Okay, so the non-billionaire truck salesman was good for a laugh or two, but the charlatan’s hiring hall being used to fill the incoming administration is going to get people killed. From The New York Times:

The lawyer helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pick federal health officials for the incoming Trump administration has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, which for decades has protected millions of people from a virus that can cause paralysis or death. That campaign is just one front in the war that the lawyer, Aaron Siri, is waging against vaccines of all kinds.

Mr. Siri has also filed a petition seeking to pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines; challenged, and in some cases quashed, Covid vaccine mandates around the country; sued federal agencies for the disclosure of records related to vaccine approvals; and subjected prominent vaccine scientists to grueling videotaped depositions. ... At the Trump transition headquarters in Florida, Mr. Siri has joined Mr. Kennedy in questioning and choosing candidates for top health positions, according to someone who observed the interactions but insisted on anonymity to disclose private conversations. They have asked candidates about their views of vaccines, the person said.

A related NYT story argued that vaccines had been so effective at eliminating childhood diseases that generations of medical students have come through the pipeline who have no memory of what life without the vaccines was like, what it was like when measles or whooping cough ran wild among the country’s children. Polio afflicted thousands of children, too, but it also hit adults hard, like that Roosevelt fellow. And my mother, who spent a year in an iron lung, which ignited in her a distrust of doctors that she never lost. But I remember how happy she was when news of the Salk vaccine broke and how enthusiastically she shipped me to the pediatrician for the first of many lifetime jabs, the most recent of those happening two weeks ago.

Like Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Siri insists he does not want to take vaccines away from anyone who wants them. “You want to get the vaccine—it’s America, a free country,” he told Arizona legislators last year after laying out his concerns about the vaccines for polio and other illnesses. He did not mention the petitions he has lodged on behalf of ICAN [Informed Consent Action Network] with the Food and Drug Administration, asking regulators to withdraw or suspend approval of vaccines not only for polio, but also for hepatitis B. Mr. Siri is also representing ICAN in petitioning the F.D.A. to “pause distribution” of 13 other vaccines, including combination products that cover tetanus, diphtheria, polio and hepatitis A, until their makers disclose details about aluminum, an ingredient researchers have associated with a small increase in asthma cases.

When did this country become so suspicious of everything it once did right?