At a recent Senate hearing, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) asked Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. whether he accepted the fact that COVID vaccines had saved the lives of almost 2 million Americans.

“I don’t think anybody knows,” Kennedy replied, “because there was so much data chaos coming out of the CDC.” Aware of multiple studies confirming this assessment, Warner shot back, “How can you be so ignorant?”

In an exchange with Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Kennedy — who has frequently propagated discredited claims that childhood vaccines cause autism, which he now says is a “preventable disease” brought on by an “environmental toxin” — opined, without evidence, that mRNA vaccines produce “serious harm, including death, especially among young people.”

After listening to the testimony, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), a physician, stated he had “grown deeply concerned” about Kennedy’s leadership of HHS, because Americans now “don’t know who to rely on.”

The combative Senate hearing demonstrated that an infectious disease — one that rejects scientific expertise, metastasizes conspiracy theories and contaminates programs that track and treat illnesses — has entered the body politic of America’s public health agencies.

“In terms of working scientists,” Kennedy announced in May, “our policy was to make sure none of them were lost and that research continues.” A comprehensive study by ProPublica, however, reveals that more than 3,000 scientists and public health officials and 1,000 health and safety inspectors have resigned or been fired from the CDC, National Institutes of Health and FDA this year. That does not include those placed on........

© The Hill