Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unveiled a new federal push to document vaccine injuries - days after quietly opening part of it without telling anyone.
On Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services detailed a four-part initiative aimed at finding and treating people who say vaccines hurt them. The centerpiece is a new clinic at the National Institutes of Health dedicated to studying and caring for these patients. That clinic actually opened October 5, and Kennedy attended its ribbon-cutting alongside other senior Trump administration officials. Neither the clinic's opening nor Kennedy's visit was disclosed until Bloomberg Law reported it. The initiative also proposes paying doctors to file reports with VAERS, the CDC's system for tracking possible vaccine side effects.
VAERS takes reports from anyone, vetted or not, which is exactly why anti-vaccine advocates have leaned on it for years to manufacture alarm. Paying doctors to submit more reports adds volume to that system without adding any new way to check whether those reports hold up. More data isn't the same as better data.
The clinic opened on a Monday; the press release came out the following Thursday. Three days of silence is an odd amount of secrecy for an administration this vocal about vaccine harm.