Kennedy with Reason magazine on AIDS & the Covid Vaccine

This will be a short post, to alert you to an interesting, short, interview. A week ago, the following piece appeared in the Daily Mail, which included a video link to an interview between Robert F Kennedy Jr and staff at Reason magazine.

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You need to scroll down to the video that says “RFK Jr defends his views about Covid vaccines and HIV.” I won’t spend too much time on this, although it’s really interesting to see who in the media will and who won’t mention RFK’s statements about the HIV AIDS story. It’s also interesting to see what Kennedy himself says about it. Here are a few interesting tidbits, with time stamps approximate:

At 1:20 one of the interviewers characterizes Kennedy’s stance as “HIV is not a necessary condition for AIDS.” Kennedy then replies in a way that is a bit confusing. He first says, “Well, that is not controversial. First of all, I say in my book, I believe HIV causes AIDS.” The interviewer then immediately says, “Alright, thanks, let’s take that off the table then.” I certainly can’t read the interviewer’s mind, but it seems like he had to ask the question and really didn’t want to, and would have been happy to leave that subject alone entirely. Kennedy continues:

At 1:42, he says: “Are there tens of thousands of AIDS cases that are not HIV? Yeah, that’s not controversial. Are there people with HIV who never get AIDS? Yes.” Okay, Mr. Kennedy—I’m confused. You say in your book that you believe “HIV” causes AIDS, yet you also say, here and now, that “HIV” is neither necessary nor sufficient for AIDS. Could you clarify your position, please? Is “HIV” a cofactor for AIDS? This seems like a rather important issue on which we would like to see some clarification.

The entire video is only ten minutes long, and the tone strikes me as rather hostile at times. They only spend a minute or two on AIDS, but that’s more time than most media outlets would give, so I’ll take it. They spend some time discussing Kennedy’s position as a “conspiracy nut” (their words) before moving on to the covid vaccines. This isn’t directly relevant to AIDS, but I find the wording used interesting, considering Reason is considered to be a libertarian-leaning publication.

At 6:30, the question is asked: “Let me ask you the one very specific fact then—do you think that the Covid vaccine, which we’re in agreement should not have been mandated across society for all ages, regardless of circumstance. Do you believe, on net, that it saved lives, that it prevented people from dying of Covid?” That’s very interestingly stated and I find it hard to believe that came from the mouth of a libertarian—the strong implication is that some level of mandate for some subset(s) of the population would be just fine, although the classical liberal or libertarian would argue that no mandates should exist when it comes to vaccines, or health issues more generally. Kennedy’s answer here is good—he cites data from Pfizer implying that it would take 22,000 vaccines administered to save one life, and that it caused more problems than it averted, most especially from cardiac events. There’s a bit of damage control on the part of the interviewers, but that’s basically where it ends.

It will be interesting to see the developments over the next few weeks with regard to this nomination. I’d love to see more reporters ask Kennedy directly about HIV AIDS, as was done here, but next time a much longer discussion would be terrific.

Let me know what you think of this interview and of the potential Kennedy appointment and its implications for AIDS research and treatment.