Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Crusade Against Covid Vaccine Anguishes Family

Blake Fleetwood, a author who calls Mr. Kennedy “an inspiration” and has been a pal and snowboarding companion since 1971, stated he couldn’t perceive why Mr. Kennedy was “risking his entire life” of activism by “taking up this campaign.”

“Why is he blowing his entire life’s work?” he requested.

Mr. Kennedy, 68, started inveighing towards vaccines effectively earlier than the arrival of the coronavirus, contending that they trigger autism — a notion that has been soundly rejected by medical consultants. But the tenor of his assaults intensified with the arrival of Covid vaccinations and introduced new scrutiny not solely to Mr. Kennedy’s positions on vaccines, however to different unorthodox causes he has gravitated to over time.

Mr. Kennedy now says Sirhan B. Sirhan didn’t kill Mr. Kennedy’s father and has urged California parole commissioners to free him. He has repeated a well-liked conspiracy idea that 5G excessive pace transmission towers are being put in throughout the nation “to reap our information and management our habits.”

In a best-selling new ebook, he claimed that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who’s President Biden’s high medical adviser for the coronavirus pandemic, and Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, have been in cahoots with the pharmaceutical business to profiteer off harmful vaccines.

He has amassed a major following on social media, the place he circulates what is usually false info on the coronavirus and vaccines. Last 12 months he was barred from Instagram, the place he had 800,000 followers, for pushing misinformation in his assaults on the vaccine. His Facebook web page, with greater than 300,000 followers, stays on-line, as does his Twitter account, with over 405,000 followers.

Mr. Kennedy declined a request for an interview, saying he was busy in a trial about vaccine damages in Jackson, Tenn. He additionally stated he thought freelancertamal had not given a good airing of his considerations in regards to the vaccine and had ignored his ebook on Dr. Fauci, regardless of its brisk gross sales. But he responded to some questions by e-mail, saying he was drawn into this problem when the mom of a kid with autism introduced stacks of research purporting to point out a hyperlink between vaccines and the situation to his Cape Cod residence and stayed there till he reviewed them.