[Source: Reuters]

Democrats and Republicans pushed U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s Jr. on his recent vaccine policies and their stark contrast to President Donald Trump’s successful first-term pandemic initiative to speed vaccine development during a combative three-hour Senate hearing on Thursday.

Half a dozen heated exchanges focused on the details of his decision to fire Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez, who had started the job with Kennedy’s support only a month earlier. Kennedy said she lied about the reason she was dismissed.

Republican U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana praised Trump for having accelerated the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines in 2020.

His line of questioning – mirrored by two other members of his and Trump’s party – underscored the tightrope Republicans critical of Kennedy needed to walk in order to push back against his vaccine policies without
criticizing the president.

Cassidy, a former physician, asked Kennedy during the Senate Finance Committee hearing if he agreed with him that Trump deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for the COVID vaccine initiative. Kennedy said he did.

Why then had Kennedy said the vaccines killed more people than COVID? Cassidy asked. Kennedy denied making the statement, would not agree that the vaccines saved lives, and in a later exchange acknowledged the shots prevented deaths but not how many, citing chaotic data from the Biden administration.

COVID vaccines in the first year of their use saved some 14.4 million lives globally, according to a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal.

Republicans Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Barrasso of Wyoming, who like Cassidy is a physician, adopted Cassidy’s tactic, as did Senate Democrats Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, where the CDC is headquartered, and Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats.

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