No vaccine for fearmongering

Climate change threatens the survivability of countless species. Zika robs newborns of normal lives. But who needs to apply science to solve pressing threats when there’s work to be done unraveling the last century’s signature success? Not America’s President-elect or Robert F. Kennedy Jr., summoned to Trump Tower Tuesday to discuss chairing a new presidential commission on “vaccine safety and scientific integrity.”

Safety and integrity which are only in question to those on the far fringes, Trump and Kennedy among them. Posing as mere “skeptics,” both have given credence to decisively debunked conspiracy theories purporting a link between childhood vaccinations and autism.

Kennedy spoke without a tinge of doubt in 2015: “They get the shot, that night they have a fever of a hundred and three, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone,” adding, in case his conviction wasn’t clear: “This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country.”

That’s not just wrong, it’s offensively wrong. According to the Centers for Disease Control, vaccines given to American infants and young children over the past two decades will prevent more than 300 million illnesses, more than 20 million hospitalizations and more than 700,000 deaths over the course of those kids’ lifetimes.

Men with megaphones spout dangerous nonsense, spreading hysteria — and prompting parents to leave their kids vulnerable. And potentially deadly diseases like measles, rubella, smallpox and polio are made great again. It could happen.