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last week, U.S. senators spent three hours in a hearing room grappling with an urgent problem. The problem is that even though most Americans trust vaccines and feel safer when they and their families have access to them, the Trump appointee in charge of distributing America’s shots has his doubts.

This hearing was supposed to be about the president’s plan to “make America healthy again.” But for Democrats, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s actions as the secretary of Health and Human Services changed the agenda. we’ve known from the beginning, of course, how Robert F. Kennedy feels about vaccines. But it’s worth talking about what he’s done. So far, he has fired members of a crucial vaccine advisory committee-something he promised senators he would not do. His Food and Drug Management has tried to limit who can get COVID shots this fall. The secretary booted the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after a disagreement over immunization practices. Then, more than 1,000 government scientists demanded Kennedy’s resignation.

On a recent episode of What Next, Mary Harris spoke to Apoorva Mandavilli, a science and global health reporter at the New York Times, about how RFK Jr. put himself between Americans and their vaccines. This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.Mary Harris: Some of the former members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices who were fired talked to Stat news, and they said Americans are losing the ability to choose vaccination. I thought that was an interesting way of phrasing things, because it’s not like your vaccine is being taken away. It’s your choice to have a vaccine. Can you just lay out how this is working? ## Florida Drops Vaccine Mandates: How Does it Compare to policies Worldwide?

One thing that a lot of the COVID vaccine skeptics point to is that the guidelines now are closer to what they are in other countries. Of course, they very conveniently leave out the fact that in those countries, the vaccine is still approved for everyone. so they do actually have a real choice. They can still get it if they want. And many of these countries have national health care.So they’re not worried about the cost for themselves if they want the vaccine. The circumstances are very different, partly because they have a safety net. They have a health care network that takes care of them.

Last week, Florida came out and said it will no longer require vaccines to participate in public life, whether that means going to school or whatever else. This is striking because vaccine mandates have been around for a long time and have been controversial for a long time.but they’re definitely a tool of public health to keep all kinds of people safe. So when you heard about what was happening in Florida, what was your reaction? And can you tell that story a little bit? 

Florida has a surgeon general who has been very anti-vaccine for quite a while now. He has said many, many things about COVID vaccines that are not true. Even when there was a measles outbreak, he said that kids could come into school without being vaccinated.It’s not surprising that states are starting to go their own way. States have always decided for themselves what to do with various health policies. But what has been important for them is to have this central voice, the CDC, saying, “This is what we think is right,” and then they can just follow that. Maybe they make minor tweaks here and there, but they essentially follow that.But when you have a situation where they can no longer trust what’s coming from the federal government, then they are sor

The Silent Crisis: How Cuts to Public Health Are Leaving Us vulnerable

Public health infrastructure in the United States is quietly crumbling, leaving communities increasingly vulnerable to outbreaks of preventable diseases. Years of underfunding, exacerbated by recent budget cuts, have depleted the ranks of public health workers and weakened the systems designed to protect us. This isn’t a future threat; it’s a present reality, as evidenced by the recent rise in measles cases and the ongoing challenges of managing infectious diseases.

The problem isn’t simply a lack of funding, but also a shift in responsibility. State health departments are increasingly expected to make independent decisions, but simultaneously face reduced resources. As one expert explained, “It doesn’t at all. It doesn’t stay in one state, in one country. The thing to remember also is that a lot of the money that state health departments have comes from the CDC. So when that budget is cut, which it has been, they have less money. And they have had to lay people off.So at the same time that they’re being asked to make more decisions on their own, or they’re having to make decisions on their own, they have fewer people to do the work.”

Vaccines are all about prevention, and you don’t see the benefit of them for a really long time. You’re preventing a negative. So when an outbreak does happen, it may happen years after the vaccines are no longer available. Would it then be harder to draw the connection of why it happened?

Yeah. Something public health people say a lot is, “When we’re doing our job right, you don’t see us.” So when we start to see more measles outbreaks, or polio, that’s when it’ll become clear what was needed.

It’ll also become clearer how intricate this network is. Things go across states, across countries.So you can’t dismantle global health, and you can’t dismantle federal health structures, and still expect things to function OK at the local