This appeared in the Washington Post

Science is a journey in pursuit of truth, often extracted from confounding unknowns. In the midst of the worst public health disaster in a century, the scientist's job is hard enough — so no one should tolerate those who deliberately spread falsehoods and misinformation. Millions of Americans who are hesitant about vaccines deserve honest answers, but they do not deserve what they are being told by Robert Malone and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Malone, who earned his medical degree at Northwestern University, is a scientist whose early research focused on one of the building blocks of the mRNA vaccines, which have been hugely important in fighting the coronavirus pandemic. But in recent years, he has become an exponent of untruths about vaccines and has gained a sizable following. On Sunday, speaking to the anti-vaccine rally in Washington, he said: "Regarding the genetic covid vaccines, the science is settled. They are not working."

The doctor is terribly wrong, and he is leading his followers on a journey to illness, suffering and possible death. He has also spread his nonsense on Joe Rogan's podcast, which averages 11 million listeners per episode.

According to Eric Topol of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, the weekly covid U.S. death rate for those unvaccinated is 9.74 per 100,000 people; for the fully vaccinated but lacking a booster, it is .71 per 100,000, and for those with a booster on top of the other shots, it is only 0.1 per 100,000. Says Topol: "I'm not aware of anything else in medicine that reduces death by 99%."

Along with Malone's malarkey over the weekend, the crowd heard from the anti-vaccine campaigner Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the onetime environmental lawyer who has become a champion of the anti-vaccine movement. He said U.S. vaccine mandates were worse than Nazi persecution of the Jews. "Even in Hitler's Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did." This comparison of lifesaving vaccines to the horrific extermination machine of the Nazis is profoundly odious.