As reported earlier, RFK Jr was grilled today at a confirmation hearing for his nomination to head up HHS. While that first report showed how RFK Jr is correct about the “overspending/underperforming” problem specific to US health care, this one focuses on his claim that infectious disease pales in comparison to chronic disease.
A JAMA report shows that, while infectious disease death (red) has come way down, chronic disease death (blue) remains high:
While in 1900 they were similar in importance, chronic disease is now over 10 times more important than infectious disease, but you’d never know it based on the respective proportion of health care dollars spent on each — i.e., too much is being spent on infectious disease. It is true for all age groups:
In all age groups, the proportion of all deaths due to infectious disease (blue line) is below 20%. In the age group of 5 to 24, the infectious disease death rate hit 500 per 100,000 in 1918 — which is the same as 5,000 per million. But even though the age group of 25 to 44 had double that, by 1980, they had only 6 per 100,000 (60 per million):
That is a reduction of 99% in the infectious disease death rate, and occurring by 1980 — before the childhood vaccine schedule was vastly expanded. By 2014, the trend since 1980 had involved a short-lived increase, and then a final decrease in the infectious disease death rate for all U.S. counties and using all age groups (right side):
The final all-ages (age-standardized) death rate in 2014 was 34.1 per 100,000 (341 deaths per million) — which was only 4.7% of deaths by all causes for that year. But the lowest infectious disease death rate is the death rate from COVID for those in the age band of 5 to 9, coming in at just 4 deaths per million (0.4 per 100,000):
Because that risk is approximately zero, it does not make sense to give kids COVID shots. Here is a side-by-side comparison of the background death risk per million that kids faced from COVID, versus the fatal adverse event reports per million doses for Moderna:
As you can see, the COVID shot is more than 8 times more dangerous than COVID for this age group. If something is more than 8 times more likely to kill you, then the responsible thing to do is to not use it or take it. That is just simple math. Hopefully, RFK Jr can restore the use of such “simple math” to the HHS if confirmed.
Reference
[chronic disease is more than 10 times more important than infectious disease] — Armstrong GL, Conn LA, Pinner RW. Trends in infectious disease mortality in the United States during the 20th century. JAMA. 1999 Jan 6;281(1):61-6. doi: 10.1001/jama.281.1.61. PMID: 9892452. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/768249
[25 to 44 year olds only had 6 deaths per 100,000 (60 per million) from infectious disease in 1980] — Pinner RW, Teutsch SM, Simonsen L, Klug LA, Graber JM, Clarke MJ, Berkelman RL. Trends in infectious diseases mortality in the United States. JAMA. 1996 Jan 17;275(3):189-93. PMID: 8604170. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8604170/
[2014 infectious disease death rate of 34.1/100k was lower than 1980] — El Bcheraoui C, Mokdad AH, Dwyer-Lindgren L, Bertozzi-Villa A, Stubbs RW, Morozoff C, Shirude S, Naghavi M, Murray CJL. Trends and Patterns of Differences in Infectious Disease Mortality Among US Counties, 1980-2014. JAMA. 2018 Mar 27;319(12):1248-1260. doi: 10.1001/jama.2018.2089. PMID: 29584843; PMCID: PMC5885870. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5885870/
[the 2014 infectious disease death rate was 4.7% of the all-cause rate of 724.6/100k] — CDC. National Vital Statistics Report. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr65/nvsr65_04.pdf
[COVID death rates were lowest in the age band of 5 to 9] — Flaxman S, Whittaker C, Semenova E, Rashid T, Parks RM, Blenkinsop A, Unwin HJT, Mishra S, Bhatt S, Gurdasani D, Ratmann O. Assessment of COVID-19 as the Underlying Cause of Death Among Children and Young People Aged 0 to 19 Years in the US. JAMA Netw Open. 2023 Jan 3;6(1):e2253590. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.53590. PMID: 36716029; PMCID: PMC9887489. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36716029/
[251.85 million doses of Moderna by 22 Mar 2023 in the USA] — “COVID-19 vaccine doses administered by manufacturer, United States.” All doses, including boosters, are counted individually. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
[8,362 fatal adverse event reports for Moderna shots given up until Mar 2023 in the USA] — https://medalerts.org/vaersdb/index.php
