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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. just released a video on X that suggests that he’s not really anti-vaccine but has just been mischaracterized and silenced by the “public health machine.” The tactics used in the video should be familiar to anyone who’s followed RFK, Jr., or any other highly public anti-vaccine figure. In this video, RFK Jr. frames himself as a charismatic leader, characterized as someone who believes he’s been pushed to the fringes, marginalized, and silenced. He, therefore, implicitly promises to rise up from those purported margins and speak truth to power. He also engages with two other familiar anti-science tactics: impossible expectations (insisting that in order to be deemed safe, vaccines must have a 0 percent risk profile) and taking things out of context (especially with his quotations of former public health leaders, whose comments on the possibilities of vaccine adverse side effects are not put in their proper place of weighing risks and benefits).
As a conspiracy theorist, the way RFK, Jr. has conducted himself during this election cycle is unsurprising. He has characterized himself as a “courageous truth teller” who is the only honest voice in the room. He also tells you he has access to revealing information that he is ready to share with his followers. This helps create the sense of a strong ingroup that has access to secret, high-stakes information that the rest of the general public lacks. He assures you that he looks out for the “little guy,” exposing powerful government entities for the crooks they are. This also helps build community and ingroup bonding. He creates a community that has come together to bring down the establishment and restore truth and order to society. All of his tactics are recognizable and, frankly, not terribly original, as he creates himself as a charismatic leader with a conspiracy-laden community by his side. We should, therefore, theoretically, know exactly how to respond to him since we can see so clearly the tactics he is using to fight us.
This latest video raises the specter of a public health establishment that is failing to respond to RFK Jr. and similar anti-vaccination figures who use similar tactics. While it is understandable not to want to take him on in a live debate, completely ignoring him is a major mistake that the CDC and other public health authorities should not be making.
Part of the reason the CDC refuses to respond is due to risk aversion, but part of it also has to do with the mode in which the CDC and other public health authorities engage with the public. That approach generally uses a broadcast-first model, where public health authorities release messages to the general public but do not engage in a two-way dialogue.
In our modern information ecosystem, this can only go so far. We are now in an age in which many people seek out and receive information about health and science on social media platforms. The public health establishment needs to recognize that our information environment is now networked and multi-pronged, and if they continue to interact primarily through broadcast messaging, they will miss the entire conversation, lose trust, and contribute to people following figures like RFK, Jr. in the process.
It is understandable if entities like the CDC feel it cannot converse directly with or respond to figures like RFK, Jr., who may be likely to target or even sue them. However, there is now a plethora of more community-based science communicators who could fill the gap here. These entities need to be brought together to form an official part of the public health ecosystem that the CDC can endorse and officially point to in situations like this. Nimble and unaffiliated with the government, with CDC’s backing, this kind of a collective could take on the RFK, Jr.’s of the world with empathy and understanding of the communities they serve. This is the only way the public health community is going to gain back the trust it loses when figures like RFK, Jr. claim that they are hiding something from the public.
We’re going to keep losing this battle if we continue to ignore figures like RFK, Jr. Let’s find a way to respond that’s realistic for all parties but has the greatest chance of restoring and preserving the public’s trust in both the public health community and the lifesaving technologies like vaccination we are devoted to espousing.
