Letters to the Editor | Sept. 14, 2025

In light of changes to COVID-19 vaccine authorization by the FDA and recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Pennsylvania and New Jersey have now joined several states (all controlled by Democrats) that have taken various steps, through executive orders and/or regulation, to ensure access to the shots. These steps include expanding pharmacists’ abilities to provide the vaccine and recommending that anyone over 6 months of age can get the vaccine, not just those with a risk factor for the disease.

Several barriers remain that prevent unrestricted access. Most importantly, it’s unclear whether insurance companies will cover the costs of the shots where there is a conflict between federal and state guidance or regulations. Since states regulate insurance companies within their borders, they have the authority to require coverage. This would make providers less hesitant to vaccinate.

Even with states’ efforts to increase access, providers may still be reluctant to vaccinate off-label and will require people to attest to having a risk factor for COVID. Unfortunately, this may require healthy people who want the vaccine to lie about their health status, especially to pharmacists.

Without additional measures by states, we can expect COVID vaccination rates to continue to be inadequate to protect the public’s health.

Eddy Bresnitz, former deputy commissioner of health and state epidemiologist, New Jersey Department of Health

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent appearance before the Senate was nothing short of stupefying — quite an achievement after months of outrages, lies, censorship, and outright cruelty from the Trump administration.

Mr. Kennedy represents a clear and present danger to every American — and most especially to the lives of our children. RFK Jr. — a “charlatan,” according to one senator — mixed fact with fabrication, which is one of the chief rhetorical techniques used by the president. When asked, Mr. Kennedy could not acknowledge that an estimated 3.2 million lives had been saved by the COVID-19 vaccine — something that, to the president’s credit, was made possible by Operation Warp Speed. The president followed this accomplishment by undermining faith in public health and medical science, as well as by promoting quack cures. The RFK Jr.-Trump method is to layer falsehoods with cherry-picked truths in a toxic lasagna.

Thanks to RFK Jr., the U.S. will likely see surges of preventable infectious diseases, including influenza, COVID, measles, et al.

Mr. Kennedy repeated his outrageous claims that Black boys given COVID vaccines were at a higher risk of autism. It should be noted that the secretary has frequently repeated these lies about the effects of vaccines on African Americans.

With Secretary Kennedy, the question is not “what,” but “why.” He is a highly intelligent man who acts with deliberation — contrary to the prevailing theories among his critics.

The “why” is that he hews to racially based eugenics; he is a true believer in a warped interpretation of Darwin’s theory of “survival of the fittest.” He believes the unvaccinated children who survive illness will improve the genetic “stock” of the white race. This underlies much of his thinking: It is the sort of race-based eugenics that was promulgated in the 1920s and 1930s in the U.S. and Germany.

I was waiting to hear a senator ask Mr. Kennedy, “Have you no sense of decency?” — but that would be an exercise in rhetorical futility.

Eric Radack, Santa Fe, N.M.

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