We repeat: These celebrities are not doctors. Is that clear enough?
In the face of a measles epidemic, Barack Obama has changed his once-controversial views of vaccines. Yes, that’s right. Obama was once an anti-vaxxer.
As measles continue to sweep across the US, President Barack Obama has urged all parents to have their children vaccinated, saying the science is “indisputable”.
“There is every reason to get vaccinated, there aren’t reasons to not,” Obama said in an interview with the Today Show last Tuesday.
Obama confirmed that both his children, Sasha and Malia, had been vaccinated — and urged other parents to do the same for their kids because “it’s good for them”.
Read more: This is why you need to immunise your children.
“We should be able to get back to the point where measles effectively is not existing in this country,” the President told interviewer Savannah Guthrie. “We’ve studied this a lot. And the fact is that a major success of our civilization is our ability to prevent disease.
“The science is, you know, pretty indisputable. We’ve looked at this again and again,” Obama went on. “There is every reason to get vaccinated, but there aren’t reasons to not.”
Right on, Obama.
But in news that left us gobsmacked, it turns out the US President wasn’t always such a staunch pro-vaccine advocate. No, we’re not kidding: In 2008, Obama, as a senator and presidential candidate at the time, made a statement that him sound suspiciously like an anti-vaxxer.
In April 2008 — eight months before assuming office — Obama called the science around the so-called “link” between autism and vaccines “inconclusive”, as Politico reports.