Make America Healthy Again - Trump populism comes to health regulation (2 Viewers)

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superchuck500

superchuck500

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This is going to need a thread as we move forward - there are now clear signs that Trump supports a new, critical if not dubious approach on vaccination, and his HHS nominee RFK Jr. regularly espouses eating raw milk and raw meat . . . dietary components most experts agree are more dangerous than their heated counterparts.

Health is certainly one of those areas were anti-institutionalism and turning to popular influencers over medical science comes with genuine risk of harm.

Today Trump provided his most clear indication that he is a vaccine skeptic - claiming (falsely of course) that the USA doesn't "do as well" as other nations that use no vaccines at all.

1734368520243.png
 
As vaccine hesitancy increases in the US, isolated, tight-knit and religious communities have frequently been at the center of high-profile outbreaks.

Such is the case in west Texas, where a rural community is the center of an expanding measles outbreak that has already claimed the lives of two Americans – the first deaths from the disease in nearly a decade.

However, as the conspiracy theories of Maga conservatism marry the bugbears of health secretary and vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr, the one-time fringe view of vaccines has become increasingly mainstream – with activists in right-leaning population centers taking lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic into the realm of childhood inoculations.

One need look no further than Sarasota, Florida, for a full-throated political denunciation.


“Generally, people are weak, lazy,” said Vic Mellor, an activist based near Sarasota, and a close ally of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Mellor owns the We the People Health and Wellness Center in nearby Venice. Mellor, in a shirt that shouts “VIOLENCE MIGHT BE THE ANSWER”, is a self-professed attendee of the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.

“And that lazy part just makes them ignorant … Covid has proven that obviously this is true. I mean, all the facts are starting to come out on Covid now – that it was a hoax. That is just an extension of where this hoax began decades earlier with the vaccines, OK? This is all a money grab, this is all a power grab.”

The pandemic was real, and it started Mellor down the road of questioning vaccines. Where he once opposed only the Covid-19 shots, he now opposes vaccines entirely – arguing they harm children despite experts on vaccines considering them one of mankind’s greatest medical achievements.

“This is not an isolated, rural, religious community, which I think is what a lot of people associate with an anti-vaccine mentality,” said Kathryn Olivarius, author of Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom, and historian of disease at Stanford University. “This is in the heart of everything.”……

“This is what happens when you have a virulent anti-vaccine activist, a science denialist, as the head of the most important public health agency in the United States,” said Offit. “He should either be quiet or stand down.”

The same poll found trust in public health agencies has fallen precipitously amid Republican attacks. More than a quarter of Republican parents report delaying childhood vaccines, the poll found, a rate that has more than doubled since 2022. There is no analogous trend among Democratic parents. Despite how claims espoused by vaccine skeptics can be easily refuted, their power has not been undercut.

“The anti-vaccine business is big business,” said Offit, pointing to the myriad unproven “treatments” offered by promoters of vaccine misinformation, some of which are offered at Mellor’s We the People health center. “We have been taken over by a foreign country, and the goal of that foreign country is to disassemble public health.”……..

www.theguardian.com

‘The goal is to disassemble public health’: experts warn against US turn to vaccine skepticism

As measles sickens hundreds and health secretary RFK Jr spreads dubious information, experts sound the alarm
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
Optimus Prime said:
As vaccine hesitancy increases in the US, isolated, tight-knit and religious communities have frequently been at the center of high-profile outbreaks.

Such is the case in west Texas, where a rural community is the center of an expanding measles outbreak that has already claimed the lives of two Americans – the first deaths from the disease in nearly a decade.

However, as the conspiracy theories of Maga conservatism marry the bugbears of health secretary and vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr, the one-time fringe view of vaccines has become increasingly mainstream – with activists in right-leaning population centers taking lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic into the realm of childhood inoculations.

One need look no further than Sarasota, Florida, for a full-throated political denunciation.


“Generally, people are weak, lazy,” said Vic Mellor, an activist based near Sarasota, and a close ally of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Mellor owns the We the People Health and Wellness Center in nearby Venice. Mellor, in a shirt that shouts “VIOLENCE MIGHT BE THE ANSWER”, is a self-professed attendee of the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.

“And that lazy part just makes them ignorant … Covid has proven that obviously this is true. I mean, all the facts are starting to come out on Covid now – that it was a hoax. That is just an extension of where this hoax began decades earlier with the vaccines, OK? This is all a money grab, this is all a power grab.”

The pandemic was real, and it started Mellor down the road of questioning vaccines. Where he once opposed only the Covid-19 shots, he now opposes vaccines entirely – arguing they harm children despite experts on vaccines considering them one of mankind’s greatest medical achievements.

“This is not an isolated, rural, religious community, which I think is what a lot of people associate with an anti-vaccine mentality,” said Kathryn Olivarius, author of Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom, and historian of disease at Stanford University. “This is in the heart of everything.”……

“This is what happens when you have a virulent anti-vaccine activist, a science denialist, as the head of the most important public health agency in the United States,” said Offit. “He should either be quiet or stand down.”

The same poll found trust in public health agencies has fallen precipitously amid Republican attacks. More than a quarter of Republican parents report delaying childhood vaccines, the poll found, a rate that has more than doubled since 2022. There is no analogous trend among Democratic parents. Despite how claims espoused by vaccine skeptics can be easily refuted, their power has not been undercut.

“The anti-vaccine business is big business,” said Offit, pointing to the myriad unproven “treatments” offered by promoters of vaccine misinformation, some of which are offered at Mellor’s We the People health center. “We have been taken over by a foreign country, and the goal of that foreign country is to disassemble public health.”……..

www.theguardian.com

‘The goal is to disassemble public health’: experts warn against US turn to vaccine skepticism

As measles sickens hundreds and health secretary RFK Jr spreads dubious information, experts sound the alarm
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
Click to expand...
There are consequences. The consequences from actions such as those pushed by Mellor are often unintended because they are ignored or scoffed at until they happen. When they do happen there are consequences which they must pay.
 
Robert F Kennedy Jr said the nation’s health agencies will cut 10,000 jobs from their 82,000-person workforce – an enormous reduction the US health secretary characterized as streamlining federal bureaucracy amid internal resistance to the administration’s agenda.

The cuts announced on Thursday, along with previous restructuring and voluntary buyouts, mean the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will lose roughly 20,000 workers.

Kennedy said the department will also close half of its regional offices and create a new agency called the “administration for a healthy America”, or AHA.


“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said on Thursday morning.

HHS is among the largest branches of the federal government, overseeing a $1.7tn budget and agencies that are household names. Among the agencies under HHS’s oversight are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)……..





www.theguardian.com

RFK Jr plans 10,000 job cuts in restructuring of US health department

Health secretary aims to close regional offices and establish new division called ‘administration for a healthy America’
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
WASHINGTON (AP) — As part of a push to roll back dozens of environmental regulations, the Trump administration is offering coal-fired power plants and other industrial polluters a chance for exemptions from requirements to reduce emissions of toxic chemicals such as mercury, arsenic and benzene.

The Environmental Protection Agency has set up an electronic mailbox to allow regulated companies to request a presidential exemption under the Clean Air Act to a host of Biden-era rules.

Companies were asked to send an email by Monday seeking permission from President Donald Trump to bypass the new restrictions.

The Clean Air Act enables the president to temporarily exempt industrial sites from new rules if the technology required to meet them is not widely available and if the continued activity is in the interest of national security.

Environmental groups denounced the administration’s offer, calling the email address a “polluters’ portal” that could allow hundreds of companies to evade laws meant to protect the environment and public health.

Exemptions would be allowed for nine EPA rules issued by the Biden administration, including limits on mercury, ethylene oxide and other hazardous air pollutants.

Mercury exposure can cause brain damage, especially in children. Fetuses are vulnerable to birth defects via exposure in a mother’s womb.

Margie Alt, campaign director of the Climate Action Campaign, said the request for exemption applications “is a gift to the fossil fuel industry” and further indication of a “polluters-first agenda” under Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.……


apnews.com

EPA offers industrial polluters a way to avoid rules on mercury, arsenic and other toxic chemicals

As part of a push to roll back dozens of environmental regulations, the Trump administration is offering coal-fired power plants and other industrial polluters a chance to receive exemptions from rules requiring them to reduce emissions of toxic chemicals, including mercury, arsenic and benzene.
apnews.com apnews.com
 
Optimus Prime said:
Robert F Kennedy Jr said the nation’s health agencies will cut 10,000 jobs from their 82,000-person workforce – an enormous reduction the US health secretary characterized as streamlining federal bureaucracy amid internal resistance to the administration’s agenda.

The cuts announced on Thursday, along with previous restructuring and voluntary buyouts, mean the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will lose roughly 20,000 workers.

Kennedy said the department will also close half of its regional offices and create a new agency called the “administration for a healthy America”, or AHA.


“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said on Thursday morning.

HHS is among the largest branches of the federal government, overseeing a $1.7tn budget and agencies that are household names. Among the agencies under HHS’s oversight are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)……..





www.theguardian.com

RFK Jr plans 10,000 job cuts in restructuring of US health department

Health secretary aims to close regional offices and establish new division called ‘administration for a healthy America’
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
Click to expand...
He doesn’t have the brains to do any damn thing beyond screeching nonsense about vaccines.

The damage the entire administration is doing is bad enough. This azzhat needs to be removed from office and kicked out of the country.
 
A little-known federal agency responsible for funding vital health faces potential downsizing and even elimination under a proposed restructuring of the US Department of Health and Human Services.

The agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), currently commands an $8 billion budget and employs over 700 staff.

It is responsible for services including the 988 crisis line, naloxone distribution, and addictiontreatment.……

SAMHSA was created by Congress in 1992, so closing it is illegal and raises questions about Kennedy’s commitment to treating addiction and mental health, said Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University addiction researcher.

“Burying the agency in an administrative blob with no clear purpose is not the way to highlight the problem or coordinate a response,” Humphreys said.

Other experts said crippling SAMSHA could stall progress on overdose deaths. The agency regulates methadone clinics and pays for addiction prevention efforts in all 50 states.

“There’s a reason why we have reduced overdose in this country, it’s because SAMHSA has been doing its job so well,” said Dr. Ruth Potee, medical director for seven methadone clinics in Massachusetts.

“My jaw drops at this news.”

Noting the 24 per cent decline in drug overdose deaths over a recent 12-month period, former White House drug czar Dr. Rahul Gupta said he's concerned the bureaucratic overhaul will slow momentum.

“A worsening overdose crisis is the last thing our nation needs,” said Gupta, who served under President Joe Biden.……..


www.independent.co.uk

RFK Jr’s health agency shake-up leaves addiction treatment uncertain

Naloxone distribution and the 988 crisis line could also be affected
www.independent.co.uk www.independent.co.uk
 
19 states are experiencing measles outbreaks currently, with the monster TX outbreak still spreading. So the maggot orders the CDC to NOT address this public health threat.

www.propublica.org

The CDC Buried a Measles Forecast That Stressed the Need for Vaccinations

The move — along with the CDC’s explanation — is a sign that the nation’s top public health agency may be falling in line under HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines.
www.propublica.org www.propublica.org
 
MT15 said:
19 states are experiencing measles outbreaks currently, with the monster TX outbreak still spreading. So the maggot orders the CDC to NOT address this public health threat.

www.propublica.org

The CDC Buried a Measles Forecast That Stressed the Need for Vaccinations

The move — along with the CDC’s explanation — is a sign that the nation’s top public health agency may be falling in line under HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines.
www.propublica.org www.propublica.org
Click to expand...
Yes he is using resources wisely. it really shows how antivaxxers could care less about those that suffer because of their decisions. I am waiting for him to recommend drinking pee as a cure. but maybe not since no profit would be made from that advice.
 
fooferdoggie said:
well, idiots are listening to brain worm.

‘It’s been flying off the shelf,’ Lubbock pharmacy sees more Vitamin A and Cod Liver Oil purchases amidst West Texas measles outbreak​


Click to expand...
www.irishstar.com

RFK Jr.’s measles cure leaves kids hospitalized with vitamin A toxicity

After RFK Jr. advised Americas to fight the measles outbreak with vitamin A rather than the vaccine, a hospital in Texas has reported multiple cases of children with vitamin A toxicity.
www.irishstar.com
 

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