This Isn't Reform. It's Sabotage.
Musk and Trump are launching a frontal assault on the concept of democratic governance
...The war on public health is just one facet of this ugly diamond, but through it you can see both the breadth and the cruelty of the whole assault — and how it often hides behind an alibi of "reform."
All of a sudden, last Friday, you could not view C.D.C. data about H.I.V., or its guidelines for PrEP, the prophylactic treatment to prevent H.I.V. transmission, or guidelines for other sexually-transmitted diseases. You couldn't find surveillance data on hepatitis or tuberculosis, either, or the youth-risk behavior survey, or any of the agency's domestic violence data. If you were a doctor hoping to consult federal guidance about postpartum birth control, that was down too. As was the page devoted to "Safer Food Choices for Pregnant People," presumably because that last word wasn't "Women." Throughout the pandemic, conservative critics of these institutions complained that their messaging was unequivocal and heavy-handed. The new message seems to be: You are on your own.
In the end, this is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s message, too — beyond his claims about vaccines and G.M.O.s. The man who will almost certainly assume control of the country's entire public health apparatus is often described as a late arrival to MAGA, and an unlikely ally — a longtime environmental lawyer and anti-corporate activist who was even considered a potential E.P.A. administrator by Barack Obama. But he nevertheless embodies the broader program, as does the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement for which he serves now as a hood ornament.
In the aftermath of the pandemic emergency, Americans grew increasingly distrustful of many of the country's institutions of health — it wasn't just faith in organizations like the C.D.C. and F.D.A. which fell, but trust in nurses, doctors and pharmacists, too. But the administration isn't proposing reform. Kennedy's core focus is asking sweeping questions about vaccines and about the food system and environmental contamination. This emphasis represents a paradigm shift, from a social and epidemiological view of illness and disease, emphasizing collective responsibility and mutual aid, to one focused on behavior, diet and lifestyle. Which is to say, personal responsibility — in place of public health, health libertarianism...
Musk and Trump are launching a frontal assault on the concept of democratic governance
All of a sudden, last Friday, you could not view C.D.C. data about H.I.V., or its guidelines for PrEP, the prophylactic treatment to prevent H.I.V. transmission, or guidelines for other sexually-transmitted diseases. You couldn't find surveillance data on hepatitis or tuberculosis, either, or the youth-risk behavior survey, or any of the agency's domestic violence data. If you were a doctor hoping to consult federal guidance about postpartum birth control, that was down too. As was the page devoted to "Safer Food Choices for Pregnant People," presumably because that last word wasn't "Women." Throughout the pandemic, conservative critics of these institutions complained that their messaging was unequivocal and heavy-handed. The new message seems to be: You are on your own.
In the end, this is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s message, too — beyond his claims about vaccines and G.M.O.s. The man who will almost certainly assume control of the country's entire public health apparatus is often described as a late arrival to MAGA, and an unlikely ally — a longtime environmental lawyer and anti-corporate activist who was even considered a potential E.P.A. administrator by Barack Obama. But he nevertheless embodies the broader program, as does the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement for which he serves now as a hood ornament.
In the aftermath of the pandemic emergency, Americans grew increasingly distrustful of many of the country's institutions of health — it wasn't just faith in organizations like the C.D.C. and F.D.A. which fell, but trust in nurses, doctors and pharmacists, too. But the administration isn't proposing reform. Kennedy's core focus is asking sweeping questions about vaccines and about the food system and environmental contamination. This emphasis represents a paradigm shift, from a social and epidemiological view of illness and disease, emphasizing collective responsibility and mutual aid, to one focused on behavior, diet and lifestyle. Which is to say, personal responsibility — in place of public health, health libertarianism...
early in the pandemic it might have been useful to communicate a bit more clearly about the striking difference in risk faced by the old and the young, as I was writing as far back as the spring of 2020, too.
But these were not the questions that Kennedy was asking most conspicuously at the height of the Covid emergency — about how we might do better with guidance and communication and trust, or whether we had done enough to communicate the age skew of the disease or the strength of "natural" immunity. Instead, he was focusing on the horrors of the new vaccines. Indeed, fighting to stop their authorization, and any future authorization for any future Covid vaccine, not just for little children or those who'd already survived infection, but for any American of any age and suffering any health condition.
This was in May 2021. The rollout had begun just six months before, but vaccines had already saved, it was estimated, nearly 140,000 American lives. In the years that followed, they would save perhaps three million more. That is to say, if Kennedy had been successful, the pandemic death toll in this country could have been about three times as high.
This attempt at public-health sabotage towers over the new secretary's meddling in Samoa, which may have contributed to the deaths of dozens by measles in 2019, and it came more recently, concerning millions of American lives. It was also what earned him a spot in the Trump coalition — indeed a starring role. The Covid vaccines were a medical miracle, probably the most consequential American one in several generations. Kennedy did what he could to stop that miracle, which he later called "the deadliest vaccine ever made." When the country encountered a rampaging novel disease, he told us very clearly, he would have preferred we all faced it naked and alone.
This should be disqualifying. Instead, it proved the opposite. In the name of reform and government overhaul, the new administration is approving and ushering in something much more like destruction, with the president imploring his new health secretary to "go wild" in the role. The admonition does not apply just to Kennedy and public health, or even just to Musk and his initiative. A new generation of libertarians is not letting the country's crisis of confidence go to waste. On Tuesday, Ted Cruz declared, "Abolish the IRS." Up first, apparently: the Department of Education.
David Wallace-Wells
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/opinion/trump-musk-government.html?smid=em-share
But these were not the questions that Kennedy was asking most conspicuously at the height of the Covid emergency — about how we might do better with guidance and communication and trust, or whether we had done enough to communicate the age skew of the disease or the strength of "natural" immunity. Instead, he was focusing on the horrors of the new vaccines. Indeed, fighting to stop their authorization, and any future authorization for any future Covid vaccine, not just for little children or those who'd already survived infection, but for any American of any age and suffering any health condition.
This was in May 2021. The rollout had begun just six months before, but vaccines had already saved, it was estimated, nearly 140,000 American lives. In the years that followed, they would save perhaps three million more. That is to say, if Kennedy had been successful, the pandemic death toll in this country could have been about three times as high.
This attempt at public-health sabotage towers over the new secretary's meddling in Samoa, which may have contributed to the deaths of dozens by measles in 2019, and it came more recently, concerning millions of American lives. It was also what earned him a spot in the Trump coalition — indeed a starring role. The Covid vaccines were a medical miracle, probably the most consequential American one in several generations. Kennedy did what he could to stop that miracle, which he later called "the deadliest vaccine ever made." When the country encountered a rampaging novel disease, he told us very clearly, he would have preferred we all faced it naked and alone.
This should be disqualifying. Instead, it proved the opposite. In the name of reform and government overhaul, the new administration is approving and ushering in something much more like destruction, with the president imploring his new health secretary to "go wild" in the role. The admonition does not apply just to Kennedy and public health, or even just to Musk and his initiative. A new generation of libertarians is not letting the country's crisis of confidence go to waste. On Tuesday, Ted Cruz declared, "Abolish the IRS." Up first, apparently: the Department of Education.
David Wallace-Wells
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/opinion/trump-musk-government.html?smid=em-share
No comments:
Post a Comment