Here are a couple of photos of Robert Kennedy Jr. at President Elon Musk’s cabinet meeting this week. Kennedy is head of Health and Human Services, which gives him broad oversight over the Centers for Disease Control, the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (in case of emergency health crises), the National Institutes of Health, the Office of Global Affairs, and the Food & Drug Administration. That’s just a fraction of HHS’s purview, but those are some of the biggest parts of Kennedy’s job. One of the first items on Kennedy’s agenda was mass layoffs at the CDC, NIH and FDA.

Just this week, there’s been an abundance of Kennedy wingnuttery all around vaccines. The Trump administration wants to pull funding for Moderna’s development of a bird flu vaccine. Kennedy also paused a multimillion-dollar project to develop a Covid-19 vaccine which could be taken orally. But nothing is stupider than this: Kennedy is f–king with the development of this year’s flu shot.

The scheduled meeting to begin planning this fall’s flu vaccine has been canceled by the Food and Drug Administration. Members of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC), who advise the FDA on expected flu strains to be targeted by the vaccine, said they were told the meeting was canceled, the New York Times reports.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says VRBPAC “makes the final decision about which vaccine viruses to include in the composition of domestic flu vaccines,” using research on which flu strains are “most likely to spread and cause illness.”

Formulating the vaccines takes time, committee member Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told the NYT. “It’s a six-month production cycle. So one can only assume that we’re not picking flu strains this year.”

The reason for the cancellation was not given. The news has sparked concern about the fate and effectiveness of the upcoming vaccines, given Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. controversial statements criticizing vaccines, likening vaccine schedules to “Hitler’s Germany.”

[From People]

The whole reason why “annual flu shots” are a thing is because every year, the CDC and FDA work for months to tailor the flu shots to the different strains of influenza going around that year. It’s literally one of the best parts of modern medicine – people can get a little shot once a year and they won’t die of influenza. For most people, the flu shot is even free! The reality that Kennedy’s unhinged anti-vaxx wingnuttery extends to FLU SHOTS is beyond immoral. Also: it really feels like the Trump administration has decided to pursue a plan of action which will kill off as many seniors as possible as quickly as possible. Seniors are the ones who most need an annual, updated flu shot. They’re the ones most at risk of dying from the flu.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.