Stop calling everyone a "skeptic" and call them what they are: deniers. Anti-science, fact resistant deniers. Calling people germ-theory skeptics, or climate skeptics, or vaccine skeptics, and so on and so on, makes it sound like there's an honest scientific debate going on

How can the onion ever hope to compete with reality

Like most con men, RFK is using people's ignorance of what odds mean. If the chance of getting sick from swimming in that water is only say one percent, he knows the odds are extremely good that he won't individually get sick, and then he will palm this off as "evidence" that it's all a big fuss over nothing. The park service might know maybe 100,000 people will swim in that water this season, so they'll probably save about a thousand from getting sick by closing the place. Even if somebody who does get sick manages to get the attention of a news outlet, they can be scoffed at as an anomaly. "How do you even know the water was responsible? Where else have you been? You're just looking for attention!"

Usually the people in charge of regimes like this are often sadistic hypocrites and absolutely know that what they spout is bullshit. RFK jr. here on the other hand, is apparently actually a fucking idiot.

Wtf did i just read? The US health secretary swimming in shit water???????

"Germ-theory skeptic"

I hope he gets sick and suffers

Maybe we can convince him to drink some of it

go go power Darwin!

...maybe this problem will solve itself?

Our best chance is that he gets one of these diseases that is effectively treatable with a vaccine.

Thing is, even with that, he'd just take the vaccine and proceed to lie about it for profit. His father must be turning over in his grave.

I'm team bacteria on this one. C'mon little guys - do your thing!

If he gets some insane new parasite from this what are the odds it kills the one driving his brain now and takes over with a more normal personality?

Wouldn't it be an absolute riot of a "leopards ate my face" situation if he ends up croaking because of this?

To clarify: I don't wish any harm on his grandchildren, but this man's level of willful ignorance and sheer recklessness makes it hard for me to sympathize with any negative outcome he may suffer personally.

Wow this is next level stupid, i really thought it was the onion. I'd say i'm even shocked at this demonstration of stupidity, but the fact his grand children are led into this is beyond sad.

I think I know how a lot of people are thinking right about now. lol

the creek's bacterial counts—particularly E. coli counts—were dangerously high all the time.

Sorry for those children.

The fact that people have any thought that this guy is smart or a good person makes me hate humanity.

I love that we're literally going back in time. They thought we'd have flying cars and end world hunger, but instead we have to watch our politicians swim in shit water.

Edit: HE TOOK HIS GRANDCHILDREN!?

Hope natural selection does its thing.

During similar conditions in the past it has had around 100x the EPA standard of bacterial colonies.

And he's hypocritical enough that I bet he started an antibiotic cocktail before he went there.

O... Ok! The situation in taking care of itself.

I'm rooting for chlorea here tbh.

The water is now less clean for having him in it

What a shitty grandpa.

Stuff like this isn't a problem, until it is.

What was in that sewage? Anybody with typhoid? Diphtheria? Probably not because vaccination and treatment is still over herd immunity levels. Then, of course, there were the kids who used to get vaccinated for Polio naturally by exposure to untreated sewage, and us rich countries having terrible cases of polio survival in older people because we didn't bathe in toilet outflows.

Thing is, it's a numbers game. The first hundred people might not get sick, immediately, but if you form two lines, one bathing in the sewage pool and the other bathing in a treated sanitary pool, run 100 people a day through each one and track them for two weeks, you'll see the differences. That's why we have scientific publications, so we can read about these kinds of past experiments and don't have to repeat them.

Ok so what is the most obvious, unhide-able , agonizing, and debilitating disease he can get from this?

Because I hope he gets 330 million cases of it.

Can someone arrest him for child endangerment?