With health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unable to prove his specious claims about the dangers of vaccines, he has pivoted. In a Sept. 29 Instagram post, Kennedy claims vaccines are ineffective, that is they are not the reason deaths from infectious diseases have dropped in the U.S. over the 20th century.

Kennedy claims communicable disease mortality decreased long before vaccines and pharmaceuticals were developed. He argues that sanitation and nutrition are the real reasons Americans are living longer and no longer suffering from infectious diseases.

His video is slick and persuasive, but incomplete and deceptive.

Kennedy deserves credit for stressing the importance of sanitation and nutrition in reducing infectious diseases and death. In 1900, the average life expectancy in th

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