Unpacking Claims That RFK Jr. Said COVID-19 Was Targeted to ‘Spare’ Jewish and Chinese People
In November 2024, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services sparked renewed scrutiny of controversial statements he had previously made.
Among these was a widely circulated claim that Kennedy once said COVID-19 was engineered to “spare” Jewish and Chinese people. For example, a Nov. 15, 2024, X post stated: “Never forget—RFK Jr famously spread a conspiracy that COVID was ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.”
Such claims were not new, with an earlier wave surfacing in July 2023.
While numerous social media users shared the claim that RFK Jr. said COVID-19 was “‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people,” others said the accusation was incorrect. For instance, one X user wrote: “RFK cited a scientific paper defending his remarks. The NYT falsely claims that the paper makes no references to Ashkenazi Jews.”
What Did Kennedy Actually Say?
Kennedy made the statement from which the claim stemmed during a July 2023 event, during which he said: “There is an argument that [COVID-19] is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately.” He added: “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
The quote appeared in a July 15 New York Post article originally headlined “RFK Jr. says COVID was ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Jews.” Here is a transcription of RFK Jr.’s remarks, as shared by the Post in a YouTube video (emphasis ours):
And we need to talk about bioweapons. The level, I know a lot now about bioweapons because I’ve been doing a book on it for the past two and a half years. And you know what? The technology that we now have to develop these microbes, we’ve put hundreds of millions of dollars into ethnically targeted microbes. The Chinese have done the same thing. In fact, COVID-19, there is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately. The races that are most immune to COVID-19 are because of the structure, of the genetic structure, of genetic differentials among different races, of the receptors, of the ACE2 receptor. COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.
We don’t know if it was deliberately targeted at or not, but there are papers out there that show, you know, the racial and ethnic differential and impact to that. We do know that the Chinese are spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing ethnic bioweapons and we are developing ethnic bioweapons. That’s what all those labs in the Ukraine are about; they’re collecting Russian DNA, they’re collecting Chinese DNA so we can target people by race.
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While Kennedy did not use the word “spare,” his phrasing implied that some groups, including Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, may have genetic factors making them less vulnerable to COVID-19. It is important to note that while some scientific research has explored variations in ACE2 receptor expression across populations, no credible evidence supports the idea that COVID-19 was engineered to target or bypass specific ethnic groups.
RFK Jr. himself acknowledged uncertainty, stating: “We don’t know if it was deliberately targeted.”
Additionally, during his remarks, Kennedy accused both the U.S. and China of investing heavily in research on ethnically targeted bioweapons and referenced “labs in Ukraine” allegedly collecting DNA for this purpose. This is a contentious claim lacking verifiable evidence and aligns with long-standing conspiracy theories about alleged U.S. biolabs in Ukraine.
Widespread Criticism and RFK Jr.’s Response
The American Jewish Committee told CNN in a statement that Kennedy’s “assertion that Covid was genetically engineered to spare Jewish and Chinese people is deeply offensive and incredibly dangerous.” The Anti-Defamation League, a nongovernmental organization founded to combat antisemitism, also condemned RFK Jr.’s remarks, as did his sister and the White House.
In response to this criticism, and to the New York Post article in particular, Kennedy stated on July 15, 2023, shortly after the article was published: “I have never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews.”
Below is the full text of RFK Jr.’s statement posted on X:
The @nypost story is mistaken. I have never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews. I accurately pointed out — during an off-the-record conversation — that the U.S. and other governments are developing ethnically targeted bioweapons and that a 2021 study of the COVID-19 virus shows that COVID-19 appears to disproportionately affect certain races since the furin cleave docking site is most compatible with Blacks and Caucasians and least compatible with ethnic Chinese, Finns, and Ashkenazi Jews. In that sense, it serves as a kind of proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons. I do not believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered. That study is here: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32664879/
Notably, the New York Post revised its headline later that day as follows (emphasis added): “RFK Jr. says COVID may have been ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Jews.”
Kennedy’s statement referenced a 2020 study titled: “New insights into genetic susceptibility of COVID-19: an ACE2 and TMPRSS2 polymorphism analysis.” However, as PolitiFact reported in July 2023, the 2020 study “did not conclude that Chinese people were less affected by the virus.” Instead, it noted that one of the virus’s receptors appeared absent in Amish and Ashkenazi Jewish populations and speculated that certain genetic mutations might increase the severity of COVID-19. Below, you can see the in-question part of the study (emphasis added).
Here, we investigated genetic susceptibility to COVID-19 by examining DNA polymorphisms in ACE2 (OMIM 300335) and TMPRSS2 (OMIM 602060) genes. […]
We found that the distribution of deleterious variants in ACE2 differs among 9 populations in gnomAD (v3). Specifically, 39% (24/61) and 54% (33/61) of deleterious variants in ACE2 occur in African/African-American (AFR) and Non-Finnish European (EUR) populations, respectively (Fig. 1b). Prevalence of deleterious variants among Latino/Admixed American (AMR), East Asian (EAS), Finnish (FIN), and South Asian (SAS) populations is 2–10%, while Amish (AMI) and Ashkenazi Jewish (ASJ) populations do not appear to carry such variants in ACE2 coding regions (Fig. 1b).
The study highlighted several limitations, noting that “current analysis examined massive genomic data from general population, not COVID-19 patient-specific populations. All genetic associations identified in current study are urgently needed to be tested in COVID-19 patients in the near future.”
On July 16, 2024, Kennedy further addressed the controversy in a conversation with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, during which he underscored his opposition to antisemitism and commitment to Jewish advocacy, calling the accusations “a disgusting fabrication.”
The same day, RFK Jr. also shared a question allegedly sent by the New York Post to his press office.
In a press release, then-presidential candidate Kennedy denounced the accusation as “disgusting and outlandish.” He stated: “It was [Jon Levine, the Post’s reporter], not myself, who invoked anti-Semitic tropes by attributing words to me (‘spare the Jews’) that I never said.”
In sum, due to the ambiguous nature of Kennedy’s remarks, we have opted not to assign a specific rating to the claim that RFK Jr. said COVID-19 was created to spare Jewish and Chinese people. While he did not use the word “spare,” one could fairly infer that his comments about “bioweapons” being designed to “target people by race” meant he was implying that COVID-19 could have been created to target some populations and not others.
Snopes has investigated similar claims regarding Kennedy in the past. For instance, we fact-checked whether RFK Jr. said he would send people addicted to legal and illegal drugs to “wellness farms” where they would grow organic food.
