Marty Makary, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and direct underling of anti-vaccine scam artist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is having a very humiliating time as head of one of the nation's most essential institutions. The oath he swore tasked him with ensuring that your children's food isn't contaminated with horrible pathogens and that their medicine is safe and effective. Makary has elected to neglect those responsibilities so he can prioritize attacking the COVID-19 vaccine, bringing in fellow anti-vaccine quacks Tracy Beth Høeg and Vinay Prasad as Special Advisor and Head of CBER, respectively.
Going against the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus, Marty Makary has destroyed any legitimacy the FDA once held. Now, numerous state governors and health departments have gone rogue and signed executive orders to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines remain available to the public - called it back in June, mind you:
Democrats, you're more than welcome to pay me $8,000/month for more great ideas.
You see, Marty truly thought he could come into the leadership role of a federal institution responsible for safeguarding the health of hundreds of millions and casually snatch away a vaccine that has saved countless lives. Marty foolishly believed the whole country would just roll over and go along with it. Marty chose to ignore the fact that he's spent the past five years destroying whatever credibility he might have once had as a doctor and has now been utterly cuckolded by half the country. Nobody who isn't already subscribed to the MAGA Cinematic Universe on Trump+ is falling for his schtick.
Instead of being a mature adult and admitting fault, Makary has elected to double down. Going on cable news, he has foolishly proclaimed that the COVID-19 vaccines have killed Americans, including dozens of children. His evidence? Anecdotes, and a series of Vaccine-Adverse-Event-Reporting-System (VAERS) reports. If you lack a scientific background, that probably sounds pretty technical... and scary!
Let's have an adult conversation instead of falling for Makary's childish campfire antics peddling spooky vax stories.
I. Just What is a VAERS Report?
About two and a half years ago, on a chilly winter evening just mere weeks after launching the Pandemic Accountability Index, I was invited to meet up with a doctor in Manhattan who was impressed by my work, even though I lack any medical or scientific credentials or experience. He was very happy to answer my incredibly amateur level questions.
One of my many questions was to ask just what is a "VAERS Report?"
“We even warned that antivaxxers would weaponize VAERS before the vaccines even came out - and explained how they would do it - because that’s what anti-vaxxers routinely did before [COVID Vaccines] were granted emergency use authorization.” -Dr. David Gorski via Twitter
Believe it or not, a great deal of energy and resources are dedicated to ensuring that vaccines, especially pediatric vaccines, are safe. The VAERS reporting system is an early warning system that is incredibility limited in scope. Dr. Jess Steier of Unbiased Science has an excellent rundown you should read in full:
In summary, a VAERS report is not confirmation that a vaccine side effect is the cause of any bad outcome, including death. Many VAERS reports are essentially worthless as a result. This is the "evidence" that the FDA Commissioner is using to "prove" that the COVID-19 vaccine has killed dozens of American children:
This same "evidence" also says that the COVID-19 vaccine will give you larger, stronger erections. As conservatives whine about a masculinity crisis, why aren't they encouraging COVID boosters? As an aside, there is a growing body of research linking COVID-19, a multi-system vascular disease (a fact Makary conceals from the public) to erectile dysfunction. So, if you're a penis-having enjoyer of intimacy, you should consider wearing an N95 in public.
Every last exploitative anti-vaccine grifter loves wasting hours of the only precious life they're given dredging through the VAERS database, plucking out whatever sounds scary just to terrify their uninformed, conservative fans on social media. This is not science, nor medicine. This is preying upon gullible people who need credible, reliable information to inform their medical decision making. The worst of which is Tracy Beth Høeg, an embarrassing quack who was elevated to Marty Makary's "special assistant," and is now spearheading this new effort. You should really check out our profile on this lowlife fraud, leeching off the American taxpayer:
Today though, we're talking about Tracy's boss.
II. A Condensed History of Anti-Vaccine Grifter Marty Makary
Before COVID-19, Marty Makary decided he would make a name for himself by declaring that his colleagues in medicine are dangerously incompetent. He boldly declared that medical error was the third leading cause of death in America. Upon critical review, this claim was soundly and overwhelmingly debunked - totally false. This did not dissuade Makary, who saw the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to build his personal brand. Taking an unsupported contrarian view, he constantly disparaged doctors and scientists as charlatan frauds while singing the praises of a new SARS virus. Tragically, Makary could not make reality conform to his personal fantasies. In the fall of 2020, he foolishly compared COVID-19 to the flu:
Before corrupting the FDA, Marty Makary and Tracy Beth Hoeg previously co-authored a paper which used this highly unreliable VAERS reporting to proclaim that the COVID-19 vaccine was causing a big scary word 99% of Americans had never heard before 2021, while the virus was harmless. This fearmongering was soundly debunked by Dr. Jonathan Howard years prior to publication. For the past five years, Marty Makary has spouted obscene evidence-free claims such as this on cable news and social media, promoting himself by disparaging doctors and scientists who have made actual contributions and sacrifices.
America's politics, economy, and culture have become so rotten, that we choose to reward those who do nothing but tear others down with baseless lies. Marty Makary exploited this for his own personal profit, charging $10-30,000 in speaking fees before shamelessly joining the Trump Administration. In 2024 alone, he received over $90,000 from the same Big Pharma he claims to oppose as FDA Commissioner. He also secured a lofty book deal to expand upon just how stupid and incompetent his fellow doctors are (and just how smart he is, left unsaid).
With this newfound self-appointed authority, Makary wasted the past five years making a pathetic mountain of outlandish claims. He proclaimed that America had attained "herd immunity" to COVID-19 in the Spring of 2021. When the Omicron variant arrived later that year, he declared it to be "Omi-cold" and "Nature's Vaccine:"
Hundreds of thousands would die, and Makary would never acknowledge his failure.
When it became clear that Marty's Marvelous COVID was disabling millions of Americans, he rushed to defend the SARS-CoV-2 virus' honor. Dashing to the safe space of the Wall Street Journal, he insisted that this was all in patients' heads. From the safe space of Fox News, he proclaimed, "There is no Long COVID, only Long anxiety," contradicting a growing mountain of peer-reviewed medical research just to embolden conservatives in harassing and abusing the disabled:
One man's uninformed blathering overrules countless research scientists & doctors from around the world, apparently.
Marty Makary wanted to be special, and he decided the best way to do so was attacking doctors promoting the COVID-19 vaccine. He felt that doctors didn't champion "natural immunity" enough, the pursuit of which killed over a million Americans. He celebrated when parents failed to vaccinate their children against COVID-19, claiming more Americans believed in UFOs. Worst of all, he alleged that the COVID-19 vaccine would kill just as many kids as the virus. From Twitter:
“Vax deaths could approximate COVID deaths in boys 5-11 w/no comorbid…Based on the data of kids w/ NO comorbid, an estimated 0-10 kids 5-11 have ever died of COVID VS. Approx 15 would die from the vax 2nd dose (extrap from adolescents).”
Makary provided no evidence to support this claim. Meanwhile, stories of parents regretting not vaccinating their children, only to lose them to COVID-19 have actually occurred. That said, he doesn’t think kids should be protected from SARS-CoV-2 at all. Claiming that PPE harmed child speech development somehow, he alleged the CDC was engaged in a conspiracy to cover-up these harms. His genuine belief is that a pediatric bout with COVID-19 will confer lifelong "natural immunity." With American kids being used as lab rats in this grand experiment, Long COVID has now overtaken asthma as the leading chronic illness in children. Whoopsie.
As over a million Americans died and tens of millions more became disabled by Marty Makary's favorite virus, he contributed nothing except making things worse. For this, he was rewarded with the role of FDA Commissioner, further destroying whatever credibility he had by pledging his loyalty to the one man even more wrong and horrific than him: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Instead of admitting that he's lost all respect amongst his peers and compromised the FDA, Makary has decided that Americans must be punished for not submitting to his intellectual superiority.
III. Makary’s Legacy of Lies
“Remember VAERS is designed as a research hypothesis generating tool, not a diagnostic tool, and most **definitely** not a tool to seek causation. Physician review of VAERS reports really matters. Cardiologists assessing patients for myocarditis using formal criteria matters.”
-Pediatric Cardiologist Dr. Frank Han, Sept. 9th, 2021 via Twitter
When Marty and his little accomplice Tracy present their stack of VAERS reports as "evidence" of the COVID-19 vaccine killing American children, they should be soundly laughed out of the room. That's being kind, mind you. Trying to terrify American parents with a fearmongering bastardization of science, and abusing the FDA name to grant legitimacy to this years-long anti-vaccine grift, is utterly criminal malpractice. What Marty Makary has done to the Food & Drug Administration will be taught to future doctors as a prime example of what not to do.
The United States Senate needs to drag the FDA Commissioner before Congress, hold Marty's hand on C-SPAN for the whole nation to watch, and slowly explain the limitations of VAERS reporting. Talk to him in the same tone you would speak to an unruly toddler. If Marty (and his little anti-vaccine gremlins) wants to act like a child, then he should be treated like one until he finally grows up and accepts the responsibility for his big-boy job. Better yet, resign in disgrace.
American children shouldn't have their lives sacrificed in service of any adult's pitiful and narcissistic revenge fantasies. Marty Makary sought the role of FDA Commissioner as a way to get back at the medical community which rebuked him at every turn during the past five years, not to "Make America Healthy Again." Marty has betrayed his fellow Americans, his fellow doctors, and worst of all, has nothing to show for it except a legacy of lies and failure, just to wind up in the history books as little more than a pathetic simp for America’s biggest anti-vax scam artist.
Americans must refuse to let this pathetic excuse for a man terrify them with such pitiful, half-cocked deceptions. Shame on Marty Makary.
Follow us over at Bluesky and consider subscribing! We are entirely reader supported and need your help to make a stand against the government censorship of doctors and scientists.