Newly Public Emails Sure Make It Look Like RFK Jr. Lied To Congress About His Trip To Samoa In 2019

from the liar-liar dept

Way back in 2018, a series of events in Samoa brought about the country’s worst measles outbreak in years. It started in July of that year when two 1-year old children who were given a measles vaccine subsequently died. While anti-vaxxers around the world gleefully jumped into action to blame the vaccine for those deaths, it turns out that the vaccine didn’t kill the children at all. Instead, medical professionals had accidentally mixed the vaccine with a muscle relaxer solution instead of sterilized water like they were supposed to. Despite that fact, the anti-vaxxers sowed all kinds of fear and disinformation throughout the country, whipping up negativity around measles vaccines. As a result of that, the government put a 10 months ban in place on the vaccine.

In June of 2019, RFK Jr. visited Samoa. He met with anti-vaxxer crusaders and government officials. Despite that, he has said publicly and in testimony before Congress that his trip there had nothing to do with vaccines and was instead about a medical records and tracking system the country was interested in. You can see an example of that claim in his own confirmation hearing.

Lots of people questioned that claim. And rightly so. The people he was meeting with, the timing in conjunction with the vaccination ban, it all lined up to yet another anti-vaxxer visiting the country to push their anti-vaxxer message.

Two months later, Samoa experienced a massive measles outbreak.

An outbreak began in October 2019 and continued for four months. Before seeking proper medical treatment, some parents first took their children to ‘traditional healers’ who used machines purchased that claimed to produce “immune-protective” water.

As of 22 December, there were 79 deaths. This was 0.4 deaths per 1,000 people, based on a population of 200,874, an infection fatality rate of 1.43%. There were 5,520 cases, representing 2.75% of the population.61 of the first 70 deaths were aged four and under. All but seven of the deaths were from people aged under 15.

At least 20% of babies aged six to 11 months contracted measles. One in 150 babies died.

This past week, documents and emails obtained by The Guardian and The AP show that everyone on the Samoan government’s side of the house understood Kennedy’s visit to be explicitly about vaccines, contrary to his statements, including statements before Congress. He was sworn in for that confirmation hearing, to be clear.

Documents obtained by The Guardian and The Associated Press undermine that testimony. Emails sent by staffers at the U.S. Embassy and the United Nations provide, for the first time, an inside look at how Kennedy’s trip came about and include contemporaneous accounts suggesting his concerns about vaccine safety motivated the visit.

The documents have prompted concerns from at least one U.S. senator that the lawyer and activist now leading America’s health policy lied to Congress over the visit. Samoan officials later said Kennedy’s trip bolstered the credibility of anti-vaccine activists ahead of the measles outbreak, which sickened thousands of people and killed 83, mostly children under age 5.

The AP post has a ton of details further down the article, but here is an example of the content.

Embassy staffers got a tip about Harding’s involvement in the trip from Sheldon Yett, then the representative for Pacific island countries at UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.

“We now understand that the Prime Minister has invited Robert Kennedy and his team to come to Samoa to investigate the safety of the vaccine,” Yett wrote in a May 22, 2019, email to an embassy staffer based in New Zealand. “The staff member in question seems to have had a role in facilitating this.”

Two days later, a top embassy staff member in Apia wrote to Scott Brown, then the Republican U.S. president’s ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, alerting him to Kennedy’s trip and Harding’s involvement.

“The real reason Kennedy is coming is to raise awareness about vaccinations, more specifically some of the health concerns associated with vaccinating (from his point of view),” the embassy official, Antone Greubel, wrote. “It turns out our very own Benjamin Harding played some role in a personal capacity to bring him here.” Greubel wrote that he told Harding to “cease and desist from any further involvement with this travel,” though the rest of the sentence is redacted.

Now, I have zero problem believing that Kennedy is lying about all of this. Lying is just what he does. And regularly. I also put the blood of all those dead children, and any long term health issues in the thousands of others, partially on Kennedy’s ledger. This is all simply common sense.

But the real travesty is something quite similar is happening right here, right now. The measles outbreak in America is speeding up, not slowing down. Kennedy, as with Samoa, is taking zero responsibility for it. If he’s taking any real concrete actions to combat it, I don’t know what those would be, nor would I understand why they’ve been hidden so completely from public visibility. Kennedy once opined that maybe it would be better if everyone just got measles.

If that is his real goal, it appears we’re on our way. But somebody besides a couple of press outlets should be investigating Kennedy for lying to Congress, at a minimum. And perhaps having a hand in the deaths of children, as well.

Filed Under: health & human services, lies, measles, perjury, rfk jr., samoa, vaccines