Governor of Hawaii, a doctor, blames RFK Jr. for the death of the Odra to Samoa

It was a contraction of the tragedy on the distant island of the Pacific, which only a few months later was overshadowed by a global pandemic. But for the governor Josh Green from Hawaii, the Odra explosion on the neighboring Samoa, who killed 83 people, mainly children and children, was a disaster that President Trump wants to direct the American health policy.

In December 2019, Dr. Green, an emergency medical and democratic medical physician Governor of Lieutenant Hawaii at that time, summed up the medical team and thousands of vaccine doses and flew to Samoo to assist. Last month, he flew to Washington, aimed at notifying the legislators of both parties about the role of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominated for the Secretary for Health and Human Services of Trump, and a long -term skeptic of the vaccine, played in Samoa explosion.

The interrogations of confirmation of Mr. Kennedy take place on Wednesday and Thursday before two committees of Senates, which will then vote for whether his nomination for the full senate.

Democrats are attempt to use Mr. Kennedy’s relationship with the explosion of Samoa in order to build an objection to his nomination. Dr. Green recently appeared in the advertisement By the liberal group of sparrows 314, saying: “RFK Jr. It spread so much disinformation that the country stopped instilling, which caused the tragic and deadly spread of the Oder. “

In an interview on Monday, Dr. Green said that based on previous conversations, if the full vote in the Senate was anonymously taken, “RFK Jr. will be defeated 70-30 or worse. ” At the same time, he said: “The political climate has everyone under high pressure to go with the president or be disloyal.”

The spokeswoman of Mr. Kennedy did not answer the requests for comment on Tuesday. In the past, he blamed the explosion of Samoa from the Oder for “MMR vaccine produced by Indians”, referring to the measles, pigs and rose vaccines.

54 -year -old Dr. Green came to Hawaii in 2000 as a adolescent doctor from the National Health Service Corps and was often the only doctor serving miniature rural communities at Large Island in Hawaii. After he was elected to state legislation in 2012, care for patients on weekends. He was excluded from external employment after he was elected governor in 2022, but says that he is a volunteer as a practice of “street medicine” offering healthcare unintentional veterans and other needy.

Samoa explosion had its roots in a tragic mistake. In 2018, nurses preparing MMR vaccines mixed doses with muscle relaxation instead of water. The arrested arrows caused the death of two infants and the fragrance of parents’ fears against vaccine safety.

Vaccination skeptics often wrongly combined childhood vaccines with autism, and after the incident, Prime Minister Samoa, whose grandson had autism, stopped the vaccination program in the island’s country.

As a result of deaths and a ban, less than a third of 1-year-olds Samoa received the MMR vaccine in 2018, according to only 90 percent in 2013. World Health Organization. Infections began to grow.

Children’s Health Defense – a group led by Mr. Kennedy that in 2022 she was banned for some time on Facebook and Instagram for what, according to the platforms, was the dissemination of medical disinformation – she published a message about the decision of the prime minister to stop the vaccine program on her website .

Both Kennedy and his friend Del Bigtree, who is also skeptical of vaccines, have vast, international online observations and used the death of two children to emphasize the message about the threats associated with vaccines. Mr. Bigtree was later the head of communication in the presidential campaign of Mr. Kennedy.

As an American with a notable name and a powerful network that strengthened his parents’ fears to Samoa, Mr. Kennedy “feeded people who were sensitive,” said Dr. Green.

In June 2019, Mr. Kennedy and his wife, actress Cheryl Hines, went to Samo at the invitation of the prime minister, who treated a couple as a visit to royal. “My husband wants to move here,” Mrs. Hines told reporters.

During the visit, Mr. Kennedy posed for a photo with Edwin Tamasese, a coconut breeder, whom he called “the hero of medical freedom.” Mr. Kennedy later wrote on the children’s website to defend children He was arrested A few months later to spread the disinformation of the vaccine and promoting ineffective measles, such as vitamins and papaya leaves.

Mr. Kennedy also He said on the website that he visited Samoa because health officials and prime minister “were interested in health results after a” natural experiment “created by the national respite from vaccines.” Mr. Kennedy said he offers them assist in creating a tracking system.

He later denied that he was on Samoa to push his views on the vaccines. In an interview with 2021, “arrow in the shoulder” Document about the fluctuations of the vaccine And Pandemia Covid-19, Mr. Kennedy told the filmmaker, Scott Hamilton Kennedy, who has no relationship that “I did not go to Samo, for anything related to this problem”)

Odra are very contagious, and at the end of 2019 the number of up-to-date infections on Samoa doubled every week. First child He died on October 13. A month later, with 16 dead people due to the Odra complications, the government announced an emergency in an emergency and made mandatory MMR shots. Four days later, Mr. Kennedy sent a letter to the Prime Minister of Sami, calling on the Samoa Ministry of Health to “determine scientifically, if the epidemic was caused by inappropriate vaccine range or alternatively by a defective vaccine.”

At the beginning of December, z Over 3,700 new cases and over 50 dead, Samoa’s said the Minister of Communication Theoretics of the anti -vaccination conspiracy “slowed us down” to vaccinate people.

Dr. Green contacted Samoa, Faimalotoa Kika Stowers. Could he bring a team to a vaccination mission? Mrs. STOWERS gave her offer to the prime minister, who in the face of the growing number of fatalities “proposed closing the country” to assist the team in Hawaii, Dr. Green remembered in an interview.

Within 48 hours, Dr. Green secured volunteers, air travels from donors and 50,000 doses of vaccine from UNICEF.

His team landed at Samo at 5:30 December 4 and with several hundred Samoan volunteers got into the countryside. Residents hung red flags or scraps of fabric in front of their houses if they need a vaccine.

Dr. Green remembered how a visit to a house where the child died so recently that her skin was still browned with fever. “I felt that the child’s body leaves the body after her death in the epidemic of the measles that can be prevented,” he said.

Global public health experts said that several factors, including the ponderous reaction of the government and confined access to self -care for health care, contributed to the explosion. But World Health Organization He was directly related Uninforction of the vaccine to spread.