BRUSSELS — An adviser to U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lauded Europe’s data on Covid-19 vaccines in front of European Parliament lawmakers on Wednesday.
Robert W. Malone, one of RFK Jr.’s newly selected vaccine advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the United States can’t gather and analyze data as well as Europe does it, name-checking the Nordics and the U.K. especially for their systems.
“One of the consequences is we can’t do, frankly, as good a job as you can do in epidemiology, which may be part of the reason why in some nation states, we’re getting better data on the Covid harms from Europe, the U.K., than we’re getting from the United States,” Malone said.
That’s because, among other things, “we don’t have socialized medicine the same way you do, and we have barriers to ensure patient confidentiality,” he told right-wing MEPs gathered in the Parliament to launch the Make Europe Healthy Again (MEHA) movement with the Patriots for Europe group.
Under RFK Jr., the U.S. has tried to reign in who can receive Covid-19 shots, which until recently were offered to everyone over 6 months of age at least once a year.
Europe diverged from American Covid-19 shot recommendations during the pandemic, restricting eligibility to those who would be at greatest risk from catching the virus as well as weighing the possible side effects. Younger men and teenagers, for example, appeared more susceptible to a rare heart condition after vaccination.
RFK Jr., who has campaigned against the use of certain vaccines, has cited Europe’s approach to Covid-19 vaccination in his attempts to restrict who in the U.S. should receive it.
He has also pushed for pregnant women to avoid using paracetamol (Tylenol), linking its use to increasing rates of autism in the U.S., under his Make America Health Again (MAHA) campaign.
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