I almost died of rubella when I was 3.

I was very weak and wouldn’t eat. My mother was frantic. The doctor prescribed mashed lima beans and I pulled through.

I still keep lima beans in the freezer.

It’s infuriating to see Bobby Kennedy Jr. be so benighted about vaccines, risking the health of all Americans. How can the most powerful country on earth sow the seeds to make people sick again with preventable, even once-eliminated diseases?

Between school shooters and R.F.K. Jr., children in America are vulnerable in ways they don’t have to be. Officials are endangering children instead of shielding them.

The boneheaded vaccine debate has inflamed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is reeling from mass layoffs and a deadly shooting by an anti-vaxxer at its headquarters.

Kennedy tried to fire the director, Susan Monarez, then called in President Trump to finish her off after she refused to go along with his dictum to back his advisers if they recommended restricting access to proven vaccines. Other officials quit, leaving the health agency in crisis, just as Winter Is Coming.

The administration put out the most restrictive policy yet on the new Covid vaccines, with more constraints likely, given that Kennedy has stacked the C.D.C. advisory committee with vaccine skeptics and outright anti-vaxxers.