'Robert F. Kennedy Jr. strode onto the stage at a Southern California church, radiating Kennedy confidence and surveying the standing ovation crowd with his piercing blue Bobby Kennedy eyes.'
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. strode onto the stage at a Southern California church, radiating Kennedy confidence and surveying the standing ovation crowd with his piercing blue Bobby Kennedy eyes. Then, he launched into an anti-vaccine rant. Democrats “drank the Kool-Aid,” he told people assembled for a far right conference, branded as standing for “health and freedom.”
According to data from Similarweb, a digital intelligence company that analyzes web traffic and search, Children’s Health Defense has become one of the most popular “alternative and natural medicine sites” in the world, reaching a peak of nearly 4.7 million visits per month. That’s up from less than 150,000 monthly visits before the pandemic.
“With the pandemic, he’s been turbocharged,” said Dr. David Gorski, a cancer surgeon at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit and a critic of the anti-vaccine movement. During the pandemic, Kennedy has become a near-ubiquitous source of false information about Covid-19 and vaccines. Earlier this year, Kennedy was named one of the “Disinformation Dozen” by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which says he and the Children’s Health Defense web site are among the top spreaders of false information about vaccines online.
More than 200 million Americans have been given a Covid-19 vaccine, and serious side effects are extremely rare, according to government safety tracking. That tracking and testing in tens of thousands of people has shown that the vaccines are safe and effective at reducing the risk of serious disease and death and that any health risks posed by the vaccine are far lower than the risks posed by the virus.
Then, they linked to a January Children’s Health Defense article that claimed 329 deaths following the Covid-19 shot had been reported to VAERS, a federal vaccine safety surveillance system that has been misused by anti-vaccine activists. Since January, Children’s Health Defense’s Covid-19 vaccine-related posts were shared more frequently on Twitter than links to vaccine content on mainstream sites including CNN, Fox News, NPR and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to Indiana University’s Observatory on Social Media, which tracks Covid-19 vaccine-related content on Twitter. In some weeks, it found, CHD Covid-19 vaccine content was shared more often than that of The New York Times and The Washington Post.
“It started with CHD the day after the licensure and then was picked up by right-wing outlets,” Reiss said. In addition to its rise on social media, CHD’s web site has also seen an explosion in traffic. According to Similarweb, in November 2019, a few months before the pandemic began, Children’s Health Defense received 119,000 visits. That had grown to around 3 million visits last month, after peaking in August at nearly 4.7 million.
His sister, Kerry Kennedy, who runs Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the international rights group founded by their mother, Ethel, told AP that it was irresponsible to attack doctors and scientists. Many, including Fauci, have received death threats, which can deter people from entering the profession.The group, which supports government-mandated vaccinations and steps such as requiring proof of vaccination, awarded Fauci its “Ripple of Hope Award” last year.
Williams, of the Minority Health Institute, pointed out that in the Tuskegee study, people were denied medication to treat a disease. In the case of the Covid-19 vaccine, medication is available—but anti-vaccine activists are trying to persuade people not to take it. He said the film is “totally slanted.”Kennedy has also made hay from the deaths of prominent people. Baseball legend Hank Aaron got his shot as a way to show other Black Americans that the vaccine was safe.
Kerry Kennedy said her brother had taken down some family-related content at her request. Still, she noted, he continues to reference President Kennedy’s name to advance his anti-vaccine stance.
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