Sick birds. Sick kids. And you can add sick cows. Quite the time to be cutting staff at the many agencies that work to identify, prevent, and treat disease. Here are some of the serious health threats we are facing:
Despite a veritable news blackout, COVID-19 is still with us, killing thousands. Yes, according to the CDC, 893 Americans died of COVID-19 during the week of January 25, 2025; 850 Americans during the week of February 1, 2025; and 658 died during the week of February 8, 2025.
We are still experiencing a miserable flu season. The CDC reports “that there have been at least 24 million illnesses, 310,000 hospitalizations, and 13,000 deaths from flu so far this season … [including] 57 pediatric deaths.” As a result, the “CDC recommends that everyone ages 6 months and older get an annual influenza (flu) vaccine.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics adds these statistics about visits to Emergency Departments (EDs):
Pediatric patients accounted for 33.3% of all influenza cases seen in EDs for the week ending Feb. 1, according to CDC respiratory illness statistics. That is the highest percentage reported for patients ages 0-17 in CDC data going back to October 2023.
Influenza patients of all ages accounted for 8% of all ED visits for the week ending Feb. 1, also the highest level reported in data going back to October 2023. For the 2024-’25 season, 57 pediatric influenza-related deaths have been reported as of Feb. 1. ‘The best thing a parent can do to protect their family from influenza is to make sure everyone gets vaccinated,’ Dr. O’Leary said. ‘It’s not too late for this season because we’re still seeing widespread circulation.’ Latest CDC numbers show 45.7% of U.S. children have received the flu vaccine this season.
[Emphasis added.]
Meanwhile, despite many a campaign promise, the price of eggs in Truskmumpia goes up, beyond their cost under Sleepy Joe. Why? Because yet another disease, H5N1 (the bird flu), continues to spread, forcing farmers to destroy their flocks. Here is a February 28, 2025, summary from the CDC:
The always informative Dr. Katelyn Jetelina of “Your Local Epidemiologist” offers this additional guidance:
H5N1 hasn’t stopped spreading. It’s in wild birds worldwide and is causing outbreaks in poultry and dairy cows, with quite a few human cases. Here is the latest animal tally of infections:
• 12,064 wild birds
• 973 dairy herds
• 166,012,718 poultry—a big reason why eggs are hard to find and expensive
Spread among animals, particularly those in close physical proximity to humans, means we continue to see ‘spillover’ infections to humans. In other words, the virus keeps jumping from animal to human, which is bad because every time it jumps, the virus can mutate.
The U.S. human infection tally is:
• 70 confirmed human infections (+ 7 probable)
• Among those, 3 hospitalized
• 1 person in Louisiana died
People are still mainly getting sick from direct exposure to sick dairy cows (41 people) or sick poultry (24 people). Thankfully, we have not seen human-to-human transmission, and the virus hasn’t mutated to do so yet. Testing is still limited, and we now know we’re missing cases, especially the milder ones that don’t make people seek care. CDC went to a veterinarian conference and asked bovine (dairy) vets to donate blood to see if they had H5N1 antibodies (and didn’t test positive for H5N1 infection). 3 out of 150 had antibodies; in other words they were infected without knowing it.
The Kaiser Family Foundation’s Health News puts these figures in a wider perspective, suggesting we are once again failing to best protect the public health:
Amy Maxmen writes:
Nearly a year into the first outbreak of the bird flu among cattle, the virus shows no sign of slowing. The U.S. government failed to eliminate the virus on dairy farms when it was confined to a handful of states, by quickly identifying infected cows and taking measures to keep their infections from spreading. Now at least 875 herds across 16 states have tested positive. Experts say they have lost faith in the government’s ability to contain the outbreak …
To understand how the bird flu got out of hand, KFF Health News interviewed nearly 70 government officials, farmers and farmworkers, and researchers with expertise in virology, pandemics, veterinary medicine, and more. Together with emails obtained from local health departments through public records requests, this investigation revealed key problems, including deference to the farm industry, eroded public health budgets, neglect for the safety of agriculture workers, and the sluggish pace of federal interventions.
Case in point: The U.S. Department of Agriculture this month announced a federal order to test milk nationwide. Researchers welcomed the news but said it should have happened months ago — before the virus was so entrenched. ‘It’s disheartening to see so many of the same failures that emerged during the covid-19 crisis reemerge,’ said Tom Bollyky, director of the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations …
In coming years, the bird flu may cost billions of dollars more in expenses and losses. Dairy industry experts say the virus kills roughly 2% to 5% of infected dairy cows and reduces a herd’s milk production by about 20%. Worse, the outbreak poses the threat of a pandemic. More than 60 people in the U.S. have been infected, mainly by cows or poultry, but cases could skyrocket if the virus evolves to spread efficiently from person to person. And the recent news of a person critically ill in Louisiana with the bird flu shows that the virus can be dangerous.
[Emphasis added.]
You would think we would have learned from our slow and contradictory response to the COVID pandemic, but a look at the quickly spreading measles epidemic reveals that, when it comes to public health threats, we are going in the wrong direction. Yes, once again, MAGA has got it wrong, prioritizing dogma, politics, and foolish cost-cutting over rigorous science.
Contrary to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s oft-repeated campaign pledges to “Make America Healthy Again,” with his appointment at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), he has, with power and opportunity, quickly done the opposite. Instead, he is continuing the considerable damage he has done over the last decade to foster opposition to immunization.
In The New York Times’ February 28, 2025 report, “The Texas Measles Outbreak Is Even Scarier Than It Looks,” Zeynep Tufekci writes:
The news that an outbreak in Texas has caused the nation’s first confirmed measles death in a decade — an unvaccinated child — is as unsurprising as it is tragic. Spreading largely in rural Mennonite communities that typically have low vaccination rates, the outbreak has already grown to at least 146 cases since late January. Almost all of them are children.
Parents whose children got infected but survived are no doubt grateful that their family was spared. But startling research about the virus unfortunately tells a new and very different story, recasting what was previously known about how measles works and making clear why the Trump administration’s approach to vaccines is nowhere even close to meeting the moment.
That research, conducted over the past decade by the immunologist and medical doctor Michael Mina and others, revealed that measles destroys immune cells. Even people who recover from the virus lose much of their immune memory, and therefore the protection they had acquired from prior infections or vaccines to all the other childhood illnesses. This leaves survivors more vulnerable to many other diseases for years afterward. Worse, these victims may now face those childhood diseases, to which they lost immune protections, as older children, which puts them more at risk for complications.
[Emphasis added.]
On March 2, 2025, Fenit Nirappil reported for The Washington Post:
Texas’s worst measles eruption in three decades has surged to 146 known cases, with the true toll likely much higher, exposing how under-vaccinated communities are unnecessarily vulnerable to one of the world’s most contagious diseases, experts say. The first known victim was 6 and otherwise healthy, according to two individuals with knowledge of the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details that haven’t been publicly released.
The life-threatening outbreak in West Texas starkly illustrates the stakes of slipping immunization rates and the ascension of vaccine skeptics, including Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to the highest levels of the public health establishment. And it has revealed how fear and the scientifically false claims of the anti-vaccine movement have seeped into communities like Gaines County, the epicenter of the outbreak, hardening attitudes about vaccines, pro and con, in the face of a dangerous, preventable disease …
During Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearings for health secretary, Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, practically begged him to acknowledge, however grudgingly, that vaccines don’t cause autism. It was the easiest layup ever, but Kennedy just wouldn’t go there. Maybe not so surprising, given that he had previously told a podcaster that he considers it his duty to tell random strangers that they shouldn’t vaccinate their babies. Cassidy, a medical doctor by training, voted to confirm him anyway.
Since then, Kennedy has had a lot to say about the need to investigate the childhood vaccinations schedule (‘nothing is going to be off limits’), claiming that despite decades of widespread use and study it had somehow been ‘insufficiently scrutinized.’ He stopped a sensible public awareness campaign during one of the most severe flu seasons ever, and canceled a key vaccine committee meeting, which may endanger the availability of flu vaccines next year. And he talked about instituting an ‘informed consent’ model for parents that emphasizes vaccines’ possible side effects and no doubt would discourage the vaccinations that have protected Americans from the ravages of infectious disease that in earlier centuries were just a standard part of life.
[Emphasis added.]
Childrens Health Defense, the group Robert F. Kennedy Jr. founded and which paid him handsomely, has made clear its feelings about vaccines:
… the best they do is nothing; the worst is worse than the disease they’re designed to prevent or limit its effects: Vaccines sometimes do nothing ─ they cause no harm as they fail to protect the vaccine recipient from disease. Sometimes vaccines do worse than nothing ─ they cause more cases, and more severe cases of disease in those who opt to be vaccinated. Low levels of antibodies cannot be viewed as less of a good thing. Ineffective vaccines are a bad thing. They stimulate low level immune responses that sometimes potentiate the exact diseases they were intended to prevent.
As for measles specifically, a 2019 posting asserts:
Articles in the media aimed at drumming up fear and whipping the public into a frenzy about nothing is happening with greater frequency. Such is the case with the latest ‘measles epidemic’ in WA state. Headlines include dire warnings about the ‘deadly’ measles with the solution being more vaccination. One shot for your child and he/she is saved! What could be easier? …
While instilling fear, rarely do any of these mainstream media announcements alert parents to the downsides of vaccination. And, should something go horribly wrong with the vaccination of their child, they are on their own as vaccine manufacturers are liability free due to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP). It is a disservice because the fact is vaccine injuries can and do happen. To date, this program has paid out in excess of $4 billion dollars injuries.
According to a Medalerts search of the FDA Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database as of 2/5/19, the cumulative raw count of adverse events from measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines alone was: 93,929 adverse events, 1,810 disabilities, 6,902 hospitalizations, and 463 deaths. What is even more disturbing about these numbers is that VAERS is a voluntary and passive reporting system that has been found to only capture 1% of adverse events.
This web posting is filled with misinformation. The VAERS database is open and available to all—reports of adverse effects from vaccines are anecdotal and not peer reviewed by medical personnel. As the CDC puts it:
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is an early warning system, co-managed by CDC and FDA, that monitors for potential vaccine safety problems. Healthcare providers and vaccine manufacturers are required by law to report certain adverse events (any side effect or health problem after vaccination that is concerning to you, even if you are not sure if the vaccine caused the event) following vaccination to VAERS; patients and caregivers can also submit reports.
[Emphasis added.]
Anyone who suspects a problem can post their claim, and the data is unverified.
In an article titled “Childhood vaccination rates, a rare health bright spot in struggling states, are slipping,” the Kaiser Family Foundation reports on the significant ramifications of the kind of misinformation spread by anti-vaxers like Children’s Health Defense, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Joe Rogan:
Many states have recently reported an increase in people opting out of vaccines for their kids as Americans’ views shift. During the 2023-24 school year, the percentage of kindergartners exempted from one or more vaccinations rose to 3.3%, the highest ever reported, with increases in 40 states and Washington, D.C., according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Tennessee and Mississippi were among those with increases. Nearly all exemptions nationally were for nonmedical reasons …
Pediatricians in states with high exemption rates, such as Florida and Georgia, say they’re concerned by what they see — declining immunization levels for kindergartners, which could lead to a resurgence in vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles. The Florida Department of Health reported nonmedical exemption rates as high as 50% for children in some areas … Both states have reported declines in uptake of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, which is one of the most common childhood shots. In Georgia, MMR coverage for kindergartners dropped to 88.4% in the 2023-24 school year from 93.1% in 2019-20, according to the CDC. Florida dropped to 88.1% from 93.5% during the same period.
[Emphasis added.]
As more children in Texas come down with measles and as the outbreak spreads to other states, our HHS Secretary is unwilling to actively and wholeheartedly mobilize the nation to do the one thing that works best: getting vaccinated.
While anti-vaxers routinely minimize the risks of infection and downplay the likelihood and significance of contracting diseases like measles, the reality, as pediatric infectious disease specialist Dr. Rosebush tells us, is far different:
Measles is an infection caused by a virus. Symptoms include fever, cough, runny nose, rash and red eyes (‘pink eye’ or conjunctivitis). The virus can cause additional complications such as ear infections, pneumonia and diarrhea. A serious complication is acute encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain, which can result in permanent brain damage in one of every 1,000 cases. In the U.S., death from neurologic or respiratory complications of measles occurs in one to three of every 1,000 cases. In addition, there is a late-onset complication called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE). This rare, degenerative and fatal central nervous system disease can occur seven to 11 years after primary measles infection, with the highest rates seen in children infected before 2 years of age.
In fact, Dr. Rosebush emphasizes:
Measles is one of the most highly communicable infections. It’s spread through direct contact with infectious droplets or through the air (less common). For persons who are unimmunized and have never been exposed to the virus, the likelihood of contracting measles is 90% in close-contact settings. Patients with measles infection are contagious from four days before the rash through four days after the rash appears.
People typically develop symptoms such as fever, runny nose, red and watery eyes and a cough eight to 12 days after their initial exposure to the virus. The characteristic measles rash appears three to five days after the first symptoms.
In response to these important questions (How effective is the measles vaccine? Can I get the measles if I’ve been vaccinated?), Dr. Rosebush answers:
Greater than 99% of people who receive two doses (with the first dose administered on or after 12 months of age) of MMR vaccine, per U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations, develop immunity to measles. Given the effectiveness of the vaccine, measles circulates at much lower rates in the community and the disease is much less common than it used to be. Before the measles vaccination program began in the 1960s in the U.S., there were 3 million to 4 million cases of measles and 400 to 500 resulting deaths every year. In 2023, there were 58 reported measles cases, compared to 121 reported measles cases in 2022. While it is possible to contract measles after two doses of the vaccine, it is very uncommon. As with many other viral vaccines, those who contract the virus while vaccinated seem to have more mild symptoms and are less likely to spread the virus to others.
Yet we live in a time when a president, highly suspicious, even seriously antagonistic to medical professionals like Dr. Anthony Fauci, decides to appoint a lawyer with enormous bias to oversee our public health. How do you imagine that will work out?
On March 2, 2025, The New York Times reported:
In a first test of the Trump administration’s ability to respond to an infectious disease emergency, its top health official has shied away from one of the government’s most important tools, experts said on Sunday: loudly and directly encouraging parents to get their children vaccinated.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, was widely criticized as minimizing the measles outbreak in West Texas at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday. In a social media post on Friday, he took a new tack, saying that the outbreak was a ‘top priority’ for his department, Health and Human Services.
He noted various ways in which the department is aiding Texas, among them by funding the state’s immunization program and updating advice that doctors give children vitamin A.
But on neither occasion did Mr. Kennedy himself advise Americans to make sure their children got the shots. On Sunday night, he edged closer in an opinion piece for Fox News.
Mr. Kennedy acknowledged that vaccines ‘protect individual children from measles’ and urged parents to talk with their doctors ‘to understand their options to get the MMR vaccine.’
‘The decision to vaccinate is a personal one,’ he added.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, part of H.H.S., did not send its first substantive notice about the outbreak until Thursday, almost a month after the first cases in Texas were reported.
‘They’ve been shouting with a whisper,’ said Dr. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota and a former health department official. ‘I fear that their hands have been tied,’ he added.
[Emphasis added.]
Two days later, the Times reported there were 20 more cases in West Texas:
The Times wrote:
A measles outbreak that has spread over a swath of West Texas, killing one child, shows no signs of slowing, according to data released on Tuesday by state health officials.
The Texas Department of Health reported that since late January, nearly 160 people have contracted measles — 20 more cases than reported on Friday — and 22 have been hospitalized …
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, on Sunday described vaccination as a personal decision. In a prerecorded interview that aired on Fox News on Tuesday, he said that the federal government was shipping doses of vitamin A to Gaines County, in West Texas, and helping to arrange ambulance rides. H.H.S. previously said officials also were shipping doses of the M.M.R. vaccine, but Mr. Kennedy did not mention vaccination.
Doctors had seen ‘very, very good results,’ Mr. Kennedy claimed, by treating measles cases in Texas with a steroid, budesonide; an antibiotic called clarithromycin; and cod liver oil, which he said had high levels of vitamin A and vitamin D.
While physicians sometimes administer doses of vitamin A to treat children with severe measles cases, cod liver oil is ‘by no means’ an evidence-based treatment, said Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases … Dr. O’Leary added that he had never heard of a physician using the supplement against measles.
In comments that seemed to refer to conventional safeguards against measles, Mr. Kennedy said, ‘We’re going to be honest with the American people for the first time in history about what actually — about all of the tests and all of the studies, about what we know, what we don’t know.
We’re going to tell them, and that’s going to anger some people who want an ideological approach to public health.’
[Emphasis added.]
It used to be that ordinary citizens without medical degrees could rely on a vast brigade of public servants who provided vigilant monitoring of public health threats. Not only were they constantly looking at how we could best defend ourselves from emerging diseases but working hard to figure out how we could most effectively treat them. But agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institute of Health and the Centers for Disease Control are under threat, and those public servants are being fired. Even critically important meetings are being cancelled:
As Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Christina Jewett reported for The New York Times:
A panel of scientific experts that advises the Food and Drug Administration on vaccine policy — and that has been the target of criticism from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — learned on Wednesday that its upcoming meeting to discuss next year’s flu vaccines had been canceled.
The F.D.A. sent an email to members of the panel, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, on Monday afternoon informing them of the cancellation, according to a senior official familiar with the decision. There was no reason given. The panel was to meet on March 13.
One committee member, Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, an outspoken critic of Mr. Kennedy, confirmed the cancellation and warned that it could interfere with or delay production of flu vaccines.
‘It’s a six-month production cycle,’ Dr. Offit said. ‘So one can only assume that we’re not picking flu strains this year.’
The cancellation — and the postponement last week of a similar meeting of scientific advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — plays into fears among scientists who worry that Mr. Kennedy will use his perch to sow doubts about vaccines and interfere with the regulatory process that leads to their approval.
Richard Hughes, a lawyer for some vaccine makers, said the postponement was concerning since the schedule for making the flu vaccine tends to be quite strict. Strains are usually selected in the F.D.A. meeting in February or March using data from the World Health Organization — a relationship the United States walked away from early in the Trump administration. He said manufacturing tends to begin in June.
‘The stakes are incredibly high,’ he said, noting that this year’s flu season has been especially intense.
According to the C.D.C., 86 children and 19,000 adults have died from flu this season. About 430,000 people were hospitalized. In June, a C.D.C. committee tends to decide whether to advise use of the vaccine, which sets in motion insurance and government coverage of the vaccines, Mr. Hughes said.
[Emphasis added.]
In the face of continuing threats like bird flu, measles, influenza, and COVID, we are less prepared than ever thanks to anti-vaxers like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Joe Rogan and the efforts of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE to slash our federal workforce. Together, they constitute a powerful brigade of faux doctors without degrees or expertise, who nonetheless insist on meddling with and endangering the public health.
How about yet another example of the dreadful impacts the vaccine skeptics have had? As Dr. Kristen Panthagani reports on You Can Know Things, “1 in 3 Americans believe COVID vaccines caused thousands of sudden deaths—here’s what the data show.” She writes:
A poll in 2023 revealed roughly one in three Americans believe that ‘COVID-19 vaccines have caused thousands of sudden deaths in otherwise healthy people’ is probably or definitely true. This is one of the major rumors that spread fear of COVID vaccines, with some health departments now forbidden to promote COVID shots or even outright banning them.
The ‘sudden death in athletes’ rumor
The rumor of ‘thousands of deaths’ was partly driven by viral videos of young, healthy athletes collapsing on the field, alleging COVID vaccines were to blame. But further investigation revealed these clips were highly misleading – for many of the clips either 1. the collapsing athletes hadn’t received a COVID shot or 2. the death occurred well before COVID vaccines were even available.
… A new study published in JAMA this week tested this hypothesis formally: was there any increase in sudden cardiac arrest (SCA, heart suddenly stops) or sudden cardiac death (SCD, heart suddenly stops leading to death) in young US athletes after either the introduction of COVID (2020) or COVID vaccines (2021)?
The answer is no. The highest year for both sudden cardiac arrest and death in the study was 2017, and overall the levels did not change much from year to year. There was no giant spike in deaths when the COVID vaccines rolled out in 2021. There was also no giant spike from COVID in 2020.
Dr. Panthagani acknowledges that there are risks from the COVID vaccine, including myocarditis (inflammation of the heart):
The risk is real but thankfully overall rare. It is higher for young men after mRNA vaccines, with 0.036% of males age 12-17 developing the condition after a second mRNA vaccine dose (in comparison, for this same age group this risk of myocarditis after COVID infection is about double that). While post-vaccine myocarditis is milder than other forms of myocarditis and most patients quickly recover, in rare cases there can be long-term complications.
[Emphasis added.]
So what vaccine skeptics don’t acknowledge is the fact that young men have twice the chance of developing myocarditis if they come down with COVID.
On August 22, 2023, the Kaiser Family Foundation released their poll tracking health misinformation. They noted:
Some groups seem to be more susceptible to misinformation than others, with larger shares of Black and Hispanic adults, those with lower levels of educational attainment, and those who identify politically as Republicans or lean that way saying many of the misinformation items examined in the poll are ‘probably true’ or ‘definitely true.’ News sources also matter as those who say they regularly consume news from One America News Network (OANN), Newsmax, and to a smaller extent Fox News, are consistently more likely to believe most of the misinformation items asked about in the survey …
False claims about COVID-19 and vaccines:
The COVID-19 vaccines have caused thousands of deaths in otherwise healthy people.
Ivermectin is an effective treatment for COVID-19.
The COVID-19 vaccines have been proven to cause infertility.
More people have died from the COVID-19 vaccines than have died from the COVID-19 virus.
The measles, mumps, rubella vaccines, also known as MMR, have been proven to cause autism in children.
Now, considering the current threat, and the crucial role of Health and Human Services, let’s focus for a moment on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s controversial history with the measles vaccine. Kennedy Jr. has vehemently questioned reporting that he helped exacerbate a 2019 measles epidemic in American Samoa. But here is an excerpt from David Corn’s reporting for Mother Jones:
Appearing in Shot in the Arm, a 2023 documentary about vaccine opposition, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was asked about the deadly measles outbreak that occurred in Samoa in 2019 and claimed the lives of 83 people, mostly children. Kennedy, a leading anti-vaxxer who had visited the Pacific island nation a few months before the outbreak, replied, ‘I’m aware there was a measles outbreak … I had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa. I never told anybody not to vaccinate. I didn’t go there with any reason to do with that.’
Kennedy was being disingenuous, sidestepping his connection to that tragedy. Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit anti-vax outfit he led until becoming a presidential candidate, had helped spread misinformation that contributed to the decline in measles vaccination that preceded the lethal eruption. And during his trip to Samoa, Kennedy had publicly supported leading vaccination opponents there, lending credibility to anti-vaxxers who were succeeding in increasing vaccine hesitation among Samoans. Moreover, in early 2021, Kennedy, in a little-noticed blog post, hailed one of those vaccination foes as a ‘hero.’
In the years prior to 2019, measles had not been a problem in Samoa. But in 2018, two infants died after receiving the measles vaccine. The country quickly placed its vaccine program on hold, as vaccine opponents, including Children’s Health Defense, exploited these deaths to raise questions about the safety of vaccines. The vaccination rate plummeted from in the 60-to-70 percent range to 31 percent. But the problem, it turned out, was not with the vaccine. Two nurses had mistakenly mixed the vaccine with a muscle relaxant. Once this was revealed, CHD did not update social media posts suggesting the vaccine was the culprit. (Those posts are no longer available.)
Meanwhile, when it comes to the MNR measles vaccine, the CDC noted in January 2025:
Most people don’t have any side effects from the vaccine. The side effects that do occur are usually mild, and may include: Soreness, redness, or swelling where the vaccine was given; Fever; Mild rash; Temporary pain and stiffness in the joints; More serious side effects are rare. These may include high fever that could cause a seizure.
Most importantly:
Vaccines, like any medicine, can have side effects. Most people who get MMR vaccine do not have any serious problems with it. Getting MMR vaccine is much safer than getting measles, mumps, or rubella … Almost everyone who has not had the MMR vaccine will get sick if they are exposed to those viruses. The vaccine keeps your child from missing school or childcare; and you from missing work to care for your sick child. Vaccination also limits the size, duration, and spread of outbreaks.
[Emphasis added.]
Hopefully, this guidance isn’t removed as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. strengthens his hold at HHS.
I can’t imagine ever writing a better sentence than Charles Dickens, who opened his “Tale of Two Cities” with these oh-so-very-appropriate words:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Unfortunately, if I were asked which of these words/phrases rang most true, I would have to go with “worst,” “foolishness,” “incredulity,” “darkness,” and “the other way.”
Indeed, we have sick birds and sick kids and RFK Jr. and an administration consumed by greed, prone to stupidity, and obsessed with the desire to exercise unlimited power. They seem determined to turn their back on and banish those American public servants dedicated to wisdom and committed to the light. I suspect because they are part of the problem and not the solution, we will have more sick kids.
