so john, dean of the brown university school of public health. we appreciate your time and your insights on this friday. thank you. thank you. and finally, before we go, sky gazers have been enjoying views of our moon that we won't be getting for a while. take a look, it's called a super moon when a full noun comes especially close to earth, making our satellite look bigger and brighter in the night. sky usually happens 3 or 4 times a year, but there won't be another one for nearly a year. right now there is a downside to the super moon. it's so bright then stargazers will have trouble seeing the meteor shower that's currently going on and reaches its peak on sunday. when the moon gets in the way us. all right, here's a reminder of our top story. jeremy transferred over schultz and pressure president vladimir putin and have spoken today on the phone. it's their 1st direct contact in nearly 2 years. the to discuss the board in ukraine with schultz demanding that boots in withdrawal. russian force. you're watching dw news live from berlin after a sh

shah, dean of the brown university school of public health and also the white house covid-19 response coordinator. dr. ja, thank you so much. eager to get your perspective on this. i know you tweeted out earlier today this is an extraordinarily bad close for the health of the american people. the hhs secretary shapes health policy in profound ways. can you expand on in nomination here? >> i can. and this is not a general criticism of trump's nominees. his previous hhs secretary was a perfectly good choice. look, rfk jr. is really outside of the mainstream and hhs secretary does a lot more than just look at vaccines. the hhs secretary oversees medicare. the program for seniors overseas medicaid which covers almost half of all kids in america and certainly has profound influence over things like what medicines are going to be available to the american people and so in other things. the problem here is the way we have made progress in our country. we're not perfect. we have relied on evidence and analysis and the scientific approach to try to make those decisions. and when we have, and w

joining me now is -- dean of the brown university school of public health. he was also the white house covid-19 coordinator. thank you so much. i am eager to get your perspective. i know you tweeted earlier today, this is an extraordinarily bad choice for the help of the american people. the -- shapes policy in profound ways. can you expound on how you are thinking about rfk jr.'s nomination? >> i can't. this is not a general criticism of trans-nominees. i thought -- was a perfectly good choice. rfk jr. is really outside of the mainstream. and hss does more than look at vaccines. the hss secretary overlooks a medicare, the program for seniors, it oversees -- it certainly have profound influence on things like what medicines will be available to the american people. and of course, vaccines and other things. the problem here is the way we have made progress in our country. our system is not perfect. -- we have relied on evidence and analysis, and the scientific approach to try to make those decisions. when we have gotten it right, it has made huge impact on pe

white house covid-19 response coordinator under president biden and the dean at brown university school of public healthctor, great seeing you as always. what do you think of rfk jr. potentially leading the department of health and human services? >> good morning, jose. thanks for having me here. i'm disappointed by the choice. i was -- i think he's a particularly bad choice. look, when i think back to the previous trump administration, the folks he had in leading position, scott gottlieb, alex azar. those are good choices, but smart, thoughtful people who understood how our health care system work. rfk jr. has a series of ideas that are, i think, very, very harmful to the health of all americans. all americans. not just about vaccines. right. the hhs secretary has enormous power over medicare and the insurance and what's going to be covered and how it's structured for seniors, over medicaid and how we cover half the kids in america. for all of us on private health insurance, mammograms, colon cancer screening are going to be covered. very concerned about his really off the wall vaccine ideas but his id

ashish jha, dean of brown university's school of public health and former white house covid-19 responseto have you back on the program. so, voters chose to send donald trump back to the white house knowing that rfk jr. would have a large role overseeing our nation's health. you've worked closely with prior hhs directors. what specifically concerns you about some of kennedy's positions? >> yeah, good morning, whit. thanks for having me back. hey, look, presidents are afforded their leadership team, and president trump should obviously be afforded that as well. this is a very concerning pick, one that i think can potentially do a lot of harm to the american people. previous hhs secretaries have left the big decisions of treatments and medical coverage of medicare to experts. rfk jr. holds a whole set of conspiratorial views about vaccines, about hiv, about medicines that i really think if he tries to inundate or affect decision-making inside hhs with any of those ideas i think would be quite dangerous for the health of the american people. >> whit: so, another thing we discussed earlier,

public drinking water, eliminate entire departments at the fda, and replace 600 officials at the national institutes of health, among other issues. joining me now is doctor ashish jha, dean of brown university schoolformer senior official in the biden administration as well. doctor jha it's good to have you this evening. you've also waded into the debate on some of these pics. you tweeted earlier today, while rfk jr. is an absolutely terrible choice for hhs secretary, you think the nominees for fda, cms, and nih are, in your words, all pretty reasonable, and that while you have plenty of policy disagreements with them, they are smart and experienced. we will need them to do well. what do you see as the dividing line between kennedy and those others that you mentioned? >> yeah. >> so first of all, thank you for having me back. there really is a very big difference. if you look at the picks for cms fda, nih, as i said, they're not the people i would have chosen. there i have significant disagreements with them on policy but there are people with experience. they are smart they have a track record and and generally believe in modern medicine and modern public health. rfk jr. is very different. i mean

public health officials at the time. for more on this pick we are joined by the head of the pandemic center at the brown university pool -- schoolic health. so good to have you back in the program. he is tasked with running the nations preeminent biomedical research organization. what do you make of this pick? >> it is very controversial. typically the people tapped to lead this organization are people with a long history of doing clinical research or maybe they have spent a long time doing laboratory research. the is an economist -- he is an economist. he works more on policy. of course the secondary controversy is what you reference, during covid-19 he was a very outspoken critic. he was one who really questioned a lot of issues. people worry whether his approach to this job would be driven by dogma versus evidence. reporter: i went back and read the declaration. there is a part of it that has some grains of truth. that was the low risk that covid posed to young people and the larger risk of keeping them out of school so long. when you look at that, how do you look at the time? >> there are some things i agreed with him on. ca

white house covid-19 response coordinator under president biden and the dean of brown university school of public healthstrategist and professor at columbia university, msnbc political analyst. your reaction to rfk junior to hhs? >> thank you for having me back, this is an extraordinarily bad choice. as you laid out, this is not just about vaccines, this is about medicare and what is medicare going to cover and what kind of health insurance are americans going to have because hhs has profound effects on those and what we know is that when we have used evidence and science and analysis to make those decisions, americans are better off, robert kennedy has been piling in conspiracy theories that aren't antithetical to good evidence in science and if he brings that to a whole host of policy decisions, it will affect the health of every american alive and that obviously is a very concerning scenario.>> let me show you, the thing with vaccines isn't just do they exist, you know, he said i won't take them from anyone, vaccines and a vaccine schedule works because you trust the doctor who prescribes them and wh