Shockingly enough, recent events mean that we get to talk about professional wrestling again. Here is a rather condensed history lesson - apologies to Mr. Brooks: Phil "CM Punk" Brooks was a rather famous professional wrestler, who left rapist billionaire Vince McMahon's WWE in 2014 under intensive controversy. Phil would attempt to make the transition from professional wrestling, a highly athletic theater show, into mixed martial arts (MMA), a "shoot" competition lacking pre-determined outcomes. Fans of MMA said that Punk was too late to begin this transition and would fail to rise to the highly competitive standards of the world’s leading MMA promotion. Fans of CM Punk insisted he would overcome these odds and become a Universal Fighting Championship (UFC) champion of the welterweight division.
When footage of Phil's training sessions for his initial UFC bout became public, it became immediately obvious for anyone with a basic understanding of mixed martial arts competition that Mr. Brooks would severely struggle in the octagon, with subpar striking and grappling abilities. Yet, UFC owner & wifebeater Dana White refused to give Phil the opportunity to step back and develop the skills he needed to survive. If you were a collector of old PRIDE DVDs & bad MMA mismatches, then you were in for a good time. Otherwise?
Well...CM Punk entered the octagon in September 2016, and he experienced what one might call: immediate disintegration.
The fans with a basic understanding of MMA were completely vindicated in seconds, and "Punk" was totally humiliated in front of the entire world - not once, but twice. He would inevitably come crawling back to the WWE years later. Phil let down everyone who looked up to him as a working-class anti-establishment champion and was paid handsomely for his failures by crooked billionaires.
Why this narrative arc had to be repeated in the field of public health, nobody knows.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Immediate Disintegration

Phew. So now we can finally talk about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. - (RFK Jr.) the present Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Donald Trump. For quite some time now, the fringe anti-vaccine scam artist has been laundered into the mainstream and treated as a legitimate voice with good ideas. Credentialed academics at leading medical universities and journalists in mainstream outlets insisted that the general public needed to hear what this supplements shill had to say.

Critics of RFK Jr. predicted that if he was confirmed as HHS Secretary, that there would be horrible disease outbreaks under his watch and RFK would fail to mitigate them, leading to children getting very sick and dying. Fanboys and fangirls of RFK Jr. insisted that this would not happen, and he would bring about much needed reforms to America's federal public health institutions. Well, the latter got what they wanted and believe it or not: time moved forward.
There is a historic measles outbreak in Texas. HHS Secretary RFK Jr. thinks the solution is fish oil supplements. A child is already dead. Precisely what RFK's critics said would happen, almost immediately after he took office. There is zero "debate," zero wiggle room, zero space for mitigating details to deflect blame. RFK's fanboys said he would do an amazing job, and within weeks of joining The Medical Establishment, Robby completely faceplanted headfirst, with children suffering needlessly for his failures. Who could have predicted this? Ah, yes. Anyone with an amateur level understanding of medicine and science.

Now, as an occasional consumer of online content, one has to pose the question: something seems to be missing?

Just where is that extensive 5000 word longform apology from Adam Cifu over at Sensible Medicine, begging forgiveness for legitimizing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr? Do we have a clip from Real Time With Bill Maher featuring Bari Weiss from The Free Press condemning contributor Vinay Prasad from UCSF for misleading her audience about RFK Jr's merits? Is there a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience which features Joe making a public apology to vaccine scientist Peter Hotez, and acknowledging that men like RFK Jr. pose a direct threat to the health and lives of his daughters? If you can find these essential pieces of media; please link them in the comments. Sadly, they seem to be missing from the internet. Strange how that happens.
Or perhaps these pestilence sycophants were not operating in good faith?
An Ode to Silence
I am writing to RFK Jr.'s fan club directly now. You now own this moment.
You can toss out the Substack draft, shut down the podcast recording equipment, and drop the tweeting device of your choice. Sure, you can say whatever you want going forward - but it will be forever tainted by the stain that you got your way, your boy wound up in charge - and faced with the basic responsibilities of the role you said he would excel at? RFK Jr. immediately failed. Now a child is dead as a result. There is absolutely zero pieces of media you can publish which could change this fact. You will never wipe away this stain for the rest of your pathetic lives.

The general public should hound you at every attempt of a public appearance you make in the future and remind you of what you championed. Your colleagues should look upon you with scorn and embarrassment, that they're forced to share a workplace with such a useless, incompetent piece of trash. Professional obligations with your name attached should be canceled with explicit condemnations. You all owe the critics of RFK Jr. that you insulted as “covidians” and other childish smears a massive, extensive apology. There is no “debate,” you are just wrong.

You got your way with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and he rushed to start treating infectious disease outbreaks with fish oil supplements. With an innocent child paying the ultimate price to entertain your perverted ideals of how science and medicine should function. Just how do you plan to hold The Medical Establishment, which RFK Jr. is now a part of, accountable? Your ideals won out - and now a child is dead of measles because you wanted “revenge” on anyone who struggled to prevent pediatric COVID-19 deaths. RFK Jr's critics were immediately validated, and you have absolutely nothing to show for it in response.

Those of us who possess at least an incredibly basic understanding of medicine, science, and public health told you precisely how Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services was going to play out. We were immediately proven correct. Don't seem to see many apologies on social media, however - isn't that strange? As Vinay Prasad of the University of California San Francisco posted to social media on January 23rd, 2025:
"It's going to be a long 4 years for the people who are crying about this."
A Long Four Years

A long four years of "I helped get children killed by vaccine preventable diseases," Vinay Prasad - a supposed Professor of Medicine at the prestigious University of California San Francisco. Try asking your local gaggle of zoomers about how they would describe the treatment of exploitative anti-vaccine creep Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. by credentialed academics like Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, who will likely be confirmed as the next Director of a now-crippled National Institute of Health, and they will likely go with a single word:
"Dickriding."
There doesn't seem to have been a strategy in place to manage when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. would immediately faceplant as Secretary of Health and Human Services, as his critics predicted one of the most inevitably obvious outcomes of all time. Oops.

Strangely enough, we're not seeing the Adam Cifu tweet of "I am donating any and all future proceeds of the Sensible Medicine account on Substack towards vaccine outreach groups to mitigate the harms that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is causing, someone that my platform falsely championed as a hero of public health," arriving anytime soon. Just where is the half hour special from Jay Bhattacharya as he disbands his fraudulent media platform "The Illusion of Consensus" and admits that yes, the rather boring medical consensus that COVID-19 vaccines are a net positive for society is correct, and his fringe support for an anti-parasitical drug, Ivermectin, to treat COVID-19 is completely ineffective & dangerously wrong? Will someone like Marty Makary be brave enough to declare that they simply cannot work under someone as depraved and utterly incompetent as RFK Jr.? No. That would take actual courage.
What have we got instead?
A worthless gaggle of loudmouthed arrogant incompetents doing everything they can to sabotage the doctors & scientists who are doing the truly important work that saves lives. What a completely pathetic embarrassment of narcissistic losers. The worst part of all of this? That we have to spend the next few years throwing it back in their faces that they already completely & utterly failed and will continue to do so. It's miserable work, but unfortunately, it's got to be done.
Everyone who said that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was a legitimate figure with good ideas, someone worth listening to, and would do a great job as Secretary of Health and Human Services in 2024 accomplished nothing except getting a child killed. More will inevitably follow.
Never let these voices forget what they’ve done.