Make America Sick Again

Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation.The greatest spreader of vaccine misinformation is the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Teddy Rosenbluth at NYT:

The United States has now recorded more cases of measles in 2026 than in any other year since the virus was declared eliminated in 2000, a grim sign that the country may be headed toward a new era in which the disease regularly sickens thousands every year.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that there have been 2,318 confirmed cases of measles so far this year. The case count toppled the record set last year, when measles infected more than 2,200 Americans and killed two unvaccinated children. More measles cases have been reported in the United States in the last two years than in all the years from 2000 through 2024 combined.

Reversing course on measles would require a nationwide push to improve vaccination rates, a prospect that experts said seemed unlikely under the leadership of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He has halted funding for vaccine hesitancy research, downplayed the risks of measles and spearheaded a hunt for evidence that vaccines are unsafe.

In November, a panel of international experts will meet to determine whether the United States has lost its elimination status, which has long been viewed as one of the country’s crowning public health achievements.

Hafiz Rashid at TNR:

Americans now have to deal with a salmonella outbreak affecting eggs, on top of everything else.

Midwest Poultry Services is recalling close to 1.6 million white shell eggs and brown cage-free shell eggs produced in Texas, the Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday. The eggs in question have the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella enteritidis, and were being sold at Kroger stores in Texas and Louisiana, as well as Brookshire Grocery stores in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, and New Mexico.

The company has stopped distributing eggs produced on its Texas farms, according to the FDA. Salmonella enteritidis is a bacterium that can survive on the shell of an egg or inside it, and could cause symptoms including cramps, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, chills, ⁠fever, and headaches.

The salmonella scare comes after an explosive diarrhea outbreak hit the country from tainted lettuce produced by Taylor Farms. That produce contained cyclospora, a one-celled parasite, and has affected at least 41 states with over 12,000 possible cases. On top of that, the New World screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite, has infested cattle in Texas and spread to other states, causing an estimated $1 billion in damages.

The Trump administration has cut a lot of the programs that prevented these types of outbreaks in the past, and now the country seems to be dealing with one food crisis after another. Elon Musk’s DOGE cut a monitoring program for the screwworm and gutted the team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention responsible for responding to cyclospora outbreaks. Hopefully, the salmonella issue remains isolated, although the administration hasn’t inspired much confidence thus far.

RFK Jr said "We're going to give infectious disease a break for about 8 years"

Cyclospora, Ebola, Hantavirus, measles and salmonella outbreaks later, it's pretty obvious that infectious disease is not going to give *us* a break

And cutting funding for it was a foolish idea pic.twitter.com/mUcSmdK1WQ

— Neil Stone (@DrNeilStone) July 26, 2026

Ebola

 Many posts have discussed COVID and pandemic preparedness.

Helen Regan at CNN:

An international effort is underway to contain an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda that has infected hundreds of people and caused dozens of suspected deaths, as the United States looks to relocate a “small number” of its citizens affected.

On Sunday, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Ebola epidemic a “public health emergency of international concern.” The latest outbreak does not yet meet the criteria of a “pandemic emergency,” but WHO warned the high positivity rate and increasing number of cases and deaths across health zones point toward “a potentially much larger outbreak than what is currently being detected and reported.”

More than 100 suspected deaths have been linked to the outbreak in the DRC, the director-general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), Jean Kaseya, told CNN on Monday.

Trump withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization. 

A little more than a year ago, Emily Mullin reported at Wired:

A research facility within the US National Institutes of Health that is tasked with studying Ebola and other deadly infectious diseases has been instructed by the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to stop research activities.

According to an email viewed by WIRED, the Integrated Research Facility in Frederick, Maryland, was told to stop all experimental work by April 29 at 5 pm. The facility is part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and is located at the US Army base Fort Detrick. It conducts research on the treatment and prevention of infectious diseases that are deemed “high consequence”—those that pose significant risks to public health. It has 168 employees, including federal workers and contractors.

RFK Stacks Vaccine Panel: Judge Smacks Him Down

Judge Brian E. Murphy: ORDER entered. MEMORANDUM AND ORDER on Plaintiffs' Motion for Preliminary Injunction. Plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary relief is GRANTED in part.(i) The Court STAYS the January 2026 Memo revising the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 705. (ii) The Court STAYS the appointments of the thirteen ACIP members appointed on June 11, 2025, September 11, 2025, and January 13, 2026. (iii) The Court further STAYS all votes taken by the now-stayed ACIP.(MBM) (Entered: 03/16/2026)

Federal District Judge Brian Murphy:

“Science,” like law, “is far from a perfect instrument of knowledge.”  Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark 29 (1997).  History is littered with once-universal truths that have since come under scrutiny.  Nevertheless, science is still “the best we have.”  Id.1   

“Procedure is to law what scientific method is to science.”  In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, 21 (1967) (cleaned up).  Although sometimes seemingly tedious, “the procedural rules which have been fashioned from the generality of due process are our best instruments for the distillation and evaluation of essential facts from the conflicting welter of data that life and our adversary methods present.”  Id. 

For our public health, Congress and the Executive have built—over decades—an apparatus that marries the rigors of science with the execution and force of the United States government. One extraordinary product of that apparatus has been the eradication and reduction of certain communicable diseases through the development and use of vaccines.  In the words of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”), “[v]accines are one of the greatest achievements of biomedical science and public health.”2  Since the rise of vaccine development and usage in the early- to mid-1900s, “[t]he United States of America [has been] one of the pioneering nations to conceptualize and implement a robust immunization system that helped the nation tackle major epidemics.”3 

Since its founding in 1964, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (“ACIP”) has aided this endeavor by providing expert guidance on the clinical use of vaccines.4  The Department of Health and Humans Services (“HHS”), which indirectly oversees ACIP, formalized ACIP’s non-partisan, science-backed nature through ACIP’s governance documents.5  And Congress has, in turn, recognized the importance and value of having such independent experts involved in setting our national public health agenda by cementing ACIP’s role in the CDC’s issuance of immunization schedules, which—among other things—determines which vaccines are available to patients through insurers and government healthcare programs.6  This is all to say that there is a method to how these decisions historically have been made—a method scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements. 

Unfortunately, the Government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions.  First, the Government bypassed ACIP to change the immunization schedules, which is both a technical, procedural failure itself and a strong indication of something more fundamentally problematic: an abandonment of the technical knowledge and expertise embodied by that committee.  Second, the Government removed all duly appointed members of ACIP and summarily replaced them without undertaking any of the rigorous screening that had been the hallmark of ACIP member selection for decades. Again, this procedural failure highlights the very reasons why procedures exist and raises a substantial likelihood that the newly appointed ACIP fails to comport with governing law. 

Today, faced with Plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary relief, the Court concludes that Plaintiffs are likely to succeed in showing that the reconstitution of ACIP and the January 2026 changes to the childhood immunization schedule violate the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”).  For the reasons stated below, the Court will grant Plaintiffs’ motion in part.  

Vaccines: Information Gaps and Disinformation

 Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation.The greatest spreader of vaccine misinformation is the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Lauren Weber, Caitlin Gilbert, Dylan Moriarty and Joshua Lott at WP:

The share of U.S. counties where 95 percent or more of kindergartners were vaccinated against measles — the number doctors say is needed to achieve overall protection for the class, known as “herd immunity” — has dropped from 50 percent before the pandemic to 28 percent, according to The Post’s examination of the public records from 44 states and the District of Columbia.

Most of the counties that previously lacked herd immunity for kindergarten classrooms got worse, according to the Post analysis, which in most cases compared the academic years 2018-2019 and 2024-2025.

 ...

Data collection efforts by states are uneven. Public health authorities in some places are flying blind, without adequate data to guide policy decisions, The Post found, because vaccination records have not been uniformly collected. Many school districts are unable to keep track of which kids have received shots.

In Kentucky, state data shows that the measles vaccine rate in Jefferson County, which includes Louisville, was below 60 percent for kindergartners.

Data collection efforts by states are uneven. Public health authorities in some places are flying blind, without adequate data to guide policy decisions, The Post found, because vaccination records have not been uniformly collected. Many school districts are unable to keep track of which kids have received shots.

In Kentucky, state data shows that the measles vaccine rate in Jefferson County, which includes Louisville, was below 60 percent for kindergartners.

“It leaves parents very confused about who they should trust and what information they should rely on,” she said. “And ultimately, often families are choosing not to vaccinate because that feels safer, or it’s easier to not do something out of fear than it is to choose to make a decision.”

The federal vaccine advisory committee Kennedy remade with his appointments voted in December to eliminate a long-standing recommendation for every newborn to receive a hepatitis B shot, which the CDC approved. And more changes could be ahead for the vaccine schedule.

The number of parents questioning vaccine safety in Anita Chandra-Puri’s Chicago pediatric practice has doubled in the last few years, she said. Many of them are highly educated, but they keep coming across misleading information on social media, she said.

Across schools in Chicago, the measles vaccination rate has dropped 6 percent on average since the pandemic.

“They have access to every resource, and they think that they can become the expert at something because they’ve seen it multiple times” on social media, Chandra-Puri said.

 

Malevolence and Incompetence at HHS

Many posts have discussed the chaos at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Apoorva Mandavilli and Sheryl Gay Stolberg at NYT:

The Trump administration on Saturday raced to rescind layoffs of hundreds of scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who were mistakenly fired on Friday night in what appeared to be a substantial procedural lapse.

Among those wrongly dismissed were the top two leaders of the federal measles response team, those working to contain Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, and the team that assembles the C.D.C.’s vaunted scientific journal, The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

After The New York Times reported the dismissals, two federal health officials said on Saturday that many of those workers were being brought back. The officials spoke anonymously in order to disclose internal discussions.

The mistakes rocked an agency already in tumult, and which has been a particular target of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The C.D.C. lost about a third of its staff in April; many were rehired weeks later.

Pandemic Preparedness

Many posts have discussed COVID and pandemic preparedness.

Britt Lampert and Anemone Franz at  The Hill:

The White House’s pandemic preparedness team has quietly withered to a single part-time employee.

Last month, Dr. Gerald Parker, the top White House pandemic preparedness official, resigned as senior director for the National Security Council’s Biosecurity and Pandemic Response directorate. His exit drew needed, though still scant, attention to a troubling reality: the biosecurity office now has no full-time staff, and the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR), which some headlines mistakenly claimed Parker led, has sat empty since late June.

This collapse comes as pandemic preparedness and public health programs are being dismantled, measles outbreaks in undervaccinated communities reach a 33-year high, and H5N1 bird flu spreads through U.S. farms. The White House offices responsible for coordinating the U.S. government’s response to biological threats have effectively vanished.

Congress established OPPR in 2022 with broad bipartisan support to coordinate and strengthen domestic pandemic preparedness and response. It worked alongside the National Security Council’s Global Health Security and Biodefense directorate (renamed Biosecurity and Pandemic Response, or BPR, in 2025), which focused on global threats to national security.

As OPPR’s first (and so far only) director, Maj. Gen. Paul Friedrichs told Congress the office was meant to build on “the foundation laid by multiple administrations over the past twenty years which have recognized that biological threats are increasing in frequency and impact.

 Jennifer Calfas, Josh Dawsey and  Sabrina Siddiqui at WSJ:

As President Trump sat with top donors at his New Jersey golf club this month, he made a private admission: He believed the coronavirus vaccine was one of the biggest accomplishments of his presidency, but he couldn’t bask in it.

Trump told donors at a dinner—who were paying $1 million to be there—that he wished he could talk more about Operation Warp Speed, the government program he initiated that helped expedite the development of the vaccine, attendees said. The guests included Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla, whose company developed one of the first Covid-19 vaccines.

Trump’s private comments illuminate the fraught politics around vaccines that the White House is confronting, which reached a boiling point Wednesday after the administration fired the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other top officials quit their jobs in the midst of disagreements with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policy.

The agency is now facing a crisis. Longtime officials there said Kennedy is ignoring scientific findings to pursue an antivaccine agenda, threatening public health as the calendar gets closer to winter and seasonal outbreaks of Covid and other viruses.

Measles and Misinformation

 Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation.  The greatest spreader of vaccine misinformation is the secretary of Health and Human Services.

 Jonathan Corum and Teddy Rosenbluth at NYT:

Measles continues to spread in West Texas and New Mexico, with more than 250 people infected — many unvaccinated school-age children. Two cases in Oklahoma, for which state officials have not provided a location, have also been linked to these outbreaks. Eleven other states have reported isolated measles cases, typically linked to international travel.

Teddy Rosenbluth at NYT:

In a sweeping interview, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, outlined a strategy for containing the measles outbreak in West Texas that strayed far from mainstream science, relying heavily on fringe theories about prevention and treatments.

He issued a muffled call for vaccinations in the affected community, but said the choice was a personal one. He suggested that measles vaccine injuries were more common than known, contrary to extensive research.

He asserted that natural immunity to measles, gained through infection, somehow also protected against cancer and heart disease, a claim not supported by research.

He cheered on questionable treatments like cod liver oil, and said that local doctors had achieved “almost miraculous and instantaneous” recoveries with steroids or antibiotics.

Tommy Christopher at Mediaite:

A viral clip of that exchange was hit with a “Community Note” on X/Twitter that read “According to the CDC, MMR vaccinations are an effective and safe way to prevent measl

In fact, RFK Jr.’s carefully-worded claim about measles deaths is wildly misleading — there have actually been zero deaths from the vaccine among healthy people — and the deaths that have occurred have been in people for whom vaccination is already not recommended:

There have been no deaths shown to be related to the MMR vaccine in healthy people. There have been rare cases of deaths from vaccine side effects among children who are immune compromised, which is why it is recommended that they don’t get the vaccine.

The Tuesday night clip was the second of a two-part Hannity interview from a Florida Steak ‘N Shake.