President-elect Trump stated he thinks there are “problems” with vaccines and once more drew a false connection between vaccines and autism charges on Monday.
“There are problems. We don’t do as well as a lot of other nations, and those nations use nothing,” Trump stated throughout a wide-ranging press convention at Mar-a-Lago.
In the course of the press convention, Trump once more hinted that vaccines are driving up autism charges and that his administration would examine it. It’s a place Trump has flirted with for years, but it surely’s lately come to the forefront because the president-elect has allied with vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“Should you have a look at autism, so 30 years in the past we had I heard numbers like 1 in 200,000, 1 in 100,000. Now I’m listening to numbers like 1 in 100. So one thing’s flawed. There’s one thing flawed. And we’re going to seek out out about it,” Trump stated.
Autism diagnoses have been rising, however specialists have attributed the rise to raised consciousness of signs in youngsters and altering standards to diagnose ASD in youngsters.
About 1 in 36 youngsters now have a prognosis of autism spectrum dysfunction (ASD), based on estimates from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC), in comparison with about 1 in 150 in 2000.
Trump additionally signaled he was against vaccine mandates, which have lengthy been a part of the nation’s public well being coverage.
“I don’t like mandates; I’m not a big mandate person,” Trump stated when requested whether or not colleges ought to mandate vaccines.
Trump’s opposition to high school mandates was a standard theme on the marketing campaign path, although his aides stated he was solely referring to COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
In separate feedback, Trump additionally defended Kennedy, his choose to steer the Division of Well being and Human Companies.
Kennedy is assembly with GOP senators this week on Capitol Hill as he seeks to shore up help for his nomination.
“I believe he will be a lot much less radical than you’d assume. I believe he is bought a really open thoughts. Or I would not have put him there,” Trump stated
Senators are prone to query Kennedy on his coverage stances, lots of which run counter to conventional GOP orthodoxy. He has an extended historical past of questioning vaccines and has additionally promoted the debunked concept that vaccines trigger autism.
However Trump additionally stated he was a “big believer” within the polio vaccine and promised that “you’re not going to lose” it, noting that he “saw what happened with polio” and has “friends that were very much affected by that.”
