Crackpot Kennedy

Just call me Canary Cal in response to this article about vaccines, especially for polio.

The fellow pictured is Health and Human Services nominee Robert Kennedy's closest advisor, attorney Aaron Siri, about vaccines. He's agin’ ‘em, unless just given to those who volunteer to take them.

Freedom to chose in America. What could be better? But let me tell you a story from the 1950s, before Dr. Jonah Salk invented the vaccine that prevented people, including children, from contracting polio.

My brother, two sisters and I were raised on a farm just north of Wayne, OK, and one of our greatest fears was to be struck by the dreaded disease of polio. That terror was exacerbated by the fact that a neighbor boy was infected and nearly died. His left arm was useless for the rest of his life and he passed away before age 50 due to complications from the disease.

I tell you this sad but never to be forgotten tale from my youth because it is only one reason that I know Kennedy, his lawyer Siri and other anti-vaxxers need never to be near health policy in America. But unless the United States Senate rejects Kennedy's nomination as HHS Secretary, those two and others of their ilk will be making health rules, regulations and laws that affect all Americans, mostly negatively.

Don't believe me?

Fine, just read, watch or listen to this Kennedy family embarrassment for yourself. Would you really want your children or grandchildren to sit in the same classroom with others who are unvaccinated for any of a dozen or more deadly afflictions, easily transmitted through touch, air or even a lesser, minimal form of contact?

Robert Kennedy is not a doctor, but perhaps of even more importance to you and yours, 61 of 62 of his relatives opposed and actively worked against his recently failed candidacy for the presidency. When he dropped out, knowing he was losing, Kennedy endorsed Donald Trump who foolishly co-opted him before the election, which politically made sense, but after winning, has put forth his name for the most important health post in this nation which makes no sense at all.

A majority of my fellow Americans have chosen Donald John Trump to be president again. I was not among them. However, they did not select a terribly flawed, ambitious, crass and ill-informed member of America's most famous family to control medical decisions. To do so would be like choosing a passenger on a plane to replace the pilot simply because the person in the cabin, not in the cockpit, had read a book about how to fly a plane, rather than being trained to do so.

Knowing that would you board the aircraft? Of course not, but that is exactly what Trump is suggesting we all do with our health now and into the future. Under these circumstances I think I would take a train, car, walk or crawl instead to my destination. The actuarial tables say I'll live longer that way than if crackpot Kennedy is sitting in the left seat of the cockpit and I'm in a middle seat back in coach.