TallGuyJohninBKK

Viewpoint: RFK's reckless firing of CDC vaccine advisors not supported by evidence Vaccine Integrity Project Staff and Advisors ... Part of a troubling pattern "Kennedy's rationale, laid out in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, was based on a series of inaccuracies, calling the ACIP "little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine," and made accusations with little actual evidence, claiming it is "plagued by persistent conflicts of interest." ... As standard protocol, members must declare conflicts at the start of every meeting and must recuse themselves from matters in which a conflict could influence their actions. The only "proof" Kennedy offered on conflicts of interest were oversight reports on investigated activities from at least 18 years ago. Yesterday's announcement follows a pattern for Kennedy and the agency that he oversees: With no transparency, the little evidence provided in support of policy changes is selective, and data are retrofitted to support decisions that dovetail with Kennedy’s personal views." (more) https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/viewpoint-rfks-reckless-firing-cdc-vaccine-advisors-not-supported-evidence

RFK Jr. guts the U.S. vaccine policy committee The system is becoming unrecognizable "In an unprecedented and deeply alarming move, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has removed every single member of the nation’s vaccine policy committee—the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—and announced plans to handpick their replacements. In other words, someone with an established track record of ignoring reality made the unilateral, ideological decision to gut one of the most trusted and effective pillars of America’s vaccine infrastructure. A system that helped eliminate smallpox, drastically reduce childhood diseases, safeguard schools, expand insurance coverage, and save millions of lives. A system that empowered 90% of Americans to protect their children and families confidently. [emphasis added] ... The Secretary of Health (a man named one of the Disinformation Dozen by the Center for Countering Digital Hate) now controls the levers of federal vaccine policy and is pulling them fast based on his decades of false beliefs about vaccines." (more) https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/rfk-jr-guts-the-us-vaccine-policy Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) is founded and operated by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD. YLE is a public health newsletter that reaches over 380,000 people in more than 132 countries, with one goal: to translate the ever-evolving public health science so that people are well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions.

More fallout from RFK Jr's latest outrage: RFK Jr. purges every vaccine adviser on CDC panel, will pick replacements ... "Bruce A. Scott, the president of the American Medical Association, said the committee for generations has been a trusted source for vaccine guidance. “Today’s action to remove the 17 sitting members of ACIP undermines that trust and upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives,” Scott said in a statement. “With an ongoing measles outbreak and routine child vaccination rates declining, this move will further fuel the spread of vaccine-preventable illnesses.” [emphasis added] ... Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), another member of the Senate health committee, said that the move to dismiss all the ACIP members “raises serious questions.” Senate Minority Leader Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) condemned their ouster. “Firing experts that have spent their entire lives protecting kids from deadly disease is not reform — it’s reckless, radical, and rooted in conspiracy, not science,” Schumer said. “Wiping out an entire panel of vaccine experts doesn’t build trust — it shatters it, and worse, it sends a chilling message: that ideology matters more than evidence, and politics more than public health.” [emphasis added] Washington Post https://archive.ph/IJJlR

So then, you DON'T actually have the bank's app working as yet on your two different mobile devices???

Ya... much more of this under RFK Jr. May 20, 2025 Silencing the CDC ... "When RFK Jr. was running for president, he said that, if elected, he would “give infectious diseases a break for about eight years.” As Secretary of HHS, this has meant 1) largely ignoring a measles outbreak that has killed two young children, the first measles deaths in children in the United States since 2003; 2) ignoring a pertussis outbreak that has exceeded 9,000 cases and is spreading twice as fast as last year; and 3) ignoring the 216 children who have died this year from influenza, the most since the swine flu pandemic of 2009. [emphasis added] Now we learn that not only is RFK Jr. largely ignoring children dying unnecessarily from vaccine-preventable diseases, he’s also prohibiting the CDC from educating the public, the press, and the medical community about a new, life-saving strategy to prevent a viral infection that was previously unpreventable. RFK Jr. ushered in his administration with the phrase “radical transparency.” Whereas, the previous administration, according to him, hadn’t been honest with the American public, his administration would be. This transparency doesn’t apparently extend to information that counters his fixed, immutable, science-resistant belief that “no vaccines are safe and effective.” If RFK Jr. really wants to Make America Healthy Again, he should step down as head of HHS." https://pauloffit.substack.com/p/silencing-the-cdc Dr. Paul Offit -- Professor of pediatrics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, specializing in infectious diseases, vaccines, immunology, and virology, and a member of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.

Right now is low season for COVID in the U.S. High season is typically the December to January period, with usually another spike sometime in the summer months. Thailand has a different COVID peak season based on the past several years, typically starting around Song Kran in mid April and continuing for several months. So we're right in the thick of it here in Thailand. Lately, even in its low season, the U.S. has been running more than 1,000 COVID deaths per month. That number was more than 1,000 COVID deaths per week at the start of 2025. The last full week of data for COVID deaths from the U.S. CDC was May 10 with 250 (the latest blue colored column in the chart below). The last full month including that week totaled 1,225. (The last three columns are gray colored to reflect that the data for those periods is partial/incomplete.) https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklydeaths_select_00 The U.S.'s recent history with COVID suggest the current downturn will reverse sometime into the mid-year or fall, followed by a bigger spike around the end of the year. Both the most recent fall 2024 and January 2025 COVID spikes in the U.S. peaked at more than 1,000 COVID deaths per week, as shown in the above CDC chart.

What readers here need to understand is the CDC vaccines advisory group at issue here, ACIP, has a very primary role in deciding what vaccines will be available to Americans, and what groups of Americans various vaccines will be approved for. ACIP plays a primary role because their recommendations, as a broad panel of experts, historically have been accepted and endorsed by the CDC director, which then become federal policy. And that federal policy promulgated thru the CDC is typically what determines what vaccines will be covered (paid for) by the various private health insurers. However, right now, apart from ACIP, there IS NO CDC director, because Trump's original nominee, a predictable extremist, was withdrawn after it became clear he would not be confirmed even by the Republican majority U.S. Senate... So Trump later nominated ostensibly a more reasonable pick for CDC director, but her nomination has yet to be heard by the Senate committee that oversees the CDC and thus has not gone to a full Senate confirmation vote. So the CDC director position for now remains VACANT! Thus, for right now, RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary (in the absence of a CDC director) has the final say on U.S. vaccine policy... and that, my friends, is a very very scary situation, as underscored by his current move to gut the CDC's vaccines advisory panel.

The hypocrisy behind Kennedy’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement MAHA is supposed to be about preventing illness. So why does it shun vaccines? "At the core of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement is a fatal contradiction. On the surface, it purports to favor the prevention of diseases over the treatment of them. Some of its approaches seem to be common sense: Who could argue against cutting ultra-processed food and removing harmful pesticides? The problem is that many in the movement want to do the exact opposite: They oppose public health’s most effective tools to avert diseases (vaccines) and would rather replace them with infections. Squaring these two views is impossible. ... MAHA’s leader, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., exemplifies this tension.... As Kennedy remakes America’s health system by altering the vaccine approval process, directing federal funds to relitigate debunked conspiracy theories and even calling into question the primacy of averting infectious diseases, the medical community and the public need to press MAHA’s leaders on their views. Is MAHA a scientific proposition to improve America’s health, or is it an ideology that glorifies favored interventions while denouncing others, regardless of the evidence?" By Leana S. Wen Leana S. Wen, a Washington Post contributing columnist who writes the newsletter The Checkup with Dr. Wen, is an emergency physician, clinical associate professor at George Washington University and author of “Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health.” Previously, she served as Baltimore’s health commissioner.

... Dr. Paul Offit, a former member of ACIP, and a current member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory panel reacted strongly, saying, “RFK Junior is doing exactly what you would expect him to do. He’s a conspiracy theorist who believes everybody, but him is deeply in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry. He is fixing a problem that doesn’t exist. Also, I really worry about who he’s going to bring in and whether we’re going to be able to trust the ACIP moving forward.” ... Secretary Kennedy says he has removed all 17 active members, many of whom had terms that were not set to expire for several years. His Wall Street Journal essay imagines ACIP to be some kind a shady cabal, rather than the measured body of experts who serve specific terms following a long and careful nomination process. No evidence regarding ACIP’s current membership was offered to explain the need for this move. ... It’s unclear whether Secretary Kennedy has violated the letter of his assurances to Senator Cassidy [the Republican senator who helped clear RFK Jr.'s narrow Senate confirmation], the spirit of those assurances, or both. But Senator Bill Cassidy did post the following on Twitter/X earlier, which I also felt the need to respond to. https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/alert-rfk-jr-entirely-vacates-cdcs

Jetelina & Faust on RFK Jr.'s sudden removal of all seventeen voting members of the CDC's vaccine advisory committee. Jun 10, 2025 "Yesterday, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that all seventeen voting members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices have been fired from their jobs. As I wrote yesterday, this was an audacious move and one that will continue to undermine vaccine confidence, despite RFK Jr.’s cosplaying to the contrary. Now, given some build-up over the last few weeks and months, this move was not entirely surprising. And yet, it was still pretty shocking when it actually happened. I never really thought he’d up and vacate these highly respected experts, upon whom the American public relies for a transparent process that leads to our national vaccine policies. ... Visibility ≠ Transparency RFK Jr. is making policy from the set of Fox News and the pages of The Wall Street Journal. But what he’s offering is visibility, not transparency. ACIP’s normal process is public, data-driven, and participatory. This move was draconian and opaque. Transparency demands public agendas, working groups, open votes. None of that is happening here. Conflicts of Interest? No. Expertise. RFK Jr. is conflating expertise with corruption. His justification for this move was “conflict of interest”—but ACIP’s conflict policies are stringent and public. What he really objects to is that members know what they’re talking about. As we said live: that’s not a bug, that’s the point." (more) https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/jetelina-and-faust-on-rfk-jrs-sudden Jeremy Faust, MD, MS, is an emergency medicine physician and public health expert. Inside Medicine removes the barrier between doctors and patients, so that you know what's happening. Katelyn Jetelina - Epidemiologist, educator, professor. Publisher of Your Local Epidemiologist

This is typical Trump Admin double-speak -- RFK Jr.'s "restoring public trust" in vaccines is anti-vaxer code for gutting the CDC's expert, independent experts advisory panel (ACIP) that has long advised on COVID vaccine policy. And no doubt, the replacement panel -- assuming RFK Jr. succeeds in his attempted coup -- will be populated with bunches of anti-vaxers with little to no professional credentials in vaccinology, epidemiology or other closely pertinent fields.... Bring on the RFK vaccine-advising chiropractors, sports medicine MDs and psychiatrists!!!

There are other questions about the Thai bank mobile apps, such as: --Can you have their app on more than one mobile device at a time, or are you limited to only one (the one with your registered mobile phone number associated with that particular bank account)? --Can you use the Thai bank mobile apps when traveling outside Thailand, when you may not have a local Thai data connection available? --What's the solution to Thai mobile banking apps not have working facial recognition for non-Thai accountholders, and will they as a result be prevented from using those apps to make larger fund transfers?

LAPD chief speaks out about deployment of military forces to anti-ICE protests Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass held a joint news conference Monday on the deployment of military forces to the city as protests over immigration raids continued. "I see two parallel tracks that don't work together, if you will," McDonnell said. https://www.cbsnews.com/video/los-angeles-police-chief-speaks-out-deployment-military-forces-anti-ice-protests/

CA Governor: National Guard 'used as pawns'

'If anything, it's a provocation': L.A. mayor blasts Trump for ham-handed response to protests