Donald Trump and RFK Jr could 'ban Covid vaccine in months' despite 'chaos' risk

A Covid vaccine which is credited with having saved millions of lives during the pandemic could be pulled from the market in the US by Donald Trump’s administration.

A close friend of Robert F Kennedy Jr, US health and human services secretary and notorious anti-vaxxer, believes that the mRNA Covid vaccine given to Americans will be withdrawn “within months”. Dr Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist, has gone against the scientific consensus by claiming that the vaccines are more dangerous than the virus and his stance is favoured by Kennedy.

Malhotra also reportedly claims that Kennedy’s views on the dangers of the vaccine are shared by members of Trump’s family. The doctor is a legal advisor to the lobby group Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) action which is seen as an external arm of Kennedy’s role on health within the Trump administration.

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And Malhotra told the Daily Beast that allies of RFK Jr simply don’t understand why the vaccine is being prescribed still. They say that the vaccine will now be removed soon pending further research, and it will happen even if there is concern it will lead to “chaos” or legal issues.

“It could [happen] in a number of stages, including learning more about the data,” said Malhotra, who said there was an ongoing review into so-called “vaccine injuries” by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). “But given the increased talk of vaccine injuries in the past few weeks among the administration, it could also come with one clean decision.”

Malhotra’s reportedly said that the distrust about the Covid jab has been fuelled within Kennedy’s circle by apaperpublished in 2022 in the Vaccine journal which looked at “serious adverse events” reported in clinical trials of Pfizer and Moderna mRNA Covid-19 vaccines in adults. The peer-reviewed paper said that those given the mRNA vaccines had a 16% higher risk of “excess serious adverse events” than those in the placebo group.

However, the study has been dismissed by a major part of the medical community, who say it underestimates the benefits of Covid vaccines and overstates risks due to methodological flaws, biased data selection, and ignoring broader public health impacts. Malhotra is known to be influential to RFK Jr, having first caught hit attention in September 2022 after he published a paper in the Journal of Insulin Resistance on what he described as "misinformation about the COVID mRNA vaccine", which led to him being interviewed on TV.

Malhotra walked out of the studio, and said the first person to call was RFK Jr. Speaking about the phone call, he said: "[RFK Jr] said, 'I wanted to thank you for cour courage'." Kennedy, a longtime vaccine critic said in an X video earlier this month that mRNA vaccines do not adequately prevent upper respiratory infections such as Covid and flu, advocating instead for the development vaccines that use other processes.

Covid is the only virus for which real-world data on mRNA vaccine effectiveness is currently available, as mRNA vaccines for other diseases, including the flu, are still under development. The two scientists whose discoveries enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 won a Nobel Prize in 2023 for their work.

Kennedy’s claim ignores how mRNA vaccines work, according to experts. They prevent against severe infection and death, but cannot completely prevent an infection from occurring in the first place. Plus, years of research supports the effectiveness of Covid vaccines that use mRNA technology.

Malhotra helped fundraise for RFK Jr's failed presidential campaign, and is expected to meet Trump in September to push his anti-Covid mRNA vaccine views as part of a trip to meet Kennedy and other health and human services aides. Malhotra said: "I think [Trump will] get it, because it's in his interest to."