20 hours ago
Letters to the Editor: Vaccines save millions of lives. Don't let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. diminish them
To the editor: For Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be our secretary of Health and Human Services is not only having the fox guard the chicken coop — the fox is invited right into the chicken coop. His unfitness for the job and danger to the health of our citizens was beautifully laid out by columnist Robin Abcarian in her article on the critical role of vaccines and the dangers we face because he belittles their validity and importance ('RFK Jr. is dismantling trust in vaccines, the crown jewel of American public health,' June 29).
During my pediatric residency decades ago, some of the 'old-timers' occasionally brought in patients who had diseases that we rarely saw anymore because of vaccines, including measles. One night, a toddler came into the emergency room and we admitted her immediately to the intensive care unit because we could see she had a grave infection. She died the next day. The infection she had, Haemophilus influenzae type B, is now part of the vaccination schedule. That vaccine alone is estimated to have saved 2.85 million lives from 1989 to 2024.
There is little that prevents infant mortality like vaccines. Even though the insurance industry has followed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations for vaccines, paying for the ones recommended by the CDC Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, I recommend and hope they will pivot to following the recommendations of professional medical organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics. Our children and others receiving vaccines deserve this protection.
Linda Randolph, Los Angeles
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To the editor: Operation Warp Speed was a great success that enabled testing and widespread distribution of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the first pandemic year, 2020. According to one study, in just the first seven months of 2021, the vaccines saved approximately 279,000 U.S. lives.
Now, as Abcarian discusses, we have a Health secretary who tells Americans to eat healthy while he feasts on junk science that erroneously claims that COVID vaccines, along with other vaccines, are harmful.
We should all be concerned about our nation's transition from Operation Warp Speed to what I call 'Operation Warped Mind' — a foolish opposition to vaccines — and the risks that this poses to our health. And we should all question why the president nominated an unqualified person to be the Health secretary and why all Republican senators except Mitch McConnell voted to confirm him. It's notable that McConnell, a survivor of childhood polio, explained his position by saying, 'I will not condone the relitigation of proven cures, and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles.'
David Michels, Encino
