Not a Doctor

  • RFK Jr. recommends new vaccines after months of delay

    With no official or acting CDC director, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is in charge of the CDC — and recommending vaccines is the one job he can’t delegate. Who is in charge at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention? I reported on this last week for the Guardian — and the answer was…

    Melody Schreiber

  • Top US officials throw Covid vaccines into turmoil

    The Trump administration is bypassing scientific evidence and procedure to change vaccine rules. Last week, three top U.S. health officials made an unusual announcement about Covid vaccines. They said they would remove the recommendation for Covid vaccination from the childhood immunization schedule, and would also cease recommending it for pregnant people. The first reason it…

    Melody Schreiber

  • Texas pharmacies are running low on measles vaccine

    The surge in demand comes as a second measles death is reported in New Mexico — and as the top U.S. health official promotes misinformation on measles. There are now 198 known cases, 23 hospitalizations and one death from measles in Texas, and 30 known cases and one death in New Mexico. But if you call a…

    Melody Schreiber

  • Conflicting advice on “last week” email

    On Saturday afternoon, federal employees received an email asking what they did last week. Then the confusion set in. Some employees refused to open the email, which was from an unusual address through the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), for fear that it was a phishing attempt. Some inboxes sent the email directly to spam.…

    Melody Schreiber

  • What RFK Jr. and other nominees will mean for our health

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a decades-long vaccine conspiracist and AIDS denialist, was confirmed as head of Health and Human Services yesterday. Other nominees are still waiting for their hearings. First, we’re going to talk about RFK Jr. and what all this means. But then I want to talk about the nominations for other health agencies…

    Melody Schreiber

  • RFK Jr doesn’t need a Trump admin job to control public health

    The two most influential anti-vaxxers in the U.S.—Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump—are teaming up, which could give Kennedy control over health agencies. At his Madison Square Garden rally last week, Donald Trump talked about his new (or, at least, newly public) partnership with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the most powerful anti-vaxxers…

    Melody Schreiber