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

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    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.

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    And that’s what is so infuriating about the idiotic demonization of Fauci. As a hospital lab supervisor I witnessed his leadership through several epidemics and near-epidemics. The man is a great scientist and a good man. I cannot stand that these immoral liars have done this to him. And they elevate a decadent narcissistic psychopath in RFK Jr. This is an evil act to do that. It will kill thousands who may have been saved.
     
    You’d be hard-pressed to find many public health experts who have positive things to say about Donald Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States.

    Alongside his numerous policy failures, one Cornell University study found that he was the biggest source of Covid-19 misinformation.

    But if there’s one redeeming feature to Trump’s pandemic record, it has to be his leadership on Operation Warp Speed – a massive, government-funded initiative that played a pivotal role in fast-tracking Covid-19 vaccines.

    “Operation Warp Speed stands as one of the most remarkable scientific and humanitarian achievements of the past half-century,” the former US surgeon general Jerome Adams said.

    It directed billions of dollars into vaccine development and manufacturing, particularly into the mRNA platform, which became the backbone of the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines.

    Vaccines work by preparing the body’s immune system to identify and successfully attack foreign agents entering the body. Traditional vaccines use weakened or inactivated viruses to offer a baby version for the body to fight and learn from.

    These vaccines are often produced by growing the virus in hen’s eggs, which means production is slow and can take months to scale up.

    In contrast, the mRNA platform functions like a plug-and-play video game console: you just “plug in” the genetic code of a particular virus or pathogen. The vaccine provides instructions to our bodies to make parts of the virus in our own cells, which then prompts an immune response.

    The process of creating and manufacturing these vaccines is much faster and more flexible than their traditional counterparts. This is especially important for a disease such as avian flu, which has an up to 100% mortality rate in chickens.

    But despite the speed in which they come together, there is still a considerable time-lag before mass rollout to allow for clinical trials to ensure human safety, test for side-effects and figure out optimal dosing.

    During the Covid pandemic, the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines were created within weeks of research teams receiving the genetic sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 from China in January 2020.

    What took a year was the testing and regulatory approval processes to ensure there was trust in their safety.

    Given Trump’s success with Operation Warp Speed, it’s particularly bizarre that Robert F Kennedy Jr, his health and human services secretary, has announced $500m in cuts to the mRNA vaccine investment portfolio.

    These include cancelling funding for Moderna’s development into a late-stage H5N1 avian flu vaccine. I asked Prof Rebecca Katz, a global health security expert and former US State Department adviser, for her assessment of the damage. She called it: “A self-inflicted wound to a vital organ.”

    On its own, RFK Jr’s decision isn’t surprising, considering his longstanding anti-vax advocacy and cult-like following. He has built a whole identity on anti-science rhetoric and he is especially vocal about the supposed dangers of mRNA technology.

    But being an anti-vaxxer is also a tricky road to navigate: RFK Jr upset his basewhen, under considerable political pressure, he finally endorsed MMR vaccinations during the Texas measles outbreak.

    But putting one personality aside, what do these cuts mean for the health of people living in the US and the wider world? It’s bad news.

    Take the example of H5N1 avian flu. This virus has shown concerning step-changes including becoming endemic in wild birds, infecting a number of poultry farms, and now has sufficient mutations to enable cow-to-cow (mammal to mammal) transmission in the US among dairy cattle.

    With its circulation in certain herds of dairy cattle has come a rise in human infections (cow-to-human).

    The virus is now one mutation away from easier transmission among humans. That’s the nightmare scenario: an influenza pandemic, possibly more lethal than Covid-19.………


    I've been screaming that for months. I did a lot of research on mutating animal diseases when I was studying at the royal danish agricultural university 40 years ago and the basic rules concerning mutations are still the same. That is why RFK jr. plan to let the virus spread to gain herd imunity in chicken is bonkers to say it the least.
     
    I've been screaming that for months. I did a lot of research on mutating animal diseases when I was studying at the royal danish agricultural university 40 years ago and the basic rules concerning mutations are still the same. That is why RFK jr. plan to let the virus spread to gain herd imunity in chicken is bonkers to say it the least.
    It’s eugenics. He believes in killing off the “weak” and letting the strong survive. He thinks that is the best response to a pandemic for humans as well. It’s why he said “only sick children should die from measles”. It’s why his sycophants put out there that the 6 yo in TX who died had “other health problems”, which may or may not even be true, but most certainly violates HIPAA.

    It, at its core, is why he is against vaccines. He thinks that communicable diseases should cull the weak out of the human population to strengthen its genetic base. All the crap about mercury and so forth is just a smokescreen. It’s all proven to be false anyway, but it will convince more people to be on his side than the real reasons.

    These are the same tenets held by the Nazis, among other authoritarians throughout history. ‘

    This is just one reason why we say that MAGA is following Nazi footsteps. And as long as people like Joe and Sendai refuse to see what is happening - they will be enabling it to happen just like the GOP is doing.
     
    The Department of Veterans Affairs has lostthousands of healthcare professionals deemed “core” to the system’s ability to function and “without which mission-critical work cannot be completed”, agency records show.

    The number of medical staff on hand to treat veterans has fallen every month since Donald Trump took office. The VA has experienced a net loss of 2,000 registered nurses since the start of this fiscal year, the data show, along with approximately 1,300 medical assistants, 1,100 nursing assistants and licensed practical nurses, 800 doctors, 500 social workers and 150 psychologists.

    The numbers are at odds with claims by the VA secretary, Doug Collins, that veterans’ healthcare would not be affected by an agency-widereduction of 30,000 workers to be completed this year through a combination of attrition, a hiring freeze and deferred resignation program.


    The reduction in medical staff is also feeding fears that the Trump administration is seeking to transform the VA, which currently operates the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States, into a private voucher program.

    “It’s a betrayal,” said Manuel Santamaria, 42, a disabled veteran who served as a US army medic and paratrooper in Iraq and Afghanistan. “It takes away the government’s accountability to veterans who have sacrificed for them.”

    The VA said in a statement to the Guardian that the fear of privatization “is a far-left canard” and that “anyone who says VA is cutting health care and benefits is not being honest”.…….

     

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