MaddowBlog-Latest evidence on mRNA vaccines exposes the folly of Team Trump's opposition

[LetMyPeopleVote]

The more evidence we get of what’s possible with mRNA vaccines, the more we’re reminded of the administration’s drastic mistake.

Latest evidence on mRNA vaccines exposes the folly of Team Trump’s opposition www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

— Norm Borden (@normbord.bsky.social) 2026-05-11T18:46:17.528Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/latest-evidence-on-mrna-vaccines-exposes-the-folly-of-team-trumps-opposition

For those eager for news about potential medical breakthroughs, there have been some encouraging headlines lately. Last month, for example, NBC News reported on an mRNA pancreatic cancer vaccine that’s shown promise in an early trial. More research is needed, but as the report added, “nearly all of the patients who responded to the personalized vaccine are still alive six years later.”

Less than a month later, the public received another round of good news directly related to mRNA research. NBC News also reported last week:

Messenger RNA technology, or mRNA, is widely seen as a promising way to improve the effectiveness of flu shots, partly because it can be updated more quickly to match circulating strains.

New results published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine found Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine gave more protection against illness than the standard flu shot in a Phase 3 clinical trial.

The report quoted Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy expert at the University of California Law San Francisco, who said, “These are strong results, and would likely make it hard for the FDA to refuse in a way that withstands arbitrary and capricious review.”....

Dr. Jerome Adams, who served as the surgeon general during Trump’s first term, added via social media, “I’ve tried to be objective & non-alarmist in response to current HHS actions — but quite frankly this move is going to cost lives.”

The president tried to defend the shift, but he failed. Kennedy tried, too, and he fared about as well. When Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Trump’s handpicked director of the National Institutes of Health and acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post making his best case, it collapsed rather quickly.

The more the public is confronted with evidence of what’s possible with mRNA vaccines, the more we’re reminded of how drastic a mistake the administration made and why it remains incumbent on Team Trump to reverse course.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. Kennedy Is Driving a Vast Inquiry Into Vaccines, Despite His Public Silence (NYT Gift article)

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has toned down his public criticism of vaccines, under orders from the White House. But inside his department, a sprawling research effort is a top priority.

Link to tweet

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/health/kennedy-vaccine-safety.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hlA.YrC7.1Gc1gfj2yayc

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said little publicly about vaccines in recent months, at the behest of a White House worried that his unpopular stance will hurt Republicans in November’s midterm elections. But he has not abandoned his quest for evidence that they are unsafe.

Working behind the scenes, Mr. Kennedy is spearheading an intense push, across health agencies under his purview, for government scientists and federal data contractors to examine his long-held theory that vaccines are helping to fuel an epidemic of chronic disease, according to multiple people familiar with the effort.

They said the wide-ranging inquiry is a top priority for Mr. Kennedy, who sees vaccines as a “potential culprit” in various neurological and autoimmune disorders, including asthma and allergies. It resurrects research into a number of ideas Mr. Kennedy has espoused, including whether vaccines are linked to autism and whether thimerosal, a preservative that has largely been removed from vaccines in the United States but remains in some flu shots, is dangerous....

The work is raising alarms among some vaccine scholars and critics of Mr. Kennedy, who have long accused the secretary of cherry-picking data and misinterpreting studies to claim that vaccines are unsafe and to limit their use. They fear Mr. Kennedy will use the findings to further erode confidence in vaccines, which the World Health Organization estimates saved 154 million lives over the past half-century.

Mr. Kennedy, who came into office saying he would do nothing to discourage people from getting vaccinated, has already taken steps to scale back the number of vaccines children receive. Public health experts complain that by spending money on issues that have already been thoroughly studied, he is taking funds away from research that might answer the very questions he is asking, including what causes autism.....

As part of the new effort, Mr. Kennedy has tasked some government scientists with studying the health status of vaccinated children compared with those who were not vaccinated. Mr. Kennedy coauthored a book, “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak,” calling for such studies, which he believes will prove harm from vaccines.

Researchers say that such comparison studies would be riddled with pitfalls. Vaccinated children are more likely to receive medical care than those who are unvaccinated, and are thus more likely to receive additional medical diagnoses that could be wrongly attributed to vaccines.