Part the First and Only on this Friday Afternoon: One More Revolution of the Accelerating Doom Loop of Science. The following is an update to our previous discussion earlier this week. As everyone should know by now, the Secretary of Health and Human Services has fired the Director of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Susan Monarez, after less than one month on the job. If this is not a record, it should be. According to STAT News, RFKJr after asking “for her resignation, citing concerns about insubordination and her integrity (basically she stuck to the science and said “no”), including instances related to vaccine policy”. She refused and was offered another choice, “accept all recommendations from the agency’s vaccine advisory committee, whose members (the Secretary of Health and Human Services) had replaced with hand-picked allies (including Dr. Robert Malone, self-described inventor of mRNA vaccines, not) who shared his hostile views about childhood immunizations, and fire a number of high-level officials at the agency.”
Dr. Monarez’s lawyers argue that as the Senate-confirmed Director of CDC, only the president can fire her. This will not matter. The great and powerful X has spoken. And four high-level leaders at CDC have resigned anyway. All because, according to the Secretary who stated that “leadership changes were needed to bring Trump’s agenda to an agency that ‘has problems.’” Now, few would dispute that CDC has had problems, especially in senior leadership, during the past five years of a pandemic that is not over. But what is meant by the president’s “agenda”? One would think that any president’s agenda would be to support the best science and scientists instead of fire them by the thousands. After all, that was the ostensible purpose of President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed during his first term.
In any case it is not clear that Dr. Monarez has done anything except bring her expertise to a very difficult job in the current political environment. Who is Dr. Susan Monarez? She has a PhD from the University of Wisconsin and was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford. She published her research as Susan P. Coller and then went into scientific administration where she has held important positions in government and elsewhere. She is well qualified for the position, as noted by the Secretary, who praised her “unimpeachable scientific credentials” while noting that he had “full confidence in her ability to restore the CDC’s role as the most trusted authority in public health and to strengthen our nation’s readiness to confront infectious diseases and biosecurity threats.”
Instead, it is clear that the primary goal of the Secretary to set back disease control and prevention while Making America Healthy Again by other means. RFKJr laments, on Fox & Friends:
“There is really a deeply, deeply embedded — I would say malaise (a word Jimmy Carter did not use in that speech) at the agency, and we need strong leadership that will go in there and that will be able to go in there and that will be able to execute on President Trump’s broad ambitions for this agency to [return] to the gold standard science and what it was when we were growing up, which was the most respected health agency in the world.”
“Gold-standard science” is nothing more than a trope, a fetish of the faux science of economics. When we (RFKJr and I are near contemporaries) were growing up the CDC was respected, and it has been until the various entanglements of public health with business and politics that characterized our responses to COVID-19. Some of us remember that it was CDC scientists who figured out AIDS in a matter of months and saved countless lives even though politics was a factor. They did the same with Ebola and other outbreaks of horrible diseases around the world. Without CDC, as it was and still is at the level of working scientists, the world would not be able to respond to emerging diseases and other treats to human health.
And the Secretary displays his goals thoroughly when he continues:
“Today, on the CDC’s website right now, they list the 10 top advances, the 10 greatest advances in medical science and one of them is abortion, another is fluoridation, and another is vaccines. So we need to look at the priorities of the agency.”
Or maybe we, all of us, need to look at his priorities for the agency? I found the Top-10 information on the CDC web site. There are actually two CDC documents that list a Top-10. They can be found here at a secondary site that refers to them. The first is from MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) that is the flagship publication of CDC. The Ten Great Public Health Achievements in the United States, 1900 – 1999.
- Vaccination
- Motor-vehicle safety
- Safer workplaces
- Control of infectious diseases
- Decline in deaths from coronary heart disease and stroke
- Safer and healthier foods
- Healthier mothers and babies
- Family planning
- Fluoridation of drinking water
- Recognition of tobacco use as a health hazard
There is not one family, in the United States and in most of the world, that has not been helped by these improvements. It can be argued that we could have done better on most of these, but that is always possible. Fluoridation works despite the merchants of doubt who follow the John Birch Society in their demonization of the practice. Vaccines also work. It should pain anyone to have to say this in the year 2025. From the CDC reference, during the 20th century decreases in morbidity for the following diseases ranged from 95.7% to 100%, because of vaccination: Smallpox, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, paralytic poliomyelitis, measles, mumps, rubella, and Haemophilus influenzae (the cause of bacterial pneumonia, sepsis, meningitis, and ear infections).
The list is much longer now. Vaccines will never be perfect or perfectly safe for everyone, but they have been essential in lessening the burden of severe disease. The newer HPV vaccines have the potential to prevent cervical cancer at 98%+ efficacy. It is simple-minded madness to deny this, but the Secretary persists in his enduring belief in the fraud that is (the former) Dr. Andrew Wakefield on the connection between the MMR vaccine and autism.
The second paper from CDC from MMWR (direct link here) lists Ten Great Public Health Achievements – Worldwide, 2001-2010:
- Reductions in Child Mortality
- Vaccine-Preventable Diseases (again)
- Access to Safe Water and Sanitation
- Malaria Prevention and Control
- Prevention and Control of HIV/AIDS (a signal achievement with CDC contributions)
- Tuberculosis Control
- Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases
- Tobacco Control
- Increased Awareness and Response for Improving Global Road Safety
- Improved Preparedness and Response to Global Health Threats
Moreover, as noted recently in MMWR, Health and Economic Benefits of Routine Childhood Immunizations in the Era of the Vaccines for Children Program — United States, 1994–2023 Weekly / August 8, 2024 / 73(31);682–685:
Broad access and availability of vaccines in critical for immunization programs to avert disease. Since 1994, the U.S. Vaccines for Children (VFC) program has covered the cost of vaccines for children whose families might not otherwise be able to afford them.
Among children born during 1994-2023, routine childhood vaccinations will have prevented approximately 508 million cases of illness, 32 million hospitalizations, and 1,129,000 deaths, resulting in direct savings of $540 billion and societal savings of $2.7 trillion.
During the VFC program era, routine childhood immunizations in the United States have been an important cost-saving public health strategy. Childhood immunizations continue to provide substantial health and economic benefits and promote health equity.
Again, no reasonable person can doubt any of this, except at the far margin (we can leave for another time a discussion of why affordability has anything to do with essential healthcare in the United States). But that is where dissemblers like to hide out. One might add that firearm deaths in the United States could have and should have been included on this list, but studying that was terminated with extreme prejudice because of the Second Amendment and the National Rifle Association. Does anyone remember when the NRA was all about gun safety and that the famous “well-regulated militia” was originally intended to eliminate Native Americans and enforce Slave Codes? I didn’t think so.
But getting back to RFKJr revealing himself on Fox & Friends, nowhere in these citations does the word abortion appear. The first paper includes this in Family Planning:
Access to family planning and contraceptive services has altered social and economic roles for women. Family planning has provided health benefits such as smaller family size and longer interval between the birth of children; increased opportunities for preconceptional counseling and screening; fewer infant, child, and maternal deaths; and the use of barrier contraceptives to prevent pregnancy and transmission of human immunodeficiency virus and other STDs.
No mention of abortion whatsoever. But as intended, the word does get the attention of an audience primed to hear it.
It is also worth looking at the four senior CDC employees who have left as a consequence of the defenestration of Susan Monarez. Demetre Daskalakis is an infectious disease physician who led HIV clinics in New York and later joined the NYC Health Department. He joined CDC in December 2020 to direct HIV prevention and subsequently worked on the mpox outbreak that affected gay and bisexual men. Dr. Daskalakis is gay and thus “a messenger that community would listen to.” Yes, he was. Up until this week he was Director of the National Center of Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, a position for which he is well qualified.
Deb Houry was a top CDC official who has been the public face of CDC on diabetes, mental illness among children, and recommendations on proper opioid use. She was second at CDC under Mandy Cohen and Acting Director before Susan Monarez was selected by the Current Administration. Houry began at CDC in 2014:
To lead the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, which dealt with issues including gun violence, suicide, and opioid overdoses. It was one of the divisions at CDC rocked by mass layoffs this year, with the Trump administration saying it wanted to return the CDC’s focus to infectious diseases.
Aside from mass layoffs being a last refuge [1], this “return to focus” is an administration trope about CDC; they do try hard. Yes, the name of CDC was Communicable Disease Center (1946-1967) and National Communicable Disease Center (1967-1970; I have a discarded library book stamped to this effect). It became the Center for Disease Control in 1970 and was the Centers for Disease Control from 1980 to 1992, when CDC became the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is a thoroughly natural evolution; there is nothing sacred about communicable or infectious disease in controlling and preventing disease in the 21st century.
Daniel Jernigan had worked at CDC for thirty years, most recently as Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. He is a leading influenza expert. It is hard to imagine that his expertise will not be needed at the highest level at CDC, perhaps sooner rather than later. Jernigan has said that what sent him out the door was having to work with David Geier, whose “research” with his father on vaccines and autism has been “problematic” in its entirety.
Jennifer Layden led the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology while “spearheading the agency’s efforts to modernize its data strategy” to overcome health data systems that have been a wreck. But if the data are not available or are not usable, then there will be no health crisis or pandemic, by definition. The deterioration of the quality COVID-19 data was remarkable as pandemic fatigue progressed, perhaps never seen before at that level. On the other hand, data on HIV/AIDS and other reportable conditions are still quite good. For now.
Finally, this post was to end with the question of what will Senator Bill Cassidy, MD, R-Louisiana, have to say about this? Dr. Moneraz talked to the Senator as her termination was in the works because she would not toe an illegitimate line, and this apparently did not sit well with the Secretary. Remember, the Senator provided the slimmest of margins by which RFKJr was confirmed, because of assurances he received from nominee. By all accounts the President is all-in on RFKJr’s going “wild on health.”
The MAHA Movement lives, for the moment, but MAHA is mostly theatre for the majority, while giving the rich a feel-good experience that comes attached to their wearable continuous glucose monitors from Levels, of which RFKJr is so enamored. The company was founded by the future Surgeon General – after she gave up her medical career 80% through her ENT residency – and her brother. And no, continuous glucose monitoring for people without diabetes or another serious metabolic condition is superfluous. But the practice is lucrative for the provider of the monitor and the app and the add-ons loved by those with more money than sense.
We have heard from Senator Cassidy, naturally on the Great and Powerful X:
These high profile departures will require oversight by the HELP Committee.
The STAT News article continues:
Senator Cassidy later called for the next meeting of the CDC’s vaccine advisers, scheduled for mid-September, to be postponed indefinitely. (He called for a previous meeting of the vaccine advisory group, known as ACIP, to be postponed as well. Kennedy ignored his demand.)
“Serious allegations have been made about the meeting agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process being followed,” he said in a news release.
At one point, in response to questions about Kennedy stripping funding from mRNA research, Trump suggested that the two planned to meet about it but followed his comments with praise of Kennedy’s work. The White House has not confirmed whether a meeting ever took place, and no public reversal has emerged.
In the meantime, Kennedy, for his part, has continued to blow through promises he made to Cassidy and other senators that he would uphold vaccine science and publicly support immunization. HHS has de facto restricted access to Covid vaccines, for example. He has publicly questioned the value of certain vaccines and pharmaceutical treatments.
He’s also limited the ability of both his staff and the public to dissent: He recently moved to revoke recognition for the union that represents many HHS workers, and offers them a way to speak out against decisions they disagree with, and has made an effort to cut the public out of his decisions.
What a complete mess. One wonders if Senator Dr. Cassidy is having second thoughts. No one excuses (also a link from Conor this morning) the errors of omission and commission by CDC during COVID-19. Or the misses at NIH. Politics was mostly responsible, along with a general malaise caused by losing the plot. But we should remember that these agencies have previously served science and the people very well. Politics and science are always intertwined in the modern world, but as a good friend who is the Vice-President for Public Policy at a major organization of biological scientists, of which I have been a long-time member, puts it: “I don’t mind a fight, but a fight without rules has never been our problem, and at the moment there are no rules, only accusations and rage from critics who have never done the work and have agendas of their own.” That about sums it up, but then there is Hosea 8:7 to keep in mind. Or in the vernacular, what goes around comes around when people are not reasonable.
Nevertheless, it is difficult to see what is happening at CDC (plus NIH, NSF, NOAA, and other essential agencies) as anything but a revival of neo-Lysenkoism, a hundred years later. The outcomes for those scientists and administrators will not reach the severity of what happened in the Soviet Union (see Nikolai Vavilov, FRS), but the substitution of disinterested science for “administration priorities” will not end well this time either.
Note
[1] “Patriotism having become one of our topicks, (Samuel) Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.’ But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest.”
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“Does anyone remember when the NRA was all about gun safety and that the famous “well-regulated militia” was originally intended to eliminate Native Americans and enforce Slave Codes? I didn’t think so.”
I do, but to push back slightly, an overarching goal was to not have a large military that could be used by a possible dictator or even an oligarchy to take over the country. The militia was to take its place with an army being created only if necessary for the war. The only reason why Congress funded West Point was because the corp of engineers that the army wanted could be used to build the canals, roads, and bridges that became government policy to build. Having a military with construction expertise was handy.
So, we have the worst of both worlds. A gun crazy society going crazy for good reason and a massive security state including a massive military backing an empire and suppressing opposition to the empire.
“Without CDC, as it was and still is at the level of working scientists, the world would not be able to respond to emerging diseases and other treats to human health.” Threats to human health, not treats.
I wonder what the political fallout will be when even more infectious diseases start killing people. Aside from the political corruption interfering with the Covid response, the lack of all those epidemics that used to kill people and are fading from memory as the older survivors die make it easier to play games with our health.
It’s a bit like the (IIRC Minsky-ian) concept that “sound policy that produces financial stability leads to complacency that leads to unwise policy and risk-taking that leads to financial instability”, in the public health sphere.
I’d like to think that public institutions will be able to re-implement wise policy when the wages of folly become undeniable. But perhaps the institutions by then will have been so badly damaged that they won’t be able to respond effectively, or perhaps public confidence will be so diminished that attempts to re-implement sound policies won’t be effective.
Zooming way out, what a lot of these administration battles with institutions, medicine, academia, banking, weathermen, etc are about is likely less the issues themselves and more a desire to simply dismantle or seriously downsize the government budget (and control) over them. Ostensible conflicts are really just window dressing over a post-Soviet style “liquidation” (in the Soviet sense) of expensive civic functions which the state can’t or won’t pay for and which oligarchs see profit in privatizing.
Along these lines, if there is money to be made in people getting sick, that will simply accelerate the demolition squads. And it is extremely difficult to rally public support for civic institutions, because a lot of them really are on fire right now. Expensive, over bureaucratized, and 3/4s handed over the private sharks anyway. The public is in a loyalty/exit/voice situation across the board.
As a member of the public, I pose the question: have we no better choices than between the frying pan and the fire? Would one be counted as being loyal if one cannot afford to exit and one’s voice will be ignored, and if not, could result in negative outcomes for oneself and one’s family?
I am thinking about smallpox, which before its eradication using a vaccine, would kill around twenty percent of a local population once enough uninfected people had been born every generation, crippling and scarring many of the rest. It was one one of more than a dozen diseases that regularly killed or crippled people before their elimination or control. It’s a primary reason why people over a century ago had so many children being as it was common for many, if not most, to die before adulthood.
Smallpox was particularly nasty, but the dozen plus diseases that circulated in the nineteenth century were also bad. I don’t think that malaria or yellow fever will ever be a serious problem again, but this just leaves the other ten or so, plus any new diseases like covid, to infect, cripple, or kill entire generations again. It can happen quickly if the vaccinations numbers continue to drop. How will people react then? Will there be a demand for improved public health or will the lack of trust get worse?
I hate to have to say this, but we can reduce the chances of such new diseases and strains by shutting down gain of function. We need an international treaty.
As NC readers know from “Covid is Over,” it won’t be reported unless the bodies are stacking up in the street.
Of course, in the past, one could see that COVID-19 deaths just kept rolling on at places like NC, which reported on the deaths from reputable sources, while the MSM focuses on political trivia.
But how can doctors fight a disease whose existence is treated as enemy propaganda? Kafka meets Idiocracy?
Thanks for documenting these atrocities. It’s sad to see the great institutions of the American century die.
“What goes around comes around when people are not reasonable.”
This bottomless pit of self-importance and political pushback displayed by Susan, Demetre, Deb, Daniel, and Jennifer in front of the CDC almost guarantees the continuation, or even acceleration, of the dreaded doom loop you have previously described.
These kind of experts with their continued presentation of themselves as selfless saviors of Science (with no acknowledgment of self-interest of any kind) is, for me, quite nauseating.
Number 1 Health Achievement in U.S. 1900 – 1999:
Modern Plumbing
interlinked with a modern sewage treatment plant run by experts on the back of science.
Indeed. I was a CDC employee for 30 years. I came to believe that development of public health is one of the highest and finest creations of humanity. It draws on every corner of intellectual creation – microbiology, entomology, statistics, physics, cartography, ethics…just everything. It is also very complex and built on cooperation by countless participants. I fear it will never be rebuilt.
I retired many years ago and still retain the belief that our mission should be continued.
The website for the Senate HELP Committee, chaired by Dr. Cassidy, features a headline blaming the Biden administration for failing to protect the American taxpayer from unemployment insurance fraud. Not a peep about any of this.
All true, and lamentable. But I sense a complementary problem. You discussed it last week, and it is ever present: communications. Consider last week’s discussion of what vaccines are to scientists and clinicians and how different the public perception of vaccines is. Last week it was clear to me that scientists understood that some vaccines can prevent illness and transmission particular diseases. Other vaccines do not have this ability, and there has been some difficulty in conveying this idea.
Some members of the public are aware of this, and many seem not to be. Part of the problem may the use of the same word, ‘vaccine’ to cover prevention of the disease and stopping transmission, (measles), and where you can’t prevent getting the disease but you can drastically reduce its severity and prevent many hospitalizations and deaths (Influenza, Covid-19).
KLG’s discussion was abundantly clear on this point last week, and helped me clarify some of my own misunderstandings. Now, do many scientists have problems talking to the public? Yes. It it entirely the fault of scientists? No. I have my own problems conveying complex economic ideas to an audience that has been primed for an easy answer or one that accords with their predetermined beliefs. Scientists could speak more clearly, perhaps, but members of the public could be better prepared to receive that kind of information. So there is a problem both with education (scientific literacy) and communication (an environment that is now at best ill-equipped to deal with complex ideas).
To quote from the introduction to ‘Democracy Without Citizens’ by Robert M. Entman, in his discussion of journalism and politics.
Excellent report on the CDC. It’s the best I’ve seen. You are a good reporter.
a post worthy of Lambert, much missed and likely rolling over—not in his grave one trusts, but wherever he is, witnessing this sad spectacle
I am staring at Top Ten, 1900 – 1999:
“Safer and healthier foods”
That is a singularly non-specific phrasing, maybe even deliberately tactful in a pathological way.
Sure, in the first half of the 20th century, food safety was enhanced and vitamins and trace minerals were discovered and that knowledge applied.
Something went wrong, though, around 1970 and no one at FDA or CDC has ever seemed much interested since. I don’t have quantitative evidence on this point, but the credibility of public heath authority has been eroded by contradictory and impractical and simply wrong nutritional advice as well as a profound incuriosity about the obesity epidemic. That food additives are used in the U.S. that are banned in Europe is well-known.
I think we have lost not just confidence — and rightly so as technical competence eroded away as we discovered in the COVID pandemic — but also the ability to have critical examination of policy choices. We should be examining critically whether having flouride in toothpaste AND in municipal water is wise. We should ask whether Hepatitis B vaccination is appropriate for infants.
I have become convinced in no small part from reading this website, that we should have systematic wastewater monitoring in place for a variety of indicators. Ditto for indoor air quality, not just for COVID. That we do not see proactive efforts from leadership in these agencies is concerning. I admire the activists, but what does it say about the attitudes and professional competence of senior management and professional leadership that so much activism is required to overcome complacency? (I would also say, “corruption” but that is the wrong word for the problem of professionals running scared or shy of unscrupulous industry impacting careers and reputations.)
Lordie, this is simply not correct.
Go read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and get back to me. Extremely healthy food processing and adulterated foods (on the order of sausage with sawdust in it) were pretty common in 1900, particularly in cities.
In fairness, Mr Wilder says food safety was enhanced in the first half of the 20th century.
The large number of food ingredients and pesticides allowed in the US vs countries where people live longer is a fine place for investigation, though it’s at the FDA mostly, not CDC.
By happenstance I was researching smallpox in 19th century England. Vaccinations were made free back in 1840 and were mostly compulsory in the following years until the ancestors of RFK jr got started-
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-50713991 (note the image of the two brothers!)
Point is that we have been here before and now the anti-vaxxers & snake oil salesmen have taken charge for the next few years. Can you imagine what the measles infection rate alone will be like by 2028? In Trump’s wake have come a whole bunch of ideologues in trade, foreign policy – and public health. And the later are going to run public health into the ground because of their beliefs. Perhaps even try to dismantle public health and put the onus on individuals to deal with their own health. Maybe their motto will be ‘Every Citizen a Sovereign Citizen’ or something. So what comes afterwards assuming the Democrats get back in? Do the Democrats have the will and courage to sweep these wingnuts out and reform the system? Or will they go with the flow as they have other priorities. Regardless. At the current rate of the destruction of public health, I expect by the end of the decade that foreign countries will issue health travel warning to their citizens coming to visit the US and urgently recommending that they have their vaccinations up to date.
Democrats can do nothing. They won’t admit their vaccine mandate was wrong or that COVID is ongoing and serious. They can’t rebuild trust nor can their crop of appointees.
“There are plenty of healthy spare kidneys walking around, unused.” – Jim O’Neill, newly appointed head of the CDC.
Is it too pessimistic to think maybe they actually are trying to purge the riff raff?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15045693/amp/Trump-new-CDC-director-mass-exodus-RFK-Jr.html
Of course you’re the expert but my understanding was that the CDC in Atlanta was mainly tasked with preventing epidemics and not in some way in charge of health policy in general. In fact wasn’t the recent Dem administration enthusiasm for controlling health policy in itself unusual given that these matters were traditionally handled by local hospitals and health departments? To some of us the Biden Covid vaccine mandate seemed quite a radical departure.
So to what degree is RFK’s opinion on these matters really going to affect the health policy of local governments and physicians? Yes we’ve conquered all these communicable diseases and maybe health researchers with their “gain of function research” are looking for something to do rather than following “first do no harm.” An ignorant question perhaps, but the one that comes to mind.
My impression is that your view is not correct. There is a big issue that legally, public health policy is mainly in the hands of the states. However, IM Doc lamented repeatedly about the massive difference in the role the CDC played during the AIDS crisis v. now. The CDC was a hugely important repository and transmitter of the best information available at the time. More importantly, it provided information directly to clinicians, particularly treatment guidelines. IM Doc was particularly unhappy about the complete lack of assistance to front line doctors in Covid.
And you can see other elements of the CDC role now. CVS and Walgreens are refusing to administer any Covid shots now. This is not due to any change in the CDC’s role. See the New York Times: C.D.C. Uncertainty Upends Covid Vaccine Access at CVS and Walgreens
“See the New York Times: C.D.C. Uncertainty Upends Covid Vaccine Access at CVS and Walgreens”
At the moment at least, it appears Kaiser Permanente will do otherwise.
https://healthy.kaiserpermanente.org/northern-california/health-wellness/coronavirus-information/vaccine-appointments#:~:text=Vaccination%20remains%20one%20of%20the,cost%20to%20children%20and%20adults.
Note how much policy came from outside the CDC during covid. Biden’s attempts at mandates, teachers unions on school closures, the censorship complex trying to shut down opposing views, money trying to demonize any alternatives (including being outdoors alone).
We said when Rochelle Walensky was appointed that she was not qualified. The CDC is a bureaucracy of 32,000 and coordinates with the public health departments in 50 states. All the press puffery claimed she’d headed a department at whatever Harvard teaching hospital she was at. But a VERY detailed org chart of that hospital showed no such unit. So it was probably an itty bitty or ad hoc research team under an actual department.
Point is there was no evidence she’d ever managed even as many as 20 people, although that # might have been operative if she’d been managing a big grant.
So yes, Biden appointed a spokescritter who was barely on top of anything the CDC was doing
Fluoridation doesn’t belong on the list. Evidence: most other countries don’t fluoridate. They are just fine.
This is the clearest, most well thought out article I’ve yet read about the fate of the CDC overall (as opposed to just concentrating on its COVID failures). Just the thing to give someone who asks “So what is really happening at the CDC?” So many thanks to the author.
So here is my eccentric excursus: I now have a little set of calendar notes about the multitude of crises that are putting an end to the West. Will Israel attack Iran again in September (as, say Mercouris seems to think)? Will there be riots in Europe in November? Will February and March next year see the violent take-down of a German government? When will the US MIC realize that they really won’t be getting rare earth elements from China, and when will their stock prices begin to reflect this? Just a small sample of crazy, speculative, useless questions about what to pencil in on my speculative calendar, but still, I can’t help myself, I’m fascinated.
But more to the point here, there must be someone who has a notion of how often, on the average, some new pathogen or disease appears, that absent the efforts of the CDC or something like it, would become a world-wide catastrophe. So with the CDC disintegrating and certain elements of USAID gone, how long before we can be pretty sure to see an outbreak that will not be caught and mitigated in the old way? Does it happen every year, every five years? Where shall I add this to my calendar of looming catastrophes?
Perhaps my list of bizarro questions breaks site rules, so the moderator should feel free to kill the comment, my little calendar is probably a signpost on the way to insanity, anyway.
Again. Upon pleading guilty to heroin possession (not marijuana, meth, or cocaine, but heroin) Kennedy checked himself into rehab in New Jersey.
What’s your point Bubba? Did RFK jr repent, get healing and NEVER turn back. Isn’t this when we CONGRATULATE someone?
Kudos to you for your sinless, perfect life.
My impression, as a non-medical person outside the US borders, was that, up until the Covid-19 pandemic, the CDC and FDA were pretty much the gold standard. Perhaps like the US Federal Aviation Administration was until the Boeing fiasco.
We may have not realized how compromised the FAA was but the CDC and FDA look like they were fine until hit with massive political sanctions recently.
Now? I don’t know what various nations are doing now but I hope my country starts demanding proof of vaccination on just about anything vaccinationable™ before we let a US resident into the country.
Accept US CDC or FDA recommendations now? Regulatory staff in my country probably risk serious injury from uncontrollable laughter just reading them.
As much as I appreciate Naked Capitalism, with the exception of some stellar posts by the MidWestern Doctor, many (if not most) NK pieces I read, as with this one, seem to proceed as if insiders such as Dr. Marcia Angell, first female editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, had not flagged in the most forceful terms the profound corruption and suborning of our entire medical-research-safety apparatus by massive corporations.
After COVID, at the very least, reasonable people should be able to agree that there are profound problems with our global pharmacovigilance ecosystem, beginning with excessive oligarchic influence on our NGOs & regulatory agencies, conflicts of interest and revolving doors between their leaders and Big Pharma, and very disturbing overlaps with biological warfare research and experimentation–not least through a network of biowarfare laboratories in remote and hostile areas of the planet.
Making this about Kennedy is a disservice to the NK’s readership.