
fitscapades
I went from successful specialist doctor in rural Australia to a homeless addict selling my body for drugs and almost dead to living in full recovery in a three story house 30 meters from the beach with my amazing gorgeous partner, my son, his son, our cat and dog. I am an addict in recovery, my story is quite unique and I didn't live it all only to have it untold as the dusts pass over my grave at the eventual end of my life. I want to give hope to addicts in pain, to their families who worry that true recovery is possible even when you are as bad as I was. I want to try to shift perception in the community that addicts are not a waste of time we are capable of recovery and are not lost causes. I have learned so much and gained so much wisdom walking this pathway to recovery it seems a shame not share this. The lessons I have learned are useful to everyone not just those challenged by addiction.
fitscapades
Unmasking the Anti‑Vax Playbook
Fear is faster than facts—and when politics supercharge that fear, public health pays the price. Michelle, a former physician, takes you from the birth of vaccination under Edward Jenner to the modern machine that turns doubt into identity. We break down how a single fraudulent Lancet paper by Andrew Wakefield seeded decades of mistrust, why media amplification and algorithmic outrage kept the myth alive, and how anti‑vax sentiment migrated from wellness enclaves to right‑wing populism after COVID lockdowns and mandates.
We look closely at RFK Jr.’s paradoxical power: an elite name recast as “insider rebel,” a brand that monetizes distrust through Children’s Health Defense while mainstreaming conspiracy claims across high‑visibility platforms. Michelle explains how this plays out in governance—staff cuts, consolidation, and vaccine advisory purges that sideline expertise and reopen settled science. The stakes are visible now: a measles resurgence, frayed trust in institutions, and a policy environment where evidence competes with identity.
Then we ground the debate in what actually happened inside hospitals. ICU capacity is not a culture‑war talking point; it’s a ceiling with human consequences. In plain English, Michelle explains mRNA vaccines—what they do, what they don’t, and why “DNA editing” myths miss basic cell biology. She walks through real‑world data showing sharp reductions in severe disease and death, the rarity of adverse events, and the risk‑benefit math that clinicians live by. Finally, we test the counterfactual: without vaccines, expect tens of thousands more deaths, system collapse during Omicron, prolonged lockdowns, and a heavier toll of long COVID. Evidence didn’t end the pandemic alone, but it gave us an exit.
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Welcome back to FitzCapades. My name is Michelle, and today I am going to be talking about and the anti-vax movement. It's one that I have been wanting to sort of really get down and do for a while now, being an ex-physician myself. I've taken as a sport to arguing with anti-vaxxers on Twitter. And yeah, I don't know why I do it some days. But you know, arguing with an anti-vaxxer is like arguing with a flat earther. Both reject science, twist facts to fit their beliefs, and treat mistrust as proof. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into, and that's exactly how misinformation survives. But at the wake of you know of the you know, in the early days of the Trump presidency with RFK Jr. as the head of the health, um as a secretary of health, it these are very scary times because he's driving a mass anti-vax movement as part of a political popularism, and it's very evil and insidious because Trump himself is using him as a device to appeal to popularism and to leverage more votes, and it's a very dangerous position. And Trump, this is just one um, I guess, example of why we can see Trump really doesn't give a shit about any of his people in America. I mean, he clearly doesn't subscribe to anti-vaccine rhetoric. He had the COVID and flu shot himself. Uh, yet he is letting RFK Jr. carry on with his rubbish and um propagate quite literally very dangerous misinformation for the sake of gaining MAGA more votes. And I'll get into all of that too. So this is going to have a bit of a political slant to it. Um, but yeah, it's a topic that I'm quite passionate about, mainly because I guess for me, I find I struggle with it. I don't understand the mistrust in medical doctors. Um, you know, we all go to medical school with good intentions, we take the Hippocratic Oath, and really and truly, in our heart of hearts, we don't want to do harm. We only want to do good, you know. Uh, and the very idea that you would go to work in to do harm to people in order to make money or is just sickening. I don't understand how you know people can actually think that that's what doctors are all about. But this massive movement in mistrust in medical uh in in the medical profession and anti-vaccine and all of this rubbish about Ivermectin for cancer treatment, all of this, uh, is just yeah, it's really sad. You know, people really don't trust uh the medical profession anymore. And you know, it's just such a distorted view of really what it's all about. Um, and it just makes me sad, I guess, you know. And I guess, yeah, fundamentally, I guess the thing also that is infuriating actually is that, you know, I mean, like learning how to read a randomized controlled trial, learning biostatistics and learning how to properly interpret studies takes a mammoth amount of time, you know, like literally it's it takes a long time to get those skills because it's not straightforward. You know, you can't just read a paper and take it on face value. There's all these nuances and tricks. That's the first thing. And the second thing is, you know, right throughout my medical education, it was hammered into me, don't trust drug grips. You know, you never ever, you know, you've got to really, really dissect the information they give you because a lot of it's biased and rubbish and and you know, that like honestly and truthfully, that that was really what we were told right throughout my training. I was told and taught that, and I carried it through, you know, like I spent my days of a consultant literally running away from pharmaceutical reps because I really didn't like them, you know. So this whole idea that we get kick well that doctors get kickbacks from you know pharmaceutical reps is really uh well in Australia at least, it's it doesn't happen, you know, it's it's it's highly illegal and it's just not the way things go, you know. But yeah, arguing with these anti-vaxxers, they don't know anything about biostatistics. They can they so easily they misconstrue tr studies and twist the writings to s to fit what they want it to say, you know, to back their what their angle. Uh and yeah, it's just you you're they're it's actually pointless trying to argue with them and make them see logic, but you know, in any case, it's a good sport when I'm bored. So anyway, I guess you know so vaccines were first invented by Edward Jenner, like so he was in like in the 1796, so he developed the smallpox vaccine, so he he realised that the milkmaids in the village were not getting smallpox, and that's because they were getting this thing called cowpox on their hands, which is like a pox virus, they're getting from the cows, and he realized that this must be protective in some way against smallpox, and so I think he uh injected himself with a scab or something like that, and you know, he proved that it was uh that that was um the first vaccine, so it was an attenuated, so the cow cob cowpox was like a weakened version of the smallpox um virus, and if you gained immunity to that, then you would be immune to smallpox, and that was a breakthrough in very elegant medicine, and the first um yeah, vaccination was made. Uh, and so you know, um back then smallpox was fucking deadly, like people dying of it, it's a horrible disease. Um, and so you know you'd think that every Tom Dick and Harry would be lining up for a um a shot against that. But in fact, uh yeah, i i the anti-vax um movement went back as far as then, you know, like so it began in England in the early 1800s, right after Edward Jenner introduced the smallpox vaccine. And many people opposed it for religious, libertarian and safety reasons. Some objected to government mandates and others feared using material from cows. So, you know, I thought this sort of mistrust in medicine was a new thing, but evidently humans have always had a little bit of suspicion there. Uh the first organised group, the Anti-Vaccination League, in 1866, formed in London after the UK made smallpox vaccination mandatory for children, and their argument was personal liberty, bodily bodily autonomy, and not yet health uh but not yet healthy misinformation. So I mean, you know, here's this deadly disease that has got a very high mortality rate, and I don't know, it just it's it's it's I it's crazy. You know, I don't know why everyone wasn't just begging for this vaccine, but evidently people were not happy to have it even back then. Um so I guess it's part of human nature, isn't it, to be mistrusting, you know, particularly when you're giving something that is preventative, even if the what you're preventing is catastrophic, you know, people are still a bit suspicious. So in the early 20th century, as vaccines became widespread for like diphtheria, scepticism persisted but remained small and local. Anti-vax groups in the US and Europe framed mandates as government overreach, linking them to broader political or religious movements, you know. So I mean, uh this is the thing too that a lot of people, a bit silly, you know, they're like they don't they don't understand the concept of herd immunity, you know what I mean? Like everyone's so selfish and they can only see it from the individual perspective, you know. It's like, yeah, I got measles when I was four and I was fine, and it really gets very sick. But that's not the issue here when we talk about herd immunity, we're talking about these diseases, although it's very uncommon, there there is mortality rates associated with them, and the more people that get them, the more deaths you're going to have by the very nature of that function. And so, sure, you know, you might be alright if you get it, but think about the immunosuppressed little five-year-old down the road, you know, who will die, you know. And that's the thing that people just can't see past themselves, and they they can't see the necessity for these shots, especially when most of these diseases are very rare now because of vaccines, and they haven't seen the full um horror of them, of these diseases, you know, that that people just don't understand. Um, so then the modern movement from the 1990s to 2000s was largely sparked by Andrew Wakefield, a British doctor, in 1998. So he published a fraudulent study falsely linking the MMR vaccine, so there's measle, mumps, and Ruby Bellard, to autism. This is where the autism thing was born, by the way. The study was later attracted, and Wakefield lost his medical license for ethical and scientific misconduct, but the damage was already done. Um, some media coverage had already happened, and celebrity endorsements were out there, and then like this is people just sort of started to believe it in the the vaccine and um uh you know um autism thing. Now I'm gonna just so in terms of what the actual story of this dude was, Andrew Wakefield, it's actually quite shady. It really is very fucking dodgy. So Andrew Wakeford was a British uh gastroenterologist who nine in 1998 published a paper in The Lancet claiming a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. But the paper, and that that this paper, right, has become the cornerstone of modern anti-vaccine movement. But it was fraudulent and motivated by financial and personal interests, not sites. So uh basically, investigations by journalist Brian Deere and later the UK General Medical Council revealed that Wakefield had major undisclosed conflicts of interest. He was being paid by a lawyer preparing a lawsuit against MMR manufacturers to find evidence linking vaccines to autism before he even began his study, right? Like so basically, yeah, he was doing a study to prove something which is not ethical. You're usually trying to prove a null hypothesis. Anyway, he received over£400,000 from lawyers suing vaccine companies. He had filed a patent for a rival single measles vaccine, meaning that if he could discredit the combined MMR vaccine, um he stood to profit by selling his own version, right? So this is a fucking little shifty dude. Um his small sample of 12 children was cherry-picked, some recruited through anti-vaccine activists and legal channels, not random patients. And what was fraudulent was that the Lancet paper claimed to have found a new intestinal condition and a temporal link between the MMR vaccine and autism. But here's what investigators later found. He altered medical records to fit his hypothesis. His clinical data were falsified, with some children showing normal before MMR and autistic after, but these children were already showing autism before the vaccination, signs of autism before. He misrepresented timelines and fabricated causal connections that didn't exist. He had no proper controls, no blinding, and no statistical validity, and no ethical approval for the invasive procedures done on children. In 2010, the Lancet fully retracted the study, calling it utterly false. And Wakefield was stripped of his medical licence for professional misconduct and dishonesty. And so his Wakefield's motivations were for money and attention and potential professional ambition. And he was never truly anti-vaxxer, by the way. He had his own vaccine that he was going to peddle after this. But he wanted to become the discoverer of a new vaccine and a new vaccine injury syndrome and profit from both litigation and his own replacement product, all under the guise of scientific discovery. Okay, so this dude is like the basis for anti-vaxxers movement today, alright? Let's just sit with that for a bit. A complete and utter fraudulent study that was aimed at making him money. And that's what these people base their beliefs on, which is everything that they're against. This is crazy. So I mean, um, so you know, one would ask then, since Wakefield was, you know, exposed as a huge fraud, you know, one would think that the anti-vax movement would have died, but no, sadly not. Uh, it's yeah, really sad that that didn't happen. But this is why it kept growing, it was because fear spreads faster than fax. So the idea that vaccines might cause autism terrified parents, especially in the 1990s and early 2000s. When autism diagnoses were rising and poorly understood, fear-based stories like my child changed overnight are emotionally powerful, while scientific retractions and data are slow and boring by comparison. Once fear takes root, facts often can't dislodge it, and that's how misinformation outpaces uh correction. Also, there was media amplification. So when Wakefield's claim first dropped, major outlets like BBC and tabloids ran it ran it as breaking news, possible autisability, uh, and then they didn't really publicize much that the study was retracted after that. Even years later, talk shows, celebrity activists like Jenny McCarthy and social media influences kept the story alive. The media kept uh gave a fringe claim um uh false balance, presenting both sides as equally credible, which is bullshit. Um and also what kept the anti-vax sort of movement alive was distrust in pharma and institutions. So big big pharma's fucked up, right? Okay, they've made some questionable decisions and that's led to distrust. But this is the way I look at big pharma, right? Without big pharma, we wouldn't have medications, right? So we would not be able to treat cancer, we would be dying of bacterial disease, you know, infections in our 30s, you know. Um type 1 diabetics would be dying within a year of diagnosis, and you know, like we wouldn't have medicines. So, you know, if you want to progress in met in the field of medicine and to treat all these conditions, then you need big pharma. And unfortunately, if you're not a communist state and you're living in a capitalist world, then companies need to make money, and and so you know, this is this is the reality of the world we live in that you know, big pharma needs to make money. Unfortunately, sometimes there's corruption, and that's even painted in a worse light because it's about health and medicines, so then people see that as even more dodgy than if it was say uh bank ripping off my money from people or something like that, you know. But anyway, um, so it's it people take a very moral and yeah, more moral slant at it when the when there's corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, which is fair enough too, you know. Like we as doctors inherently are distrustful of of uh drug companies. We are, you know. Anyway, by the early by the 2000s, many people already distrusted pharmaceutical companies because of brand scandals like biox oxycontin and rising drug prices. Anti-vaccine rhetoric exploited that distrust, painting vaccines as another corporate scam, even though vaccines are among the least profitable actually medical products. Uh, and then the internet and the echo chamber, so unfortunately, social media fuels the fire, which is shit. So people they surround themselves in an echo chamber, you know, and they only want to hear things that, you know, validate what they believe. And algorithms don't help that because they re-reward outrage and emotions. So posts about vaccine injury spread far faster than nuanced medical explanations. Facebook groups and YouTube channels built echo chambers where skepticism hardened into identity and community. So people started to really take this on very personally. Um, and ideology and identity, the movement evolved beyond health, merging with anti-government, medical freedom, and conspiracy movements. By the COVID era, anti-vax sentiment had fused with political popularism, anti-globalism, and even religious nationalism, making it part of people's identity and not just their opinion. So if we look at like who m could makes up this anti-vaccine group of people, um, I first wanted to look at Australia and then America, um, because that's more volatile over there at the moment. But in Australia, vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccine sentiment cut across both left and right, but the motivations and messaging different between the two, and in recent years it shifted more towards the populist right. So, like historically, anti-vaccans were like the hippie sort of left-wingers, you know, like people who live up in the hills and bar and bay and shit like that. Before COVID, anti-vaccine attitudes were more common in well-educated, alternative lifestyle, green or well-aligned circles, especially in affluent suburbs of Bar and Bay, Mullin, Bimby, and northern New South Wales. These groups tended to just trust Big Pharma and promoted natural health and holistic medicine. So they often lean progressively or libertarian left, not politically uh conservative. But then COVID happened, right, and that changed the world. And since COVID, you know, people are pissed off about all the lockdowns and stuff like that. And, you know, you've got much more right-wing action there in that sort of group of people, and there's more, this more anti-establishment right, basically, who become anti-vax as well. So during and after the pandemic, the anti-vax movement became increasingly politicized on the right. Opposition to lockdowns, mandates, and maskrules during right-wing populists and freedom movement activists. Politicians such as Craig Kelly, Bloody Clive Palmer, and One Nation leveraged anti-vaccine and anti-Mad and Date rhetoric to rally supporters. Many protesters combine anti-vaccine views with broader anti-government, anti-globalist, and conspiracy narratives. Okay. So today, modern Australia, there's a mixture of the wellness and natural health left-leaning and the sovereign citizen, libertarian, angry right wing. Um, but polling shows vaccine refusal now correlates more strongly with right-wing identification and distrust than with left-wing, so it's it's really shifted. Uh, which is interesting. So Australia's early anti-vax movement came from hippie left, and today it's the populist right. Both share a deep mistrust of authority and mainstream sites. So if we're looking really at um where the anti-vax um movement is really gaining wind, well, we have to actually turn um and spend some time on considering is political popularism, because we're in an age of that at the moment, and it's a style of politics that claims to speak for the people against the elites. So populist leaders fame society as divided between ordinary citizens who are honest, hardworking, and patriotic and corrupt elites. So people like politicians, experts, uh, media or corporations who say they are betraying or um who they say are betraying or ignoring the people, basically. It's not tied to one ideology. There's both examples on the left and right wing uh in terms of popularism, and what you unites them is rhetoric, not specific policies. So right-wing popularism blames elites for immigration, globalization, loss of national identity, um, focuses on nationalism, cultural purity, and law and order. Um examples are, of course, Donald Trump. And left-wing popularism blames elites for economic inequality and corporate greed and exportation, focuses on social justice, wealth redistribution, and anti-corporate reform. And examples would definitely be Bernie Sanders in the US. Um, but anyway, why is populism so powerful? And it's because it thrives when people feel ignored, powerless, or left behind. So COVID, people felt very, very powerless, you know. Um, and it uses simple emotional narratives of us versus them, you know, to give people a sense of clarity and control in complex times, especially during crises and economic shocks, cultural change like COVID. The downfall is while populism can expose real grievances, it often oversimplifies complex issues and attacks institutions like courts, media, or science and fuels division and mistrust and slide can slide into authoritarianism when leaders claim they only represent the real people. So this is what's going on here in the world like uh at the moment in America. Definitely there's popularism there with Donald Trump uh in power, and you know, RFK Jr. is also a very popularist sort of dude who's appealing to, you know, this anti-establishment, anti-vaxxers on the right, which fits in with the MAGA population, you know. Uh so it's all very fitting, really. Um I mean, where does RFK Junior fit into all of this? Because the dude is a is a Kennedy, you know, they're typically democratic family, but anyway, uh, you know, where the hell does he come from? So anyway, so like where RFK Jr. fits in with Trump's whole mission because uh like he sees them as a useful disruptor. So it's quite clear that he doesn't really believe any of his bullshit, right? Because Trump went and got the COVID vaccine and the flu vaccine. But his adver so this is where you know Donald Trump is quite malignant, really. Um so but he's using him because to really leverage more popular vote, like more votes, basically. So RFK Jr. siphons independent and anti-establishment voters away from Biden. He normalises conspiracy rhetoric that benefits Trump's deep state narrative. And some mega figures even floated uh RFK Jr. could have been a good running mate because he blurs ideological lines while reinforcing the same anti-system message. Um so what is his background, man? Because he's clearly not a doctor. I mean, he can't read a medical paper to save his own life. Um no, so uh RFK Jr.'s actually started off life as an environmental lawyer, um, okay, and unlike his like so he he uh didn't really become political until later life when he went and ran for president as an independent, um, and then he stepped down. So, and Kennedys are typically, you know, Democrats, although I think Arnold Schn Schwarzenegger, who was married to a Kennedy, was Republican, but anyway, that's sort of not that's by marriage. Anyway, for over 15 years, RFK Jr.'s been one of the leading anti-vaccine activists. He founded Children's Health Defense, a group that pushes false claims linking vaccines to autism, infertility, and chronic disease. And during the COVID-19 pandemic, he called vaccines a bioweapon and falsely claimed that COVID shots were killing more people than they saved. His organization's content has shared millions, it was shared millions of times on social media, contributing debt directly to vaccine hesitancy, which public health experts estimate led to tens of thousands of preventable deaths. He's been banned or restricted by platforms spreading verified medical falsehoods, and his statements have been condemned by the CDC and WHO and dozens of scientists. RFK Jr. routinely claims that CDC, FDA, NIH and WHO are corrupt and controlled by Big Pharma, which they are not. While government agencies are imperfect, his blanket accusations create deep public mistrust in health authorities, doctors, and scientific research. That mistrust doesn't just affect vaccines, it undermines public cooperation during pandemics and disaster responses and even cancer prevention programs. So it's very dangerous and destructive, you know. Um so uh so he recently spread and debunked uh debunked conspiracy theories that Wi-Fi and 5G caused cancer and brain damage, that Bill Gates and global elites use vaccines for population control, that COVID was ethnically targeted to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people a remark condemned as anti-Semitic and racist. These kinds of claims don't just misinform, they feel paranoia, polarization, and sometimes violent extremism among for uh for followers who believe the government is waging biological warfare on them. Um so RFK Junior frequently appears on far-right conspiracy outlets like InfoWars, Bannon's War Room, and podcasts pushing QAnon linked content. By doing so, he mainstreams extremist propaganda and gives uh Itovinia of credibility because of his family name and eloquent delivery. Well he says eloquent, his voice is a bit weird. Uh so he so is a you know, the other thing that this achieves is eroding democratic democratic norms through anti-institutional um popularism. So he frames suppressed scientific bodies and governments as part of a coordinated deep state plot, a narrative that weakens democracy by convincing people that no institution can be trusted except his movement. So this is the same um playbook used by authoritarian leaders like Trump to dismantle checks and balances. So, you know, basically this regime just wants to tear down the government and the establishment and and then you know um cruise on in and and start his own their own fascist movement, you know. Um and it's it's really quite frightening and it's working because of all of this sort of divisive conspiracy theory bullshit. You know, I don't know, does do we think JFK Jr. really believes in this rubbish or is he just as evil as Trump? Um difficult to say. I think maybe he does believe it. Like RFK Jr. started as an environmental lawyer in the 1980s, working on water pollution and corporate accountability. He built a world view around the idea that big corporations poison the environment and the government covers it up, a mindset that easily translated into anti-vaccine narrative. But it's funny because he would have started off as like a left-wing person with those sorts of views. By early 2000s, he became convinced vaccines contained toxic mercury, so that's thymerazole, um, and we're harming children. By the way, thymerazole has actually been uh found to be completely safe through many different uh very good quality papers. That really fit perfectly uh with his environmental crusader versus the corrupt system identity. Only now the pollutant was inside the body, not really. So he's like like typical kind of narcissist like hero sort of thing, wants to save the world. So the ego and identity took over. So once that his anti-vaccine claims were debunked, RFK Jr. doubled down instead of backing down, and like many popularist figures, he cast himself as the brave truth-teller silent spy the establishment, turning criticism into proof he was right. Oh, it's infuriating. Big the Kennedy who defies the system made him unique, marketable, and powerful, especially online. At this point, it wasn't about evidence anymore, it was about identity and fame. And so he founded the Children's Health Defence, a multi-million dollar non-profit that spreads anti-vaccine misinformation globally. Uh so this uh CHD sells books, supplements, subscriptions, and fundraising campaigns. It's a business model built on fear and distrust. In 2020 to 2021, during COVID, the CHD's digital reach exploded. His its content was shared hundreds of millions of times, making RFK Jr. one of the top sources of vaccine misinformation worldwide. So he there is financial incentive that keeps uh him in this sort of, you know, uh narrat his narrative alive. RFK Jr. appears to be genuinely believing he's saving children from harm there. Um he he often speaks emotionally about vaccine injured kids, referring referencing parents who feel ignored by doctors. That empathy, though, gets weaponized into a moral crusade where facts and nuances are sacrificed to righteous certainty. Uh and his ideological alignment with popularist and conspiracy conspiratorial movements, so his anti-vaxing crusade dovetails with broader anti-establishment popularism, don't trust the elites, they're hiding the truth and the media lies. This makes him a bridge between far right and far left conspiracy cultures, amplifying his influences far beyond health debates. Uh so yeah, like he is invested in the anti-vaxx movement. It gives him a moral mission, an identity, I guess, a financial, nice financial source of income and political power as uh the voice for the anti establishment. It's a perfect storm of ego, ideology, and emotion, one that's far more about power and belief and science. Um so. Uh I mean he is a Kennedy, and that's what makes his popularist personas so paradoxical and powerful because he is an elite, a Harvard educated environmental lawyer, son of Robert F. Uh Kennedy, nephew of uh uh JFK, a family synonymous with political privilege, wealth, and influence. But he's reinvented himself as the insider, turned a truth teller, claiming to expose the corruption of the very system his family helped build. Uh and this is how this contradiction works. So the rebel Kennedy brand, he's traded off on his famous name while rejecting his establishment values. That gives him instant legitimacy because people listen to him listen because he's a Kennedy, but also lets him position himself as the good Kennedy who broke free from that machine. It's a classical popularist move using elite status as proof that you've seen behind the curtain and are now warning people of these people. Um there's also you know emotional power of betrayal. So popularism thrives on stories of betrayal. I was once part of them and then I saw the truth. So RFK Junior plays that perfectly. He portrays himself as a whistleblower within the elite, someone who knows the corruption firsthand, and that narrative feels emotionally satisfying even if it's factually hollow. Uh so he comes from a safe platform, and uh but he's got a dangerous message. So his Kennedy name gives him media access and credibility that ordinary conspiracy theorists never get. He could appear on mainstream shows, podcasts, and even presidential debates and sped and spread vaccine misinformation under the shield of a respected legacy. And he's selling the illusion of rebellion, the idea that you can be both part of the elite and enemy of it. In today's polarised world, that hybrid message uh resonates with people who distrust power but still crave a charismatic, higher status, truth teller. But I don't know if he's really charismatic. That voice, man. I'm sorry, like it's just really, really awful. Um, I mean, let's talk about the voice too. He actually has a medical condition called spasmodic dysphonia, which affects muscles that control speech, and that means that it's a neurological voice disorder, not a mental or physical illness. Uh, so he's not, but he's anyway, I won't be inappropriate. His brain sends irregular signals to the muscles of larynx, causing them to spasm or tighten involuntary, and this makes his voice sound strange, shaky, or broken, even though the person is otherwise healthy and supposedly mentally sharp. Uh, so in terms of how it affects his image, because it does, he's had the condition for decades, it started in his 40s, it didn't affect his breathing, thinking, or cognition, just the muscles that control his speech. Um, and basically um it's a rare type of neurological disorder, but it's interesting if we consider how this condition influences how people perceive him publicly, because it's kind of interesting. So it makes him sound emotional and vulnerable because his voice trembles and breaks. Many people interpret it as raw emotional sincerity, even when he's just speaking normally. And that quirk can make his words feel more passionate or heartfelt, which helps him connect with audiences who already see him as a true teller fighting powerful enemies, and it reinforces his underdog image. So RFK Jr. portrays himself as someone battling corrupt institutions and censorship, and his voice disorder unintentionally amplifies that. He sounds like someone who's struggling to be heard, which fits his silenced rebel persona. It's very, very deep that. And it creates empathy even among people who disagree with him. Uh it but it also hurts him publicly. So in debates or interviews, a strained voice can make him seem fatigued, emotional, or unwell. And that sometimes leads people to focus on his delivery rather than his message, and it can affect his credibility with some audiences unfamiliar to him. So yeah, his voice disorder really doesn't affect his thinking, apparently. Um, but it profoundly shapes his public image and it makes him seem to some more authentic, emotional, and embattled, which reinforces his anti-establishment brand, even as it sometimes undermines how seriously his arguments are taken. So RFK Jr., right, he's like a lawyer and a crazy anti-vaxxer. How the hell did he become uh Secretary of Health and Human Services? How did he how did he get this? So there's some conspiracy theories out there that suggest that he stepped down as a candidate for presidency when Trump was running, and Trump said, if you step down and I don't know, give me your votes or something like that, then you know, um I I'll make you um I'll give you a really good job. You know, there's some people that suggest that, but that's not actually been substantiated, so who knows? But anyway, it probably was was more many reasons, and I would gather to I'd hesitate to guess that probably a lot of it too is that he fits uh in very well with Trump's uh mission of an author authoritarian rule. Um but anyway, so he was he had to be um uh he had to be sort of confirmed by the Senate and he promised that he wasn't going to bring any of his you know anti-vaccine um rhetoric or into his job. He wasn't gonna let his personal beliefs affect it, which is a load of utter bullshit. He's done a lot of very bad things since he's been in office. So he's had major HHS reinorganization layoffs. He announced cutting about 10,000 jobs across the HHS to slim the workforce from 82,000 to 62,000. HHS re uh divisions will be consolidated from 28 to 15 and regional offices reduced from 10 to 5. He's created or proposed a new operating body called Administration for a Healthy America, intended to absorb functions from multiple agencies. Um agencies like CDC are being reoriented to focus more on infectious disease response and some infectious disease functions uh uh maybe merged or moved. The vaccine advisory panel shake up some new appointments. So, like literally he gutted the vaccine advisory panel, he purged and replaced the existing 17 member CDC vaccine advisory panel. So these are fucking bright doctors, like the top of their game, man. Like they were the authority in this shit, and he just sacked them. Uh, and then he he employed numpties, uh, absolute numpties, to replace them who aligned with scepticism and non-standard positions. Terrible decision. In early office he suggested convening a panel to examine the US vaccination schedule. Uh despite earlier promises not to tamper with it, and under his direction, the CDC has become re-examining and or reopening topics long considered settled, such as studies about alleged vaccine autism. Terrible, terrible, I like he's just so dangerous. Shifting priorities and policy standards, he's publicly called for more transparency regarding vaccine injuries and stronger reporting systems, whatever. He's emerged offices within the HHS to consolidate research and evaluation. He's expressed interest in regulating food additives and ultra-processed foods, which is probably not a bad thing. But through his first months, he initiated his Making America Healthy Again agenda, promoting structural change in health, regulation, transparency, and a rethinking in vaccine policy. Uh so he's broken his promises about his vaccine policy. Uh he pledged not to impose his personal opinions or override the vaccine science and schedules, yet shortly into office he signed signalled panel plans to revisit, and he's fucked it, gutted it, and replaced it with loonies, basically. Uh he's a risk to capacity expertise, so critics warn that slashing staffing, merging agencies, and reassigning functions would weaken disease surveillance outbreak response, regulatory oversight, and research continuity, especially in agencies like the FDA and IHCDC. Okay, it's a fucking disaster. Centralisation of power analysts argue that this, his restructuring, centralizes control in the Secretary's office, reducing autonomy of scientific and regional bodies, legal and procedural challenges, some mass layoffs, reorganization have been legally challenged as potentially violating the Administrative Procedural Act or employee protections, and public health experts, sound alarm, six former US surgeons, public surgeons general publicly warned that some of his changes undermined scientific integrity, morale within the public health corpse and evidence-based policy. Controversial scientific studies scientific statements from the office recently. He made a public claim linking early circumcision and title use to autism, a claim broadly denounced by critical credible scientists as unfounded. So RFK Jr. is making institutional personnel and policy shifts, especially in vaccine government governance and HHS structure. Some align with his long-held skepticism, and others clash with prior assurances he made with preserving existing scientific frameworks. While he hasn't uprooted everything overnight, his the direction is very clear. Greater central control, leaner bureaucracy, and reopening debates that have already been settled and dispelled. So yeah, like very incredibly dangerous. So we see this with the measles, you know, outbreak at the moment. It's horrendous. There's already been three deaths in America from measles, preventable disease, like no dead deaths for decades, and then all of a sudden, three deaths, which is three children who've died that didn't need to die from an entirely preventable disease. This is just utter madness. I want to go back to just consider COVID for a second, and I guess give you my perspective. So, like, you know, there's a lot of people who don't think that COVID was real, like think so this was all over nothing, that we all locked down for nothing. This was just a whole government conspiracy to I don't know what, do what. Um, but but you know, there's a lot of mistrust, and basically people don't know the bullet that they dodged, basically. So there when COVID first came about and it first hit Europe, um, there's a very affluent Italian uh region called Lombardy, and it's got it's very well like so. When we look at affluence and hospital systems, an affluent society will have far more ICU beds to per capita of population. And Lombardy had like almost five times the amount of of that ratio was five times the amount of anywhere else in the developed world. Well, when COVID came in, it was a shit show. Like there were so many sick patients that they exhausted their ICU beds, and it was getting down to the point where you know, like two 40-year-olds would come in and they have to flick up a coin because they only had one ICU bed and they could only save one, you know, like literally wartime medicine, it was horrendous. Uh, their ICUs were overflowing, they had were managing ventilated patients in extra beds, and then they just ran out of capacity and it was a terrible, terrible situation. And people don't see that because they were protected from this. I mean, it was still pretty bad in America, which is why it's surprising that there's a lot of COVID skepticism, because I would hazard to guess that in the US there would have like every person would know at least one person who died of COVID. So, you know, I mean it's still a lot of deaths, you know. But in Australia, for instance, well, we locked down early enough that no one saw this. Like there were deaths, but it was, you know, it wasn't the complete and utter shit show that we thought it was going to be. It was scary, you know. We thought that potentially we we might be looking at having, you know, Lombardy situation in our in our hospitals here. It was terrifying as a doctor, you know. Not only that, but there were young people who are otherwise healthy who were dying from this disease and health professionals too, because they became inoculated with greater doses of it. So it was a terrifying thing to face, um, you know, as as it was coming to Australia, and people don't realise that, you know, they they just don't see what they got out of. And so because they didn't see the true how bad it could have been, um, and they and people find it very difficult to think in terms of public health. So what a health condition or infection means for a population is very different consideration from what it means to the individual who might just get a mild illness and that's it, you know. But from a public health perspective, the prime can concern was we were going to exhaust our ICU units, run out of beds, and not be able to treat sick patients that came in, it was very frightening. So the lockdowns avoided that. And the vaccines, although didn't prevent infection, that meant that people got much less sicker, and so you didn't see so many people going into ICU, you know, really sick, needing ventilators and things. So, although like the vaccine to everyone in the general community seemed to achieve nothing from a public health perspective and from a medical perspective, it did, because there was less deaths, you know, and and and it was less of a catastrophic illness, you know, if you will. And so, yeah, the the COVID vaccine itself was a really far elegant piece of medicine. So, in time's gone by, you know, like the the difficulty in creating vaccines was always making the protein, the the actual viral protein that you inject into the person to make an immune response. So the way vaccines work is that you give a part of the virus or um and you inject it into the body, and then the your immune system uh you know recognizes that and you form an immune response so that when you are challenged by the live uh virus like the the wild virus, then you are going to be protected against it. That's the whole idea. Now there's different forms sometimes, you know, like polio, they used to give a live attenuated virus, so or cowpox was the same, a live virus, so you get the whole virus, but it's not it's a milder illness, but you know, it cross-reacts with the immunogenicity, you get the same protection from that immune response. But with COVID, um so they had to develop a vaccine really fast, right? Like there was otherwise it would have gone on and on and it would have been an even bigger nightmare than what it was, you know. The world had to open up again. And so one way to shortcut this process of having to make the virus gene in a lab is that they employed mRNA and it was very elegant medicine. So, you know, instead of having to make the protein, you get the viral mRNA injected in. The mRNA goes into your own cell, and you start to make your own cell starts to make the virus particle to which then you make the immune response. Uh now that sounds really scary because we're starting to talk about RNA and DNA, and people then go, oh, it's going to mess with my genetics or whatever. No, it doesn't even get into your cell nucleus. And mRNA will only go into the outside outer part of the cell, it doesn't affect your genome, and after um a few weeks, you know, you get rid of it, you clear it. It's it doesn't incorporate into your DNA, and that's what some people don't seem to understand. It's it's uh you know, it you clear it, right? So people really believe that mRNA viruses uh vaccines, sorry, alter your DNA is false. Like as I said, the mRNA never enters your cell's nucleus, which is where your DNA is, it breaks down quickly after instructing cells to make a harmless spike protein that trains your immune system. The gene editing myths stuck because mRNA technology sounds really complex and unfamiliar. And although mRNA research has existed for decades, COVID-19 was the first time it was used widely, and the speed of the rollout made some think it was rushed, even though science had been in development for years and met normal safety and efficacy standards. A huge factor in this is distrust of governments, pharmaceutical companies, and global health agencies. So for some, opposition to mRNA vaccines isn't about the science itself, it's about who is promoting it. And this overlaps with the broader anti-establishment freedom movement sentiments. Uh, and then social media's amplified fear narratives like microchip myths, fertility scares, myocarditis exaggerations, often pushed by influencers, grifters, conspiracy theorists who profit from clicks and or supplement sales. These stories spread faster than the slower, nuanced explanations from scientists. Uh so you know, I guess the fact that it uh, you know, mRNA being the brother of D of DNA, you know, it just fed into all of these sort of conspiracy theorists, pandemonium, and uh unfortunately, uh, if it had come at a different time, this technology it might have been better accepted. But there's a lot of skepticism, you know, surrounding this, uh and it's just not necessary. So literally, when you have the mRA, it goes into your cell cytoplasm, not the nucleus, your cell uses it for a bit, it's like and then chucks it out and you get rid of it. It it goes away within weeks, you know. It's yeah, very safe and benign. So now here's the thing, because there's a lot of people who are also saying that the COVID vaccine uh only does harm and did no good, but there's uh solid, solid um uh evidence of efficacy. So during the New South Wales Delta wave, and this is in South Australia uh sorry, Atlas Australian data, um, at the peak ICU and death rates were more than 16 times lower in people with two doses versus unvaccinated. So that was 0.9 versus 15.6 per 100,000. That's uh so you know far less disease and and there was a reduction in death across all ages. Vaccinated people had far lower severe disease. So you still got the disease, but it made the disease a lot less severe. During the Omicron period, so to December 2022, national linked data show COVID case fatality in people 60 plus fell from 3.1% in the unvaccinated to 0.8% uh in the vaccinated, that's 0.8 so that's if that those people have had two doses and 0.4 if they'd had three doses. So about a 73% reduction in death and the pattern more doses uh with the pattern of more doses equals lower fatality held across age, remoteness, and socioeconomic groups. In older Australians in 2022, a whole of population study, so uh 3.8 million 65 plus found a recent booster less than or equal to three months ago, cut the risk of death by up to 93% versus in the unvaccinated. So quite startling data. Um, in terms of boosters versus severe outcomes, Australian analysis during Omicron found dose three gave 65% extra protection against hospitalization or death compared with two doses. Additional an additional force dose provided further protection, especially in elderly adults. So the policy reflects this difference. So ATA GI's 2024 guidance uh prioritizes updated boosters for high-risk groups because protection wanes but rebounds with boosting. So in Australian real-world data, vaccination, especially with boosters, substantially reduced hospitalization and death, with the biggest gains being in older groups. So the the vaccine was definitely um uh efficacious. It did what it was supposed to do. Um and in Australia we had a 95% vaccinated rate. So that's as of mid-2022, Australians aged 12 years of age were reported to be fully vaccinated 95% of the time, and that was for the two doses, that was before the third one was recommended. Okay, so there were complications of the vaccine. Um uh in particular, so there was um myocarditis and pericarditis. So in Australia, myocarditis find following mRNA vaccination is reported about 10 to 20 cases per million doses of pfizer and about 20 million for Moderna. For a younger male, so 12 to 17 years of age, the TGA is reported myocarditis rates around 10.6 per 100,000 second doses, so the younger the more higher the risk. And in global mRNA vaccine safety, a common cited estimate is about five to six per million doses overall, so it's pretty rare. The risk is highest in young males after the second dose of the second mRNA dose. Uh, importantly, long-term follow-up though, 256 individuals with confirmed or probable vaccine-associated myocarditis found that most cases were clinically mild with low hospitalization and no deaths over 18 much. So it's a pretty minor kind of sort of um side effect. It's not not dangerous. So other rare complications are neurological clotting in a global safety study with 99 million people. Two very rare complications were identified linked to COVID vaccines. Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, uh, and that was at about 0.78 cases per million doses, and transverse myelitis in about 1.82 million, uh two per million. Gillon Barre syndrome has been observed in some vaccine surveillance systems, but at very low rates in the tens per million. And anaphylaxis, so severe allergic reaction, is also rare, but uh for many vaccines, typical rates are of the order of one per 250,000 or one per 400,000 doses, so that varies by country. Uh the risk of myocarditis from COVID-19 infection is itself substantially higher than from vaccinations in most groups. Most vaccine associated myocarditis are rare, recover with rest treatment, and have favourable clinical outcomes compared to myocarditis from viral causes, which is often a bit nastier. Because these events are so rare and they are only detected once vaccines are rolled out to millions of people, not typically visible in pre-pro they were not typically visible in pre-approval trials. Uh so yeah, like look, like anything, there's always a risk when you put anything into your body. But with vaccines, the two things are it's it's balancing um risk-to-benefit ratios is the is the main thing. And you know, that the risk-to-benefit ratio is still favourable, particularly if you're an older person. Um, you know, it's like COVID, people still die of it. So, you know, um if you're older, it's certainly there's evidence that the vaccination uh will reduce your risk of death, which is or hospitalization, which is significant. But I guess this is the thing, if you're uh when for an individual, it's very hard to look at public health uh, you know, um at and appreciate what really the value of the vaccine, you know. Um I mean what would have happened if we didn't have the COVID-19 vaccine? So modelling by the Doity Institute, commissioned by the Australian government, estimated that without vaccination, Australia would have faced up to 30,000 deaths and 270,000 hospitalizations in 2021 alone, uh, even under moderate public health restrictions. Globally, the Lancet Infectious Diseases study uh found that that vaccines prevented an estimated 10 to 20 million deaths in the first year of the rollout. In countries with slower uptake like Africa, during early 2021, the virus spread rapidly, overwhelming hospitals and causing mass graves and forcing new lockdowns. Um, health systems would have collapsed. So before vaccines, every new wave pushed ICUs to breaking point. The unvaccinated field, the hospitals delaying treatment for cancer, heart disease, and other urgent care. Without vaccines, the Omnicron wave, which infected millions, would have caused catastrophic strain on healthcare workers and infrastructure. Vaccines turned severe cases into mild ones and kept people out of hospital. The economy would have suffered much longer, so vaccines were the key that allowed borders to reopen, travel to resume, and businesses to recover. Without them, lockdowns and restrictions would have persisted for years. Treasury modelling showed vaccination saved tens of billions of dollars in GDP by preventing shutdowns and worker absences. The vulnerable would have paid the highest price, so older adults, particularly with chronic illnesses and Indigenous Australians, would have faced devastating mortality rates. Even now, the co majority of COVID deaths occur in unvaccinated or undervaccinated, and vaccination drastically reduced deaths in aged care and remote communities. Long COVID would have been more widespread, so vaccinated people are not only less likely to die, but they're also less likely to develop long COVID. Without vaccines, millions would have been living with chronic fatigue, brain fog, and uh disability linked to repeated infections. So without vaccines, uh Australia and the world faced millions of deaths, uh collapsed hospitals, prolonged lockdowns, a deeper economic pain. And vaccination didn't just save lives, it gave the world a way out of the pandemic. Uh so you know, without a doubt, there's very compelling evidence that the vaccination effort was worth it. Alright, so hopefully um I have convinced you that they're of the value of the COVID vaccine at least. Uh it's coming, reaching up to the hour mark now. I didn't realise I'd been prattling on for so long. Um I do want to actually look at uh what's happening in the United States, the measle outbreaks and the dangers uh that they are facing over there with RFK Junior in charge and changing all of the vaccine regimens around. Um, but I'm gonna do that next time. Um, so I hope this podcast was valuable. Please uh check out all of my social media stuff and um join the conversation. Um, yeah, hopefully I will be talking at you next time.