Germany Rips Kennedy's Claim

Germany's government has publicly denounced Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s accusations that it went after doctors and patients who resisted COVID-19 measures. "The statements made by the US Secretary of Health are completely unfounded, factually incorrect, and must be rejected," German Health Minister Nina Warken said in a statement. Kennedy had posted a video Saturday saying he had written to Warken after hearing that Germany was limiting people's ability to follow their own beliefs in medical decisions, Politico Europe reports. He claimed that more than a thousand German doctors and thousands of patients were prosecuted over exemptions to mask or vaccine requirements, without citing cases or sources.

Warken said that physicians in Germany were never required to administer COVID vaccinations and that doctors who declined to provide shots for medical, ethical, or personal reasons faced no criminal penalties—despite Kennedy's claims. "I can happily explain this to him personally," she said after Kennedy asked her to end "politically motivated prosecutions," per Deutsche Welle. Warken said any prosecutions during the pandemic involved fraud-related offenses, such as issuing fake vaccination documents or false medical exemptions from mask or vaccine rules. She emphasized that doctors make treatment decisions independently and that patients retain the right to accept or refuse treatment.

Former Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, who was in office during much of his nation's pandemic response, posted an emphatic rejection of Kennedy's assertions on X. "Honorable Secretary Kennedy should focus on health problems in his own country: low life expectancy, extreme costs, tens of thousands of drug-related deaths and murder victims," he wrote.