section_path: Anti-vaccine advocacy and conspiracy theories on public health/COVID-19
section_name: COVID-19
paragraph_text: COVID-19
  
  During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy promoted multiple conspiracy theories related to COVID, including false claims that Anthony Fauci and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were trying to profit off a vaccine, and suggesting that Bill Gates would cut off access to money of people who do not get vaccinated, allowing them to starve. In August 2020, Kennedy appeared in an hour-long interview with Alec Baldwin on Instagram and touted a number of incorrect and misleading claims about vaccines and public health measures related to the pandemic. Public health officials and scientists criticized Baldwin for letting Kennedy's claims go unchallenged.
  
  In May 2021, Kennedy petitioned the FDA to rescind authorization for all current and future COVID vaccines. The vaccines had saved about 140,000 lives in the United States. John Moore, a professor of immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College, called Kennedy's request "an appalling error of judgment".
  
  Kennedy has promoted misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine, falsely suggesting that it contributed to the death of Hank Aaron and others. In February 2021, his Instagram account was blocked for "repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines". The Center for Countering Digital Hate identified Kennedy as one of the main propagators of conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and 5G phone technology. His conspiracy theory activities considerably increased his social media impact. Between the spring and fall of 2020, his Instagram account grew from 121,000 followers to 454,000.
  
  Kennedy has expressed skepticism about the COVID-19 pandemic, contending that it served to benefit billionaires. According to Kennedy, the pandemic resulted in a "$4.4 trillion shift in wealth from the American middle class to this new oligarchy that we created—500 new billionaires with the lockdowns, and the billionaires that we already had increased their wealth by 30%".
  
  In November 2021, Kennedy's book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health was published. In it, Kennedy alleges that Fauci sabotaged treatments for AIDS, violated federal laws, and conspired with Bill Gates and social media companies such as Facebook to suppress information about COVID-19 cures, to leave vaccines as the only option to fight the pandemic. In the book, Kennedy calls Fauci a "powerful technocrat who helped orchestrate and execute 2020's historic coup d'état against Western democracy". He claims without proof that Fauci and Gates had schemed to prolong the pandemic and exaggerate its effects, promoting expensive vaccinations for the benefit of "a powerful vaccine cartel".
  
  The book repeats several discredited myths about the COVID-19 pandemic, notably about the effectiveness of ivermectin. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote that in the book "polemics alternate with chapters that pedantically seek to substantiate Kennedy's accusations with numerous quotations and studies". Kennedy also released a video depicting Fauci with a Hitler mustache. In response to the book, Fauci called Kennedy "a very disturbed individual" and has publicly said that, having met with Kennedy to discuss vaccines early during his tenure in the Trump administration, he " know what's going on in head, but it's not good".
  
  Kennedy wrote the foreword to Plague of Corruption, a 2020 book by the former research scientist and the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Judy Mikovits.
  
  In August 2020, Kennedy appeared as a speaker at a partially violent demonstration in Berlin where populist groups called for an end to restrictions caused by COVID-19. His YouTube account was removed in late September 2021 for breaking the company's new policies on vaccine misinformation.
  
  In January 2022, during a speech at an anti-vaccination rally on the National Mall in Washington D.C., Kennedy said: "Even in Hitler's Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in the attic like Anne Frank did. Today the mechanisms are being put in place that will make it so none of us can run, none of us can hide." The Auschwitz Memorial responded on Twitter: "Exploiting of the tragedy of people who suffered, were humiliated, tortured & murdered by the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany—including children like Anne Frank—in a debate about vaccines & limitations during global pandemic is a sad symptom of moral & intellectual decay." Kennedy's wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, also condemned his comments, tweeting that the reference to Frank was "reprehensible and insensitive". Two days later, Kennedy apologized for his comment. In June 2023, Instagram reinstated his account.
  
  In July 2023, at a private dinner, Kennedy was recorded saying, "There is an argument that is ethnically targeted", adding, "COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are the most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese... we don't know whether it's deliberately targeted or not." The American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League immediately condemned his remarks, with the latter saying that Kennedy's statement "feeds into sinophobic and antisemitic conspiracy theories".
  
  Kennedy responded that he "never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews" and that he does not "believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered". He explained his remarks by citing a 2021 study that he said showed that "COVID-19 appears to disproportionately affect certain races" due to racial differences in the effectiveness of COVID-19's furin cleave docking site, thus serving "as a kind of proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons".
  
  Experts roundly criticized these further claims, pointing out that the study said nothing about Chinese people or bioweapons and that Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews contract COVID-19 at rates similar to other ethnic groups and nationalities. The virologist Angela Rasmussen said, "Jewish or Chinese protease consensus sequences are not a thing in biochemistry, but they are in racism and antisemitism."
  
  During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy promoted multiple conspiracy theories related to COVID, including false claims that Anthony Fauci and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were trying to profit off a vaccine, and suggesting that Bill Gates would cut off access to money of people who do not get vaccinated, allowing them to starve. In August 2020, Kennedy appeared in an hour-long interview with Alec Baldwin on Instagram and touted a number of incorrect and misleading claims about vaccines and public health measures related to the pandemic. Public health officials and scientists criticized Baldwin for letting Kennedy's claims go unchallenged.
  
  In May 2021, Kennedy petitioned the FDA to rescind authorization for all current and future COVID vaccines. The vaccines had saved about 140,000 lives in the United States. John Moore, a professor of immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College, called Kennedy's request "an appalling error of judgment".
  
  Kennedy has promoted misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine, falsely suggesting that it contributed to the death of Hank Aaron and others. In February 2021, his Instagram account was blocked for "repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines". The Center for Countering Digital Hate identified Kennedy as one of the main propagators of conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and 5G phone technology. His conspiracy theory activities considerably increased his social media impact. Between the spring and fall of 2020, his Instagram account grew from 121,000 followers to 454,000.
  
  Kennedy has expressed skepticism about the COVID-19 pandemic, contending that it served to benefit billionaires. According to Kennedy, the pandemic resulted in a "$4.4 trillion shift in wealth from the American middle class to this new oligarchy that we created—500 new billionaires with the lockdowns, and the billionaires that we already had increased their wealth by 30%".
  
  In November 2021, Kennedy's book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health was published. In it, Kennedy alleges that Fauci sabotaged treatments for AIDS, violated federal laws, and conspired with Bill Gates and social media companies such as Facebook to suppress information about COVID-19 cures, to leave vaccines as the only option to fight the pandemic. In the book, Kennedy calls Fauci a "powerful technocrat who helped orchestrate and execute 2020's historic coup d'état against Western democracy". He claims without proof that Fauci and Gates had schemed to prolong the pandemic and exaggerate its effects, promoting expensive vaccinations for the benefit of "a powerful vaccine cartel".
  
  The book repeats several discredited myths about the COVID-19 pandemic, notably about the effectiveness of ivermectin. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote that in the book "polemics alternate with chapters that pedantically seek to substantiate Kennedy's accusations with numerous quotations and studies". Kennedy also released a video depicting Fauci with a Hitler mustache. In response to the book, Fauci called Kennedy "a very disturbed individual" and has publicly said that, having met with Kennedy to discuss vaccines early during his tenure in the Trump administration, he " know what's going on in head, but it's not good".
  
  Kennedy wrote the foreword to Plague of Corruption, a 2020 book by the former research scientist and the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Judy Mikovits.
  
  In August 2020, Kennedy appeared as a speaker at a partially violent demonstration in Berlin where populist groups called for an end to restrictions caused by COVID-19. His YouTube account was removed in late September 2021 for breaking the company's new policies on vaccine misinformation.
  
  In January 2022, during a speech at an anti-vaccination rally on the National Mall in Washington D.C., Kennedy said: "Even in Hitler's Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in the attic like Anne Frank did. Today the mechanisms are being put in place that will make it so none of us can run, none of us can hide." The Auschwitz Memorial responded on Twitter: "Exploiting of the tragedy of people who suffered, were humiliated, tortured & murdered by the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany—including children like Anne Frank—in a debate about vaccines & limitations during global pandemic is a sad symptom of moral & intellectual decay." Kennedy's wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, also condemned his comments, tweeting that the reference to Frank was "reprehensible and insensitive". Two days later, Kennedy apologized for his comment. In June 2023, Instagram reinstated his account.
  
  In July 2023, at a private dinner, Kennedy was recorded saying, "There is an argument that is ethnically targeted", adding, "COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are the most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese... we don't know whether it's deliberately targeted or not." The American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League immediately condemned his remarks, with the latter saying that Kennedy's statement "feeds into sinophobic and antisemitic conspiracy theories".
  
  Kennedy responded that he "never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews" and that he does not "believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered". He explained his remarks by citing a 2021 study that he said showed that "COVID-19 appears to disproportionately affect certain races" due to racial differences in the effectiveness of COVID-19's furin cleave docking site, thus serving "as a kind of proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons".
  
  Experts roundly criticized these further claims, pointing out that the study said nothing about Chinese people or bioweapons and that Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews contract COVID-19 at rates similar to other ethnic groups and nationalities. The virologist Angela Rasmussen said, "Jewish or Chinese protease consensus sequences are not a thing in biochemistry, but they are in racism and antisemitism."