An artlicle in the Guardian provides an excellent summary of the legal situation for vaccines, RFK Jr says he'll 'fix' a vaccine program.
The entire situation, as it existed 35 years ago, inspired our paper
- Baron, J. & Ritov, I. (1993). Intuitions about penalties and compensation in the context of tort law. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 7, 17-33
Kennedy himself seems to be subject to all these biases, including omission bias. He is unwilling to look at overall numbers because he regards harms from action (side effects) as orders of magnitude (at least) worse than harms from failing to vaccinate (disease).
The legal system could help if it held to a standard of negligence based on overall benefit vs. risk (the Hand rule, roughly), but it shows some of the same biases.
