To the editor: For Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be our secretary of Well being and Human Companies is just not solely having the fox guard the hen coop — the fox is invited proper into the hen coop. His unfitness for the job and hazard to the well being of our residents was fantastically laid out by columnist Robin Abcarian in her article on the crucial function of vaccines and the risks we face as a result of he belittles their validity and significance (“RFK Jr. is dismantling trust in vaccines, the crown jewel of American public health,” June 29).
Throughout my pediatric residency many years in the past, a number of the “old-timers” sometimes introduced in sufferers who had ailments that we hardly ever noticed anymore due to vaccines, together with measles. One evening, a toddler got here into the emergency room and we admitted her instantly to the intensive care unit as a result of we may see she had a grave an infection. She died the following day. The an infection she had, Haemophilus influenzae sort B, is now a part of the vaccination schedule. That vaccine alone is estimated to have saved 2.85 million lives from 1989 to 2024.
There’s little that forestalls toddler mortality like vaccines. Though the insurance coverage trade has adopted Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention suggestions for vaccines, paying for those really helpful by the CDC Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, I like to recommend and hope they’ll pivot to following the suggestions {of professional} medical organizations such because the American Academy of Pediatrics. Our kids and others receiving vaccines deserve this safety.
Linda Randolph, Los Angeles
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To the editor: Operation Warp Pace was an awesome success that enabled testing and widespread distribution of COVID-19 vaccines by the top of the primary pandemic yr, 2020. In accordance with one study, in simply the primary seven months of 2021, the vaccines saved roughly 279,000 U.S. lives.
Now, as Abcarian discusses, we’ve got a Well being secretary who tells People to eat wholesome whereas he feasts on junk science that erroneously claims that COVID vaccines, together with different vaccines, are dangerous.
We should always all be involved about our nation’s transition from Operation Warp Pace to what I name “Operation Warped Thoughts” — a silly opposition to vaccines — and the dangers that this poses to our well being. And we should always all query why the president nominated an unqualified particular person to be the Well being secretary and why all Republican senators besides Mitch McConnell voted to verify him. It’s notable that McConnell, a survivor of childhood polio, defined his place by saying, “I can’t condone the relitigation of confirmed cures, and neither will thousands and thousands of People who credit score their survival and high quality of life to scientific miracles.”
David Michels, Encino
