at every effort to unjustly sow public fear on vaccines between confused references to coincidence and anecdote,” said Cassidy.
During his way in the Senate Chamber on Monday, he said he thought that Mr. Kennedy was doing a good job with Texas’ response. “He is managing it well,” said the senator. He was asked if he spoke to Mr. Kennedy of the measles epidemic.
“Let’s talk regularly,” said Cassidy, adding: “Let’s leave it to that.”