In one of many sharp exchanges with Democratic senators during a Senate hearing Thursday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed nobody knows how many Americans died from COVID-19. "I don't think anybody knows that, because there was so much data chaos coming out of the CDC and there were so many perverse incentives," he told Sen. Mark Warner after the Democrat asked him if he accepted that a million Americans died from COVID. In a heated exchange that followed, Warner asked Kennedy if he thought the vaccine prevented additions deaths and the health secretary replied that he would "like to see the data," Mediaite reports.
- "So, Mr. Chairman, the Secretary of Health and Human Services doesn't know how many Americans died from COVID doesn't know if the vaccine helped prevent any deaths, and you are sitting as Secretary of Health and Human Services?" Warner asked. "How can you be that ignorant?"
"The data from the Biden administration was absolutely dismal, which is data chaos," Kennedy said. The AP notes that data on COVID deaths is "easily accessible." According to the CDC and the WHO, around 1.2 million Americans have died from COVID. Later in the hearing, in response to questioning from Sen. Bernie Sanders, Kennedy admitted that the vaccine "saved quite a few" lives, the BBC reports.
- The New York Times reports that some senators read Kennedy's remarks from previous hearings back to him. "When were you lying, sir?" Democratic Sen. Tina Smith asked Kennedy. "When you told this committee that you were not anti-vax? Or when you told Americans that there's no safe and effective vaccine?" His response: "Both things are true."
- Kennedy also took heat from Republican senators, with several accusing him of breaking his pledge not to make it more difficult to get vaccines, the Hill reports. Sen. Thom Tillis addressed the firing of Director Susan Monarez. "I don't see how you go, over four weeks, from a public health expert with unimpeachable scientific credentials, a longtime champion of MAHA values, caring and compassionate and brilliant microbiologist, and four weeks later, fire her because, at least the public reports say, because she refused to fire people that work for her," he said.
- The Times reports that Kennedy was "remarkably salty and dismissive" with senators throughout the testy three-hour Senate Finance Committee hearing and scrolled through his phone as Sen. Ron Wyden, the committee's ranking Democrat, made his closing remarks. Asked if he had closing remarks of his own, Kennedy replied, "I think I'll have mercy on everybody and let us adjourn."
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