I set out to write a column today about the things for which I’m grateful — and there are many, even in this time of ever-cascading, Trump-made crises — as Thanksgiving approaches.
And when I opened up The Colorado Sun Tuesday morning, I saw the photo of Jared Polis screwing up his face as he takes his annual COVID and flu shots, and I thought maybe this was something.
But then I remembered, it’s not nearly enough.
So long as Polis refuses to admit that his welcoming praise for Donald Trump’s appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as health secretary — given that RFK Jr. is possibly the most dangerous person in America today not named Trump — was both wrong-headed and life-threatening, I have trouble giving Polis too much credit. Or any at all.
Kennedy’s fight against vaccines is never-ending, with each anti-science proclamation more dangerous than the last. As I’m sure you’ve seen, the CDC recently has changed — to much uproar — its recommendations on childhood vaccines and their debunked link to autism. How long before those vaccines become, at minimum, much harder to get?
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Before the update, the CDC webpage said there was “no link” connecting vaccines to autism, challenging the notion that the vaccines were unsafe. But now, it says, “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”
The updated CDC webpage says the debunked studies possibly linking vaccines to autism “have been ignored by health authorities.”
Safe? Unsafe? You make the call. No one has banned the vaccines — yet. But who doesn’t think it’s coming?
It’s not enough, though, to blame the anti-vaxxers Kennedy has appointed to oversee recommendations on vaccines. It’s not enough to despair. Kennedy is the one who must be held to account.
As many have pointed out, Kennedy could have just as easily said there was no proof that, say, eating pickles was not linked to autism. It might have made as much sense.
That’s where the fight is. And even though Polis has, to his credit, used his influence to protect Coloradans from some of Kennedy’s worst anti-vax abuses, he has refused to take the fight directly to Kennedy. In normal circumstances, Polis wouldn’t necessarily need to be out there leading this fight. But since he endorsed Kennedy — the lone major Democrat to do so — I think he’s got a different obligation, which he steadfastly refuses to take on.
Sort of like the same special obligation that Louisiana’s GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy — a medical doctor and Kennedy skeptic — refuses to take on. But for Cassidy, it’s even more of an obligation because his was the Senate committee vote that could have single-handedly stopped the Kennedy appointment.
Cassidy, too, fails to admit his grievous error on Kennedy, even as he argues against the CDC’s increasingly dangerous stance on vaccines, which Kennedy had promised Cassidy he would not promote. Kennedy, uh, lied. Cassidy? He just won’t tell the whole truth.
When Kennedy changed the autism link, Cassidy argued forcefully against it, saying that “anything that undermines the understanding, the correct understanding, the absolute scientifically based understanding that vaccines are safe and that, if you don’t take them, you’re putting your child or yourself in greater danger, anything that undermines that message is a problem.”
He did not, as you might notice, pinpoint Kennedy for blame, even though Kennedy told the New York Times that he personally ordered the new language.
On the same day the Polis photo ran in The Sun, the news was that RFK Jr. had appointed Ralph Abraham —the controversial Louisiana surgeon general and a bonafide anti-vaxxer — as the No. 2 person at the CDC. There has been no No. 1 there since Kennedy fired CDC Director Susan Monarez for refusing to rubber stamp his vaccination proclamations.
As a doctor, Abraham says he does not recommend anti-COVID vaccines to his patients, telling them he believes in natural immunity. He says he regularly sees patients “injured” by COVID shots, without naming the injuries but still charging the CDC with covering them up.
Meanwhile, he has stopped health officials from promoting flu shots, saying it should be a personal choice. No wonder Kennedy picked him. Kennedy has also stopped the CDC from promoting flu shots, even though it still recommends that people take them.
And, like Kennedy, Abraham is all in on research claiming childhood vaccines can cause autism. The list goes on.
So sure, let’s applaud Polis for the public display of his belief in the flu and COVID vaccines. But he’s merely doing what every elected official should be doing. While Polis’ approach includes the notion that taking vaccines, proven by time and study, is a good thing, he also believes it’s basically a personal choice.
Meanwhile, Colorado has the largest measles outbreak — with more than 30 cases identified so far — in 30 years.
Polis is not an anti-vaxxer at all. He believes in medical science. Every time I’ve talked to Polis about childhood vaccines and Colorado’s still-too-low vaccination rate, he praises the vaccines, but says he is still anti-mandate. And, even though Polis praises Kennedy’s anti-Big Ag, anti-Big Pharma stances, vaccination mandates are the issue over which he and Kennedy bonded.
In fact, Polis has explained, in part, his support of Kennedy stems from helping “us defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019.” Actually, childhood-vaccine mandates, with some notable Polis caveats, passed the legislature in 2021, but let’s not nitpick.
We can say without fear of nitpicking, though, that Kennedy, basically unchecked by Trump even when he disagrees with some of Kennedy’s nuttier pronouncements, presents an obvious danger.
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For a recent story on PBS NewsHour about the states’ reactions to Kennedy’s anti-vax stances, a reporter came to interview Polis, who is term-limited as governor but is a more-than-likely candidate to eventually seek some other high office. The reporter pointed out that Polis had signed a law that doesn’t require Colorado to follow CDC rules when setting vaccine requirements for school kids. And another law requiring state-regulated insurance companies to cover the cost of vaccines. And that Colorado allows pharmacists to administer COVID vaccines without a prescription.
But when Polis was asked whether he still thought Kennedy was the right person for the job, this is as far as Polis would go:
“Well, I don’t think he’s who the person I supported for president would have appointed, but he’s better than having a pharmaceutical executive in there like President Trump’s prior director of human services. I disagree to the extent that he casts aspersions on vaccines or does anything to put data in front of people that isn’t true or is misleading.”
He disagrees to the extent that Kennedy “casts dispersions on vaccines” or that he sometimes “presents data that isn’t true or misleading”?
And that’s it?
He doesn’t mind that he cuts and freezes tens of millions of dollars in funding for scientific research on diseases, particularly studies being conducted in blue states. Or does he believe Kennedy when he recently told an audience that “we’re not cutting research or grant funding?” The Poynter Institute’s fact checkers rated that Kennedy quote as a “Pants on Fire!” lie.
It takes no research at all to know the truth about Kennedy’s wackiness — which goes far beyond dumping bear carcasses in Central Park or tying a dripping whale carcass to the top of the family car or even his testimony that a parasitic worm had invaded his brain.
As just one example, a video uncovered of a 2020 speech Kennedy made in Germany, tells you all you need to know. In the speech, he propagated a conspiracy theory about the so-called “plandemic,” a term charging that the U.S. government had somehow planned the COVID pandemic.
He would go on to say, with even less evidence than his notion that vaccines cause autism, that the effort to combat the pandemic was “a pharmaceutical-driven, bio-security agenda that will enslave the entire human race and plunge us into a dystopian nightmare.”
This is who Kennedy is. Why would anyone — like, say, Gov. Polis — have trouble just saying it? Polis needs to shout to the mountaintops something like: I WAS WRONG ABOUT KENNEDY. WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT LISTEN TO ANYTHING THIS MAN SAYS.
If Polis somehow came around by Thanksgiving — which I know would be a rush, but flu hospitalizations in Colorado, especially for children, are on the rise — I know I, for one, would be grateful.
I bet many of you, along with your kids, would be, too.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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