Medical Facts and the Big American LOL

 

Medical Facts and the Big American LOL

Are Trump Cabinet appointees truly a clown car: a kakistocracy - “government by the worst people”?

Government laws, judicial decisions, regulations, policies and practices touch our lives every day, from the obvious – like the overturning of Roe v Wade – to the more subtle realities that you only discover when you engage in an action where “change” impacts your rights and, often, your survival. Today, I am looking at the mass of voters who simply have lost faith in or simply no longer believe in the established medical community (trained doctors and researchers) versus that body of experts’ profoundly successful track records, which such voters choose to ignore, do not believe or even deride. These voters knew the metrics Trump would apply to his high-level governmental leadership posts.

This examination is particularly salient because of Donald Trump’s commitment to empower those where “loyalty” prevails over competence. This self-centered proclivity just may turn deadly, for example, if conspiracy theorist and antivaxxer (despite his claims to the contrary) Robert Kennedy, Jr is confirmed as head of the Department of Health and Human Services (with 80,000 federal employees) and TV celebrity and “wellness products” huckster, Dr Mehmet Oz, is confirmed as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a powerful agency in charge of programs that cover more than 150 million Americans.

So, let’s look at statistical success track record of scientifically applied medicine. The above charts are a good starting place. Writing for the November 19th Vox, Dylan Scott tells us how far we have come: “Measles, mumps, and polio are supposed to be diseases of the past. In the early to mid-20th century, scientists developed vaccines that effectively eliminated the risk of anyone getting sick or dying from illnesses that had killed millions over millennia of human history.

“Vaccines, alongside sanitized water and antibiotics, have marked the epoch of modern medicine. The US was at the cutting edge of eliminating these diseases, which helped propel life expectancy and economic growth in the postwar era. Montana native Maurice Hilleman, the so-called father of modern vaccines, developed flu shots, hepatitis shots, and the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine in the 1950s and ’60s, which became virtually universally adopted among Americans.

“Smallpox, the most common form of which has a 30 percent fatality rate, has been eradicated. Mitch McConnell, Republican titan of the Senate, may be the last major public figure still afflicted by a childhood case of polio, less than a century after it paralyzed a sitting American president. Measles likely infected millions of people annually in the US in the 1800s, although precise estimates from the era are hard to come by. In the early 1900s, thousands of people died from the disease every year. It was still infecting more than half a million and killing hundreds per year on average in the 1950s and ’60s, before the vaccine debuted. Diphtheria, a deadly respiratory infection, killed more than 1,800 people annually between 1936 and 1945 as the vaccine against it was still being rolled out. It has not killed anybody in the United States in decades.

“The vaccines that made this possible are among the most important achievements in human history. And yet many Americans appear to be losing faith in them, a worrying trend that could accelerate if President-elect Donald Trump succeeds in handing control of the top US health agency into the hands of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the country’s foremost vaccine denier.” We should ask how many of the children who make up that measles statistic above died (thousands) as their parents followed RFK, Jr’s skepticism of measles vaccines and how many school children will become seriously infected, perhaps facing permanent issues and even death, as RFK, Jr’s antivaxx mission causes states and school districts to eliminate vaccination as an enrollment prerequisite.

Scott continues: “The day after Trump’s election, Kennedy insisted he would not ‘take away anybody’s vaccines.’ Instead, he said, he planned to compile vaccine safety information so that people could make their own decisions. But vaccine safety has been extensively studied — and the negative effects Kennedy claims remain undetected. (Others in Trump’s orbit have stated that Kennedy will nevertheless use whatever information he finds to try to pull vaccines from the market.)… Experts fear that his appointment will validate his anti-vaccine attitudes — and exacerbate the public’s growing ambivalence toward these vital public health measures.

“As long-accepted, lifesaving public health measures increasingly become politically polarized, routine vaccination rates are rapidly declining in much of the US. In the 2019–2020 school year, three states had less than 90 percent of K–12 students vaccinated against measles, mumps, and rubella. By the 2023–2024 school year, 14 states had fallen below that threshold. The number of states with more than 95 percent of schoolchildren vaccinated — the preferred level of coverage to prevent outbreaks — dropped from 20 to 11 during that same period.”

Trump’s appointment of RFK, Jr and Dr Oz is part of that populist groundswell against science. “People once dismissed for their disbelief in conventional medicine are now celebrating a new champion in Washington. Scientists, meanwhile, are trying to figure how they could have managed the pandemic without setting off a populist movement they say threatens longstanding public-health measures… Lingering resentment over pandemic restrictions helped Kennedy and his ‘Make America Healthy Again’ campaign draw people from the left and the right, voters who worried about the contamination of food, water and medicine. Many of them shared doubts about vaccines and felt their concerns were ignored by experts or regarded as ignorant.” Liz Essley Whyte, writing for the November 19th Wall Street Journal.

But RFK, Jr isn’t just about vaccines: “Kennedy tweeted a few days before the election, ‘the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.’… ‘Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face.’… The reason, he asserted, is that ‘fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease… That’s all flatly untrue or grossly misleading. Kennedy’s screed against fluoridation is part and parcel of a policy package that has legitimate scientists warning of a public health catastrophe in the making.” Michael Hiltzik, writing for the November 22nd Los Angeles Times.

Having touted false treatments for COVID, Dr Mehmet Oz (a failed MAGA Pennsylvania US Senate candidate) joined the Trump/Musk bandwagon focused on curtailing Medicare and, particularly, Medicaid benefits as well as reducing or replacing the Affordable Care Act. It’s all part of Trump’s unambiguous effort to curtail “entitlements” to balance the lost revenue when his and his controlled Congress pass massive extensions and enhancement to cuts in corporate and high-earner federal income tax… a reverse Robin Hood, where we rob the poor to pay the wealthy.

So here we are. Low-income Americans, dependent on Medicaid, and elderly Americans who rely on Medicare may be in for some horrible healthcare realities. What happens, for example, if it becomes highly advisable for Americans to get vaccinations for diseases with dangerous consequences, and RFK, Jr doesn’t believe in them, and Dr Oz doesn’t want government healthcare to pay for them?

I’m Peter Dekom, and Americans seem to have placed their economic and healthcare wellbeing in the hands of an autocrat presiding over a kakistocracy (e.g., a clown car of government leaders).