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Covid Commentaries for July, August, September of 2025

(RFK Jr. Is Shaking Things Up at HHS)

Part One

By Gary F. Zeolla

      I thought at this point I would not have much to write about in regards to Covid. But Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has really shaken things up as head of Health and Human Services. He has also caused much confusion and consternation not just in regard to Covid and its vaccines but in regard to vaccines in general and on other issues. Consequently, I do have much to write about, though not all of it is directly related to Covid. But even then, it all springs from the antivaxxism of Kennedy.

      In this three-part article, I will be quoting from and commenting upon various news articles about Covid from the third quarter of 2025 (July to September).

Covid Recommendations for Pregnant Women and Children

      Medical associations representing hundreds of thousands of doctors, medical professionals and scientists in the United States are suing the leaders of U.S. health agencies for limiting who can get COVID-19 vaccines and for undermining overall vaccine confidence….

      In May, Kennedy took the highly unusual step of announcing in a video on social media that the COVID-19 vaccine would no longer be recommended for pregnant people and healthy children on the CDC’s immunization schedule (CNN. Medical. bolding added).
7/8/25

      First, I must comment on the ridiculous phrase “pregnant people” CNN uses in its article. CNN discredits itself to comment on health issues if it thinks anyone other than women can get pregnant. It is also not the language RFK Jr. used in his X post and video:

      Today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from @CDCgov recommended immunization schedule. Bottom line: it’s common sense and it’s good science. We are now one step closer to realizing  @POTUS‘s promise to Make America Healthy Again (bolding added).

      Kennedy is correct—healthy children do not need repeated Covid booster shots. In fact, there should never have been a blanket recommendation for children to get the Covid shot. But that previous recommendation increased Covid vaccine hesitancy for those who actually needed the initial Covid shots and now yearly boosters. This change hopefully will keep children from getting unnecessary shots but increase the likelihood those who need to get them will do so.

      Later, NPR News Now, in reporting on the Covid shots not being recommended for 6-month-olds to 5-year-olds, went on to say, “very young children are at risk of serious complications” from Covid. I would love to know what evidence they have for that claim, as it contradicts all of the evidence I have seen and presented previously on this website. I will present additional data later in this article.

      But that is the “Fearmongering” part of the name of this website. Scaring parents that their young children need to be vaccinated against Covid by saying they could suffer serious consequences is fearmongering, as in fact children are at little risk of serious Covid consequences.

Covid Vaccine Injuries

      Kennedy has also argued that COVID-19 vaccine injury claims should be included in VICP [Vaccine Injury Compensation Program]; those claims, which numbered more than 13,000 by the end of 2024, are covered in a separate but similar program to cover injuries from countermeasures. Special masters found 3% of those claims eligible for compensation, according to the Government Accountability Office (WTAE. Kennedy).

COVID-19:

Information on HHS’s Medical Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program.

·         Received a surge of 13,333 COVID-19 claims—27 times the number of claims received in the first decade of the program

·         Completed a review of about a fourth of all claims

·         Found that 92 (3%) of the completed claims were eligible for compensation…

      HRSA paid roughly $6.5 million in compensation for eligible claims as of June 2024, with most of that amount for serious injuries, such as Guillain-Barré syndrome, caused by the H1N1 vaccine. About $400,000 was paid for injuries related to COVID-19 countermeasures, such as myocarditis (inflammatory heart condition) (Government Accountability Office).

7/30/25

     To summarize and comment, Kennedy changed how people could sue for claims to have been injured by a Covid vaccine. A total of 13,333 people filed a claim. That is far less than the number of people Covid antivaxxers claim were injured by the Covid vaccines. They will claim 100,000s or even millions have been so injured.

      A review of a quarter of those 13,333 claims (about 3,066) found just 3% were verified as being genuine, or a mere 92 people. If that pattern holds fore the other three-quarters, then all of 368 people were genuinely injured by the Covid vaccines.

      Those injuries are not to be ignored, as they represent real suffering for those people. But less than 400 people suffering injury out of the estimated 280 million Americans who received at least one Covid shot is hardly a significant number. It is in fact a very tiny percentage. It is an even tinier percentage of the total number of shots given over the past almost five years, which is an estimated 720 million (estimates from Gab AI, using CDC and JAMA data, as of October 2025). Those percentages are so small and difficulty to calculate I asked Gab AI to do it for me, “400 is approximately 0.000143% of 280 million and 0.0000556% of 720 million.”

      Those minuscule percentages represent the real rate of serious side effects from the Covid vaccines and totally contradict the claimed high rate of injuries by Covid antivaxxers. That is the “Lies” part of the name of this website.

Measles Cases on the Rise

      Experts worry that if vaccination rates do not improve, deadly outbreaks will become the new normal. There have now been more measles cases in 2025 than in any other year since the contagious virus was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, according to new data released Wednesday [7/9/25] by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (NYT. Measles).

          The U.S. is having its worst year for measles spread in more than three decades, with a total of 1,288 cases nationally and another six months to go in 2025. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that the national case count surpassed 2019, when there were 1,274 cases for the year and the country almost lost its status of having eliminated the vaccine-preventable illness. That could happen this year if the virus has nonstop spread for 12 months.

      This year’s outbreaks, some of them interconnected, started five months ago in undervaccinated communities in West Texas. Three people have died — two children in Texas and an adult in New Mexico — and dozens of people have been hospitalized. Public health experts maintain the true case count may be higher than state health departments have confirmed (AP. The US).

7/10/25

      A record share of U.S. kindergartners had an exemption for a required vaccination last school year, and coverage for all reported vaccines – including the measles vaccine – was lower than the year before, according to new data published Thursday [7/31/25] by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

      About 3.6% of incoming kindergartners in the 2024-25 school year had an exemption for a required vaccine, leaving about 138,000 new schoolchildren without full coverage for at least one state-mandated vaccine, the new data shows. Exemptions jumped more than a full percentage point over the past four years, the CDC data shows, and the vast majority – all but 0.2% – were for non-medical reasons.

      About 286,000 kindergartners had not completed the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination series in the 2024-25 school year, as cases climbed this year to the highest they’ve been since the disease was declared eliminated in the U.S. a quarter-century ago.

      MMR coverage dropped to 92.5%, marking the fifth year in a row that coverage has been below the federal target of 95%, according to the CDC data. The vast majority of this year’s measles cases have been in unvaccinated children (CNN. Vaccine).
8/1/25

      This is an issue that is only tangentially related to Covid. But Covid vaccine hesitancy leached into hesitancy for getting other vaccines. That led to fewer school children getting vaccinated for measles, which in turn led to outbreaks of measles, which lead to three people dying and dozens being hospitalized for measles, all unvaccinated.  All that unnecessary suffering and death is a stark contrast to measles having been declared eradicated in 2000.

      A lot of this unnecessary suffering can be laid at the feet of RFK Jr. and others like him who pushed antivaxx nonsense for years. The fruit of that misinformation is now rearing its ugly head with preventable outbreaks like these. It also leads to people suffering needlessly with Covid, namely, those who should get the shots but have not.

Funding for mRNA Research Pulled

      “To replace the troubled mRNA programs, we’re prioritizing the development of safer, broader vaccine strategies, like whole-virus vaccines and novel platforms that don’t collapse when viruses mutate,” Kennedy said in the video.

      Infectious disease experts say the mRNA technology used in vaccines is safe, and they credit its development during the first Trump administration with slowing the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Future pandemics, they warned, will be harder to stop without the help of mRNA….

      Traditionally, vaccines have required growing pieces of viruses, often in chicken eggs or giant vats of cells, then purifying that material. The mRNA approach starts with a snippet of genetic code that carries instructions for making proteins. Scientists pick the protein to target, inject that blueprint and the body makes just enough to trigger immune protection — producing its own vaccine dose….

      The mRNA technology is used in approved COVID-19 and RSV shots, but has not yet been approved for a flu shot. Moderna, which was studying a combination COVID-19 and flu mRNA shot, had said it believed mRNA could speed up production of flu shots compared with traditional vaccines.

      “Let me be absolutely clear, HHS supports safe, effective vaccines for every American who wants them,” Kennedy said in the statement.

      Speaking hours later Tuesday [8/5/25] at a news conference in Anchorage, Alaska, alongside the state’s two Republican U.S. senators, Kennedy said work is underway on an alternative.

      He said a “universal vaccine” that mimics “natural immunity” is the administration’s focus. “It could be effective — we believe it’s going to be effective -- against not only coronaviruses, but also flu,” he said (AP. RFK).

8/5/25

      That kind of shot [mRNA] was first used during the Covid-19 pandemic, but the health secretary has been sharply critical of the technology….

      The new cancellations dismayed scientists, many of whom regard mRNA shots as the best option for protecting Americans in a pandemic.

      “This is a bad day for science,” said Scott Hensley, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania who has been working to develop an mRNA vaccine against influenza….

      “Had we not used these lifesaving mRNA vaccines to protect against severe illness, we would have had millions of more Covid deaths,” she said (NYT. Kennedy Cancels).

      So-called mRNA vaccines saved millions of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic — and now scientists are using that Nobel Prize-winning technology to try to develop vaccines and treatments against a long list of diseases including cancer and cystic fibrosis.

      But this week, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine critic, canceled $500 million in government-funded research projects to create new mRNA vaccines against respiratory illnesses that might trigger another health emergency.

      That dismays infectious disease experts who note that mRNA allows faster production of shots than older vaccine-production methods, buying precious time if another pandemic were to emerge….

      Years of research show protection from COVID-19 vaccines — both the types made with mRNA and a type made with traditional technology — does wane over time. The vaccinations provide the strongest protection against severe infection and death, even if people still become infected.

      But that’s a common feature with both the coronavirus and flu because both viruses continually mutate. That’s the reason we’re told to get a flu vaccine every year — using vaccines made with traditional methods, not mRNA.

      Today’s COVID-19 vaccines made with mRNA by Pfizer and Moderna can be updated more quickly each year than traditional types, an advantage that now has multiple companies developing other vaccines using the technology (AP. What).

8/7/25

      I got the Novavax vaccine for my last two Covid booster shots, but I doubt I will get it this year, as it is targeted towards last year’s Covid variant, the one I most likely was infected with over the holidays (see My and My Dad’s First Bout with Covid). Meanwhile, the Moderna and Pfizer boosters are geared towards more recent variants. That is an indication of the assertion in the last paragraph of the last block quote.

      But the main issue is RFK Jr. was in the forefront of spreading lies about the “dangers” of the mRNA vaccines. But, as the previous section shows, that risk is miniscule. Moreover, his claim the protection from mRNA vaccines “collapse when viruses mutate” is just as true for any other Covid or flu vaccine. That is “because both viruses continually mutate.”

      Bottom line is RFK Jr. increased vaccine hesitancy unnecessarily with this pulling of funding from mRNA research, and he made Americans less safe by restricting the development of further vaccines based on the mRNA technology.

      On the claim that without the mRNA vaccines, “we would have had millions of more Covid deaths” Gab AI gives the following statistic, “Vaccines saved an estimated 3.2 million lives in the U.S. (CDC, 2022).”

CDC Shooting Due to Vaccine Misinformation

      The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has identified the man who opened fire at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as 30-year-old Patrick Joseph White of Kennesaw, Georgia….

      The GBI statement says White died and Officer David Rose with the DeKalb County Police Department was shot and killed during the shooting Friday [8/8/25].

      The shooter opened fire outside the CDC headquarters, striking windows across the sprawling campus and killing the officer before he was found dead in a nearby building, authorities said. The attack prompted a massive law enforcement response to one of the nation’s most prominent public health institutions, but no one else was reported to be injured (Newsmax. CDC).

      They had been winding down for the weekend when more than 40 bullets smashed through their office windows, whizzing just over their cubicle walls and petrifying staffers in at least four buildings….

      The gunman – wearing what appeared to be a surgical mask and armed with two handguns, a rifle, a shotgun and two backpacks filled with ammo – fired on at least four CDC buildings….

      After a tense lockdown stretching into the night, the gunman was struck by gunfire and found dead on the second floor of the CVS store. Police could not say if the gunfire came from officers or the gunman himself….

      Shooting happened amid vaccine misinformation and slashed CDC funding

      After speaking with family members of the suspect, police are operating under the hypothesis he was either sick or believed he was sick and blamed the illness on the Covid-19 vaccine, a law enforcement official told CNN.

      The shooting occurred the same week U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – a longtime critic of Covid vaccinations, with a history of spreading vaccine misinformation – announced the cancellation of a half-billion dollars in investments in mRNA projects. HHS said it would cancel federal funding for nearly two dozen mRNA vaccine projects (CNN. CDC).

8/9/25

      NPR New Now on this day reported the shooter said he was “depressed and suicidal” due to the Covid vaccine.

      What all of this means is, Officer Rose, who was 33, married, and the father of three, was killed and many CDC employees were terrorized due to vaccine misinformation promulgated by the likes of RFK Jr. Now, it is possible the shooter was one of the 0.000143% of Americans who were truly injured by the Covid vaccines, but that is highly unlikely. Moreover, being “depressed and suicidal” is not even a reported possible side effect.

      Words have consequences, and spreading lies by saying there has been massive harm caused by the Covid vaccines has real-world consequences, in addition to unnecessarily creating vaccine hesitancy, not just for the Covid vaccines but for vaccines in general.

      This three-part article is continued at: RFK Jr. Is Shaking Things Up at HHS (Covid Commentaries for July, August, September of 2025) Part Two.

References:

      See RFK Jr. Is Shaking Things Up at HHS (Covid Commentaries for July, August, September of 2025) References.

Covid Quarterly Commentaries for Q3 2025. Copyright © 2025 by Gary F. Zeolla (www.Zeolla.org).

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The above article was posted on this website October 8, 2025.