After two weeks in the hospital, hooked to an enormous amount of oxygen, my patient, a grandmother of four on immunosuppressive medications, took her last breath. Despite throwing all the antiviral and anti-inflammatory treatments we could at her, she died from COVID-19.

I’ve pronounced the deaths of many people from this virus, but mostly during the pandemic. This patient passed just one week ago.

The cases of COVID-19 are rising, as are hospitalizations, but the head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) continues to undermine our best weapons against death and disease.

RFK Jr. is disconnected from science, accurate data and reality. His mismanagement at the highest levels of public health is a danger to the well-being of all Americans. RFK Jr. continued his anti-vaccine crusade this week by changing the criteria for COVID-19 vaccines without an evidence-backed reason.

Previously, the vaccines were available for all Americans, including children over the age of 6 months and pregnant people. RFK Jr. and his ilk have now changed the recommendations to include only those over 65 and people with preexisting health conditions, eliminating the recommendations for younger adults, children and pregnant people.

RFK Jr.'s madness will allow insurance companies to deny vaccines

Many predict this will severely limit access to the vaccines and insurance coverage to those who want it, and flies in the face of the recommendations of major medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Pediatrics. These organizations, by the way, are formed by clinicians who went to medical school. RFK Jr. may have a brain worm, but he has no medical training.

The COVID-19 vaccines were a feat of American ingenuity and offer the best protection against serious infections. They have proven to be safe and are estimated to have saved millions of lives globally. We should be celebrating what our nation produced, not turning our backs.

Yet time and again, RFK Jr. refuses to accept data and continues to turn his back on the health of Americans.

He has done this when he downplayed the ongoing measles outbreak and encouraged the ineffective use of Vitamin A. He did this when he replaced critical members of the CDC vaccine advisory board with anti-science, vaccine skeptics. He did this when he stopped funding for mRNA vaccines – a modern miracle breakthrough that the U.S. pioneered. And he did this with his cuts to the Health and Human Services workforce, crippling the ability to respond to emerging infections.

On top of that, he ousted his newly appointed CDC director, who, in her lawyer’s words, “refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.”

Believe RFK Jr. when he says we shouldn't take his medical advice

RFK Jr. is all the more dangerous as he has the ear of an administration already set on dismantling our public health rail guards, with the Trump administration and Republicans slashing Medicaid for the vulnerable with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and freezing National Institutes of Health grants for medical innovation and research.

RFK Jr.’s recent announcement that he has found “interventions” that are “almost certainly causing autism” is almost certainly going to be more anti-vaccine bologna that is not science or evidence-based. Vaccines do not cause autism, but the data doesn’t matter to him or this administration.

More than 1 million Americans died from COVID-19. We cannot go back to a time when we are ill-prepared to respond to emerging diseases, or even to diseases and chronic conditions that exist. We need public health officials who actually believe in science to guide this country’s health. We can no longer support or re-elect any Congressman who voted to confirm RFK Jr., or who continues to enable this Administration to make these disastrous public health policies. The lives of vulnerable American citizens are at stake.RFK Jr. had said during his confirmation, “I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.” This might be the most accurate thing he has ever said in the past two years, and we need to take him at his word.

Dr. Thomas K. Lew is an assistant clinical professor of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and an attending physician of Hospital Medicine at Stanford Health Care Tri-Valley. All expressed opinions are his own. Follow him on X: @ThomasLewMD

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: RFK Jr. warned us not to take medical advice from him. We should have listened. | Opinion

Reporting by Dr. Thomas K. Lew / USA TODAY

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