How Trump's Failed 2020 COVID Policy Birthed His 2024 Public Health Nominees

Originally published at: How Trump’s Failed 2020 COVID Policy Birthed His 2024 Public Health Nominees - TPM – Talking Points Memo

It’s not enough to say that Donald Trump is installing a gaggle of opportunists, gadflies and, in some cases, quacks to run public health. Rather, it’s that over time, many of those who Trump has appointed have bent their perspectives in various ways towards ideas that he has favored. On cures, treatments, and public health…

4 Likes

If you don’t care about public health, or indeed, care about “the public” at all, anything goes. Then there’s the “vengeance” and “breaking things” factors.

26 Likes

Here comes the avian flu. JFC

21 Likes

Just in time for the quacks in the new Trump administration to eff it up.

20 Likes

Any health issues will be Biden’s fault while the Trump team stands around with their fingers up their asses and their minds in Arkansas watching people die.

12 Likes

Believe it or not, I’m hoping they mess up some public health crisis to the point where the world sees how incompetent and useless they are. I do hope the Senate stands up and leaves Tulsi Gabbard and Hegseth on the dust bin of history, but I’ve been fooled before. This administration* (stolen from Chas. Pierce) will go down s the worst ever.

16 Likes

"Thou shalt not kill " but…they most certainly will…intentionally.

14 Likes

Heard a fascinating (and scary) podcast yesterday about the latest research into measles. Apparently, kids who get measles have their immune systems greatly weakened against other diseases. In other words, all of this great immunity being acquired “naturally” (by actually having the disease) by children whose parents do not vaccinate can be undermined once the child contracts measles.
It was the Pushkin podcast called “Incubation” - the one released on Nov 26. Great podcast in general, BTW, for the science minded.

18 Likes

In case anyone thinks that the COVID insanity is a thing of the past, I live in a retirement community and an 80 year old woman who is our neighbor contracted COVID about 2 months ago. She holed up in her place and when she finally came out about 3 weeks later, looking near death, she said her naturopath (translation: witch doctor) had made a compound for her with Ivermectin that “saved her life”. When I asked if she had considered taking Paxlovid, she and her husband looked at me like I had asked if she had considered drinking urine. She replied that her naturopath had told her that stuff, like the vaccine, kills more people than COVID.

26 Likes

Yes, and when we have a disease like the flu, or covid, with a high rate of mutation, ‘herd immunity’ is no better than a waving of hands and mumbling of words, The high mortality is just gonna repeat itself over and over again.
But, Donnie will get to trumpet the great economy (and schooling) being accomplished, once the numbers are adjusted to correct for absence due to sickness.
Among people who should know better, advocating ‘herd immunity’ with high mortality and disabling diseases should be chargeable under some kind of depraved indifference.
Hey, the reactionaries are big on personal responsibility and having some skin in the game, so they should get behind that.

17 Likes

Much of the “naturopath” sentiment here is sponsored by LDS folk who have institutionalized their once-upon-a-time justifiable fear and hatred of established authority of any kind outside of their communities, their current political and cultural power notwithstanding. One side of my family avows no confidence in medicine, medical doctors, or hospitals. Mindnumbing.

11 Likes

Lets hear it for ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine !! (plus light up the ass)

9 Likes

30 Likes

Were any of these doctors helping out in their city’s ERs during the initial outbreak?

Dr. Mehmet Oz
Dr. Janette Neshiwat
Dr. Marty Makary
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya

20 Likes

Are there any worthwhile odds on ‘No,’ or is that line going at less than 1:1?

9 Likes

If I was hale and hearty, and still in my 20’s or 30’s when I thought I would never die, I might be down with that. But my wife and I are now in our early 70’s, so please no. We’re in a group that is most susceptible to a public health crisis.

My hope is that HHS is too big a ship to turn around quickly, and there will be enough pushback from the 80,000 employees to stop the worst from happening.

17 Likes

And, for ‘the medical community wants a patented medicine to make more money crowd,’ the profit on ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine is certainly higher than that on the sugar pills used for advertised placebos and the benefit with covid is about the same; so, they can suck eggs.
Plus, with sugar pills, the chance of side effects or, say, accidental overdose is nonexistant.

5 Likes

I think (and mourn) daily about that last line - what our country could have been and what it will now be.

19 Likes

For a diabetic a sugar pill might not be a good idea

10 Likes

This I know is a joke, an exaggeration of what Donald asked someone during a televised briefing. But what gets every time I think about his question, he had to be in briefing when something stuck in his mind about how light can kill germs and viruses. And his brain probably went to a Clorox TV commercial about how their cleaner kills 98% of germs and viruses on contact. And some ultra violet lights will do the same for keeping a “clean room” clean.
Now I may just be a dumb Parks & Rec major but I do know that’s not how this works, how any of this works.


Now for my second rant/observation.
Why in the Hell did people object to wearing masks? Or stay home?
I know some of them must have feared about losing their job. But why did they take it so personally when WE WERE IN A GLOBAL PANDEMIC??? Did they not hear the reporting? Did they not understand that COVID was not just in America?

And lastly how many Egotistical Sons of Bitches do we live among?

13 Likes