More than 115 cases of eye damage reported in Ontario after solar eclipse
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
At a rally against vaccine mandates in Washington, DC, on Sunday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. likened vaccine policies in the U.S. to the actions of a totalitarian state, even suggesting Anne Frank was in a better situation when she was hiding from the Nazis.
"Even in Hitler Germany (sic), you could, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did," said Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine advocate, in a speech at the Lincoln Memorial. "I visited, in 1962, East Germany with my father and met people who had climbed the wall and escaped, so it was possible. Many died, true, but it was possible."
Kennedy's historically inaccurate anti-Semitic remark ignores the fact that Frank and some six million other Jews were murdered by Nazis. Frank, who was a teenager at the time, hid in an attic in the Netherlands, not Germany, before she was caught and was sent to a concentration camp, where she died.
The Auschwitz Memorial responded to Kennedy in a statement on Twitter, saying, "Exploiting of the tragedy of people who suffered, were humiliated, tortured & murdered by the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany - including children like Anne Frank - in a debate about vaccines & limitations during global pandemic is a sad symptom of moral & intellectual decay."
The son of former Attorney General and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy has a long history of spreading vaccine misinformation.
While there is no national vaccine mandate covering all Americans, various cities around the country, including Washington, have required proof of vaccination for access to many restaurants, bars, gyms and other private businesses. The federal government mandated vaccines for federal workers, but a federal judge in Texas blocked the administration from enforcing it on Friday. The administration's attempt to mandate vaccines for large businesses was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month, although it allowed a vaccine mandate for certain health care workers to go into effect nationwide. Some businesses have voluntarily mandated vaccines.
Sunday's event, billed as a protest against vaccine mandates, featured speakers repeatedly spreading misinformation about vaccines and showcased several bigoted comparisons to the Holocaust. At least one man was seen displaying a yellow Star of David, which Jews were required by law to wear as an identifier in Nazi Germany.
While language referencing totalitarianism was common throughout the speeches, references to the Holocaust were found largely on signs, one of which read, "Make the Nuremberg Code great again!" and another read, "Bring back the Nuremberg Trials." The Nuremberg Code delineated "permissible medical experiments" on human subjects and stated that such experiments must be for the good of society and satisfy moral, ethical and legal concepts. The code was established during the prosecution of German doctors who subjected Jews to torturous medical experiments.
Another sign with clear anti-Semitic sentiments read, "Corrupt, N.I.H., Big Pharma Mafia, Big C.D.C. Cartel; Big Fraud Media: Your circumcision is dividing America! You all have foreskin-blood stained money in your thug hands!!"
Other attendees donned attire and held signs that promoted former President Donald Trump or that attacked President Joe Biden. Many also wore shirts with "Defeat the Mandate," the name of the event. Organizers secured a National Park Service permit for up to 20,000 people for the event. Protesters started at the Washington Monument and marched to the Lincoln Memorial, where speakers addressed the crowd.
CNN's Joe Johns spoke to three women -- Kim Cogswell, Christina Patterson and Erin Nichols -- who traveled from Pennsylvania and Maryland to Washington for what two of them said was their first-ever large-scale protest. They said the lack of freedom is their biggest frustration with vaccine mandates, though none would say confidently they thought the vaccines were safe.
Cogswell said she is a health care worker, "so that has brought me out here due to the issues that I've had with my job and my current vaccination status." Asked what kind of issues, Cogswell said, "Multiple issues with HR and doctors treating me differently and discriminating against me because of my, my choices."
Patterson said she works in the school system but says she hasn't faced personal backlash at work for not being vaccinated.
The three vaccines available in the United States are safe and effective at preventing severe COVID-19 illness and death. They were studied in large clinical trials that included thousands of people, and more than 210 million people in the United States have been fully vaccinated since the vaccines were authorized for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks, and it continues to monitor for potential safety issues. Some people experience brief, mild side effects such as headache, muscle pain and swelling at the injection site after vaccination, the CDC says, but serious complications are rare.
In November, the CDC reported that unvaccinated adults had 13 times the risk of testing positive for COVID-19, and 68 times the risk of dying from COVID-19 compared with adults who are fully vaccinated and boosted.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
A Sherwood Park family says their new house is uninhabitable. The McNaughton's say they were forced to leave the house after living there for only a week because contaminants inside made it difficult to breathe.
A man has been handed a lengthy hunting ban and fined thousands of dollars for illegally killing a grizzly bear, B.C. conservation officers say.
The B.C. NDP has asked the federal government to recriminalize public drug use, marking a major shift in the province's approach to addressing the deadly overdose crisis.
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) says it's investigating an interaction between a uniformed officer and anti-Trudeau government protestors after a video circulated on social media.
An emergency slide fell off a Delta Air Lines jetliner shortly after takeoff Friday from New York, and pilots who felt a vibration in the plane circled back to land safely at JFK Airport.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau says there is 'still so much love' between her and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they navigate their post-separation relationship co-parenting their three children.
George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s. Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory’s hopes and fears about ascending Everest.
A loud explosion was heard across Hamilton on Friday after a propane tank was accidentally destroyed and detonated at a local scrap metal yard, police say.
As if a 4-0 Edmonton Oilers lead in Game 1 of their playoff series with the Los Angeles Kings wasn't good enough, what was announced at Rogers Place during the next TV timeout nearly blew the roof off the downtown arena.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”