Calls for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s resignation are growing after two unvaccinated people died from measles in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. There have been 393 confirmed measles cases in 28 counties in Pennsylvania this year, and 2,777 total cases nationally—a 35-year high.
These are the first measles deaths in the United States this year, and in Pennsylvania in more than three decades.
“RFK Jr.’s lies and conspiracy theories are making Marylanders sick,” Democratic Maryland Senator Angela Alsobrooks wrote Tuesday on X. “RFK Jr. must resign or be fired. Vaccines are safe and effective. Listen to your pediatrician.”
“Measles is officially out of control. How many more people need to die before there is a nationwide call for RFK Jr. to resign?” said Shaughnessy Naughton, president of the pro-science organizing group 3.14 Action. “His anti-science, anti-vaccine policies are killing people and infecting a generation of Americans with dangerous vaccine skepticism that will take years to recover from.”
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61 Comments
turtlesareneat@piefed.ca · 61 pts · 2d
Uhh it leaked earlier today that they're trying to revamp the categories of vaccine so they can reduce the number of required vaccines for everyone including kids. Worst timeline. Could not have made me believe this was possible 15 years ago.
disorderly@lemmy.world · 33 pts · 2d
20 years ago I was at a university that was studying mRNA bombing as a way to deliver "impossible" vaccines. We were young millennials, still dreaming of a better future. We really thought that 80% of cancers would have effective vaccines by the time we were 50.
Instead, most of us are repeating that MMR is safe, moving up our first colonoscopies, and exhaustedly reminding our parents not to believe anything they see on the Internet. If this isn't the worst timeline it's an honorable fuckin' mention.
pigup@lemmy.world · 46 pts · 2d
Daily reminder that the billionaire class wants most of us dead. They will not give you health care. They will destroy the CDC. They want pandemics to ravage the masses and reduce our numbers. They want our assets and our wealth and they want you dead. They don't want things to be safe. They don't want cars to be safe. They don't want your drinking water to be safe. They want it all to be as hazardous as possible so that the most number of people die.
They are happy when bad things happen to you. And they really believe that they're entitled to the planet. This is all working towards their goal.
jaybone@lemmy.zip · 14 pts · 2d
But then why simultaneously complain about low birth rates? They seem to want a growing workforce class they can exploit.
Eternal192@anarchist.nexus · 18 pts · 2d
They want the older ones that have known a better life to die so that they can teach the young to serve and obey, that's why they are complaining about birth rates.
pigup@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
They don't have their robotic workforce and killer drones just yet. towards the billionaire utopia, the billionaires require their killing machine to be up and running at max efficiency, yet they still need babies to fuck, kill, and exploit. It's really a a transitional need, not part of what I would think is the final vision.
im_fine_sandy@nord.pub · 2 pts · 2d
Its nonsensical.
If the billionaire class wanted everyone dead they wouldn't do it with measles
hoppeduponcoffee@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 2d
You’re assuming these people are competent businessmen who would figure out that killing off the people you’re exploiting for wealth is bad for building further wealth.
Trump is a prime example of the incompetence. He bankrupted multiple casinos, even with Daddy’s inheritance.
They’re just simply good at gaming the system by manipulating market shares and real estate, while buying political power to serve their interests. They’re not businessmen at all. They’re grifters.
im_fine_sandy@nord.pub · 3 pts · 2d
On the contrary.
We are in agreement that what's happening is not malice, but incompetence and greed.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 1d
hmm. No.
He got elected President, twice. He's corrupted over $5B in personal money. He has secured infinite power from SCOTUS. He has the entire Republican party scared of him. He has the entire Democratic party neutered.
Sounds pretty competent to me.
hoppeduponcoffee@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 1d
I don’t think it’s off his own intellect, at all. He doesn’t have much intellect to speak of.
He’s a stooge for the Heritage Foundation, Bibi and Putin. He works off Roy Cohn’s playbook. These guys are great thieves, I’ll concede, but actually running legitimate businesses and succeeding? Nah.
Trump on his own would be just a narcissistic, dumb, rejected NYC tycoon who bankrupt casinos. Don’t give him that much credit.
pigup@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Just like any investment, they diversify their killing methods. Having a disease wipe out a bunch of people they don't like is a slam dunk for them, easy cheap, blame free, results not guaranteed however. But you're damn sure they're going to leave the door open for any sort of disease to come and do some work for them for cheap. As a billionaire, I would not be interested in doing one big stunt to kill a bunch of people because that won't work out for me.
They've much preferred the long drawn out slow-burn of disease and poverty. Its not only entertaining and strokes their ego, it's also the best way to get the results they want. They keep plausible deniability for themselves. You can't see the puppet masters at work behind the scenes.
As plebs we see nothing but natural disasters and natural disease. It's not obvious that we should blame the billionaires at any given point. Who decides when where why and how we should go to war? Do normal people know that they only have a couple selfish psychopathic individuals to blame in reality?
They have been shown to cause "accidents" (oops a gas tanker blew up on top of the bridge in Detroit, now that real estate I wanted got a lot cheaper! thanks Ghislane!), start wildfires, and any number of insane murderous horrors to get their way. They want all these events that they've caused to look like mysterious natural disasters. I suspect that if there were no more billionaires suddenly, we'd see a lot less crazy shit happen in the world.
hoppeduponcoffee@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 2d
An empty playground for the rich free of taxation, with AI doing all the production for them. It’s like reverse communism, with the bourgeoisie completely conquereing and eliminating the proletariat.
pigup@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2d
It's like Epstein Island, but everywhere!
datendefekt@feddit.org · 4 pts · 2d
I don’t get the logic. Not criticizing you, because it’s one good explanation. Who generates the wealth for the billionaire class? Who receives the wealth? You’d want highly educated people and not peasants. Wouldn’t you rather grift in Taiwan than North Korea?
Funwayguy@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2d
Corporations spent hundreds of billions on LLMs to crator the value of skilled labor, justify mass layoffs, and launder stolen content, all to cut cost. Whether it's legal regulations or basic human rights, in the eyes of sycophants, any perceived risk to their profit margin is deemed unacceptable including their own employees.
Smaller companies are themselves not meant to survive and intended to diversify legal risks and consequences (e.g. Alphabet and Meta split from Google and Facebook). This way they can be dismantled and sold once the legal baggage becomes unprofitable without risking the wealth that has long since been funnelled to its 'legally distinct' owners. The collateral damage to the now unemployed is simply one less thing off their balance sheet and is much easier to do when you have home turf legal
corruptionadvantages.So no, it's not about generating stable wealth long term as it is about capturing any source of capital by any means necessary, legality and morals be damned.
hoppeduponcoffee@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 2d
Except that highly educated people are going to eventually fight back or flee grift and fascism. Only the dull , unskilled and propagandized will stick around until the leopards eat their faces.
pigup@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
In my mind, it doesn't really matter who generates the wealth. They already have it. They're just picking up the rest of the floor. And technically, I said, most of us. They want a small serving class. They will always need it. They take the path of least the resistance first. Take out all the lower hanging fruit.
Almacca@aussie.zone · 34 pts · 2d
Resigning would be getting off lightly. All these murderous crooks need prosecuting to the full extent of the law.
hoppeduponcoffee@lemmy.zip · 23 pts · 2d
A dude who had brain worms, defies all science that indicates that vaccines don’t cause autism, and eats rotting whale carcass isn’t the sort to swallow his pride and quit.
green_goglin@thelemmy.club · 6 pts · 1d
He’s also a heroin addict.
Batmorous@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
This is why more unity and coordination by people needs to happen. A lot already has happened but the more the better. It gets better when we all do as one
SailorFuzz@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 2d
He'll never resign. That would imply that he's capable of admitting to being wrong. And he's too fucking crazy for that. He believes all the bullshit he says.
Sanctus@anarchist.nexus · 19 pts · 2d
Lol he killed a shit load of Somali children, two more people ain't gonna mean a thing to him.
floofloof@lemmy.ca · 18 pts · 2d
It was in Samoa, not Somalia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Samoa_measles_outbreak
Sanctus@anarchist.nexus · 11 pts · 2d
Damn, knew my dumb ass should have double checked. Holy fuck that was seven years ago and still nothing happened to the fuck.
openchan@piefed.social · 7 pts · 2d
Well something happened: he was elevated to
I am so sick of typing that out I stopped mid sentence.
f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 1d
FWIW, the US has been bombing Somalia for years as well, targeting al-Shabaab and Islamic State. You don't hear about it because it's old news.
US air strikes on Somalia, per The Guardian:
Trump (first term): 219
Biden: 51
Trump (second term, so far): 190
BillyClark@piefed.social · 16 pts · 2d
When RFK Jr. was born, the measles vaccine hadn't even been created.
He described himself as a "measles survivor" because he had a very mild case. I'd like to see him go up to a child who is dying of the measles and try to explain how it's not supposed to be that bad.
I imagine that people like RFK Jr. are the reason that humans invented the idea of hell. There's literally no punishment that the man could possibly receive that would even put the smallest dent in the amount of misery he's needlessly created.
churrodestroyer@lemmy.zip · 15 pts · 2d
Just wait until people sink their teeth into the beef
meco03211@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 2d
What a load of horse shit!
deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz · 4 pts · 2d
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 2d
I would be proud to be a vegetarian if I could just stop shitting piss out my ass.
Malyca@lemmy.zip · 11 pts · 2d
I'm not sure his resignation would help, clearly Trump is more antivaxx than he is and is breathing down his neck to prove vaccines cause autism. Trump would only replace him with someone more radical.
Almacca@aussie.zone · 5 pts · 2d
FTFY
veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 11 pts · 2d
What, ivermectin not working? :p
jtrek@startrek.website · 10 pts · 1d
Resignation is not enough. Imprisonment for social murder.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 1d
Pfff. This asshole is never wrong. It’s just deflect, redirect, butwhatabout, move on to the next “breathing air causes autism” bullshit.
GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca · 9 pts · 2d
I love how (some of) his former supporters are all up in arms over this, but still can't see that everyone else in the administration they voted for is just as bad.
FluidBeef@quokk.au · 7 pts · 2d
You cannot shame people who are shameless.
skozzii@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 1d
Let's settle down guys, it's not like there a safe and proven vaccine that's available that the administration had simply been telling people wasn't necessary....
Doomsider@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Love it.
CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 2d
What about all the assholes besides him that are there, though? I don't think he was the only dumbfuck anti-enlightenment asshole put into power in these critical government positions.
nymnympseudonym@piefed.social · 2 pts · 2d
Got excited when I read this. Yes yes yes where do I join and let me give you money are we fielding a Presidential candidate??
UltraMagnus0001@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
Let them drink bleach
RaoulDuke25@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 2d
His hanging would be fine
nymnympseudonym@piefed.social · 4 pts · 2d
Would pay to watch
CoryCoolguy@lemmy.myserv.one · 5 pts · 2d
Just last week I was looking at the measles stats for 2026 and thought to myself, "huh, no deaths yet." And here we are.
JeeBaiChow@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
Its mad?
DJKJuicy@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 1d
Calls you say? That sounds official and serious.
Zier@fedia.io · 4 pts · 2d
Robert roadkill penis eater is not qualified for the job he is employed at, or any other job for that matter.
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org · 4 pts · 1d
This is what fascism has to offer you: death and increased prices due to pointless wars. Oh and pedophilia, LOTS of that apparently.
bigbangdangler@reddthat.com · 3 pts · 2d
2? Rookie numbers. 2 don't even register for these morons. It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
nymnympseudonym@piefed.social · 2 pts · 2d
1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,...
artyom@piefed.social · 2 pts · 2d
How old were these people?
velma@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 2d
I looked around at other sources and they’re specifically not releasing info on the people who died due to privacy concerns. I think they may have been children.
artyom@piefed.social · -5 pts · 2d
I mean that seems kinda important, don't it? If they're adults then they'd likely be unrelated to any changes in vaccine disinformation.
BenM2023@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 2d
Not necessarily true. If they were vulnerable adults for whom the vaccination had little/no effect or who were immunosuppressed, for whatever reason, herd immunity amongst the younger population would have protected them. Now it doesn't, thanks to the anti-vaxxer in chief.
artyom@piefed.social · 1 pts · 2d
Oh good point
Corvidae@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 2d
Pennsylvania hasn't released that info. Measles-related deaths in Pennsylvania mark first 2 US fatalities this year | CIDRAP
unemployedclaquer@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 2d
For every two measles deaths, more boils pop on rfkjr's surface area and her gains armor points but grows more orange and gets softer in the middle