“Rush University Medical Center in Chicago is adding a new twist to its curriculum for medical students and residents, using AI tools and learning modules to teach how to more quickly identify measles rashes on different skin tones. It’s another reminder that diseases once thought to have been eradicated are showing up with increased frequency in clinics and ERs, posing challenges for younger physicians and health workers who thought they were relegated to history.”
That’s what you get when you have an ignorant anti-science, anti-medicine dude such as RFK Jr. in charge of health policy. “There have been 1,267 confirmed cases of measles in the U.S. this year, almost 4.5 times the total for all of last year and on track to pass the highest annual count since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” He’s not a vaccine skeptic, he’s an anti-vax extremist who thinks this is a better alternative than kids getting autism (which isn’t an issue anyway — vaccines don’t cause autism, despite Kennedy’s lies). And he’s not just talk. Also this.
This also extends to a hatred for respected scientific journals that print facts. Because the facts are not on his side.
Kennedy says staying healthy is our patriotic duty — which is repackaging old cliches that if you’re sick, it reflects your bad decisions. Because like so many health crackpots he thinks we can stop ourselves being sick if we try (This is not new: Rep. Mo Brooks several years back argued that requiring insurance cover pre-existing conditions is bad because those conditions are our fault. Or complaints by some libertarians (John Stossel) that healthcare would work better if insurance didn’t let us use “too much” healthcare)
Epidemiologist Elizabeth Jacobs discusses how chronic disease is a fruitful ground for flim-flam hustlers and fake cures (something true throughout American history); sewing doubt about vaccines opens up preventable diseases to the same money-making opportunities.
It’s also fruitful ground for women who get sucked from wellness into fascism.
RFK’s vaccine review committee is stuffed with anti-vax clowns. And of course the Felon is an imbecile who thinks maybe 18 people out of every 10,000 don’t have autism. Plus his federal funding cuts have forced projects such as NC’s long-covid recovery clinic to close. mRNA breakthroughs are facing tough sledding, despite their tremendous potential. AG Pam Bondi, as ever a loyal toady to the Felon, has dropped charges against Dr. Michael Kirk Moore for (allegedly) providing people with fake vaccine cards and destroying several thousand dollars worth of vaccine. Fraud and destruction of government property are pretty trivial crimes to Bondi, as long as they’re directed at the public and not her Fuehrer.
Scientific integrity doesn’t matter much to these creeps either. I have a feeling they won’t worry about nuclear safety either — after all, the Felon would never accept any blame if anything goes wrong
Speaking of clowns, here’s Marjorie Taylor Greene. And the guy who wrote yet another RFK Jr. has a point article.
Kennedy talks a lot about how he wants to eliminate environmental chemicals but he’s lying. Apparently he doesn’t care about processed foods as much as he pretends either. I’m also curious if he has a financial stake in his push to get everyone wearing health trackers. We know lawyer Mat Staver approached anti-vaxxing as a tool to raise money; now he’s fund-raising off God supposedly curing Staver’s covid, saying that if he’d taken “Fauci’s deadly protocol” he’d be dead (what, God can’t counteract it?)
Here’s to more lawsuits like this one. And to scientists working on an end run around the CDC, even if they aren’t there yet. Because Republicans will destroy America’s scientific establishment if it doesn’t conform to their distorted reality. For example, Greene’s claim that the Texas floods were caused by weather control. She’s not the only one spewing this bullshit and it’s leading to attacks on weather stations. Lee Zeldin, the Felon’s EPA administrator, says he’s outraged these questions are dismissed. The truth is, they’ve had the answers — no, our government is not doing weather control — but they don’t want to accept them. That doesn’t entitle them to be taken seriously. Hell, they’ve been screaming for years that human activity can’t possibly make the climate worse — but consistency isn’t the issue.
We are indeed in the stupidest timeline. As Paul Campos says, “This country has always been chock full of credulous paranoid morons, but there used to be some sort of effort to keep them handling snakes as opposed to congressional committees and federal agencies.” As witness the Felon, having horned his way into the Club World Cup awards ceremony, is now keeping the trophy. Stupid and pathetic.
But I guess Republicans destroying the Department of Education will keep people too uneducated to notice.
