Tylenol is Safe - Ignore Trump!

Convicted felon Donald Trump has now begun to dispense medical guidance to the public that is at odds with the scientific consensus. Most well-informed folks don't need to be told to ignore whatever comes out of Trump's mouth.  But for the record-- multiple peer-reviewed studies have shown NO LINK between acetaminophen and Autism.  

Trump is the guy who wondered out loud in a televised briefing about the possibility of treating the coronavirus by "injection inside or almost a cleaning" with disinfectant.  That resulted in medical authorities frantically advising the public against ingesting or injecting disinfectant products.  

This is also the same moron who advised people to take anti-malaria drugs to cure COVID.  His public statements were later proven to have increased deaths in patients treated with it in hospitals around the world, after significant numbers of doctors began prescribing it without scientific evidence. 

Trump has long cast doubt on the advice of medical professionals, and he routinely ignored officials in his first term during the pandemic. He largely refused to wear a mask, even as the federal guidance recommended Americans do so.  He elevated officials who had rosier outlooks on the pandemic and sidelined or pushed out those who warned about his approach. Since returning to office, Mr. Trump has elevated vaccine skeptics, and his administration has defunded vaccine research.   

 

Republicans Who Voted to Confirm RFK Jr. Now Worried He's a Nut Job

GOP Senators are now seeing what anyone with half a brain has known for months: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a dangerous quack who puts Americans' health at risk.  Multiple Republican lawmakers dressed Kennedy down on Thursday during a Senate Finance Committee hearing, expressing concerns with his anti-vaccine policies and his personnel decisions.

Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, an orthopedic surgeon by trade who cast the deciding vote to confirm Kennedy, took a page out of the playbook of Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, saying that he was "concerned" about Kennedy’s stance on vaccines.  “Secretary Kennedy, in your confirmation hearings, you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines,” Barrasso said. “Since then, I’ve grown deeply concerned. The public has seen measles outbreaks, leadership in the National Institutes of Health questioning the use of mRNA vaccines, the recently confirmed director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fired. Americans don't know who to rely on."

Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana (who also was a doctor before being elected to the Senate) voted to confirm Kennedy back in February.  At the time, he said that he was confident that Kennedy would ensure access to vaccines. After the RFK Jr. hearing, Cassidy changed tunes, saying that Kennedy is making it harder for people to get vaccines, breaking a promise that Cassidy said he made before his confirmation vote.  “We’re denying people vaccine,” Cassidy said at the hearing.

Meanwhile, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina also lambasted Kennedy for firing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez just a month after the Senate voted to confirm her.  "I don't see how you go over four weeks from 'a public health expert with unimpeachable scientific credentials, a longtime champion of MAHA values, caring and compassionate, and brilliant microbiologist ' and four weeks later fire her," he said.  

Monarez said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that she was fired because she wouldn't approve the recommendations from a vaccine advisory panel that Kennedy stacked with anti-vax quacks. At the hearing, Kennedy disputed that, ridiculously claiming that Monarez was fired because she told him that she was not a trustworthy person.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune also expressed frustration with Kennedy’s decision to fire Monarez.  “Honestly he’s got to take responsibility," he said. "We confirm these people, we go through a lot of work to get them confirmed.”

Of course, it was always clear that Kennedy—a brain worm-addled, well-known anti-vaxxer—was going to be a disaster for public health.  "GOP senator votes to confirm anti-vaxxer, is shocked by anti-vax policy," Democratic Rep. Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts wrote on X, mocking Barrasso's shock that Kennedy would implement anti-vax policies.

Ultimately, Republicans had the chance to vote against Kennedy’s confirmation but failed. And while it's new for these lawmakers to speak up and criticize Kennedy, their words will mean nothing without action to remove him from his position. 

 

RFK Now Claims He Can Diagnose Mitochondrial Disorders by Sight

HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy declared last week that he knows “what a healthy child is supposed to look like” before revealing that he finds out just by looking at them.

The 71-year-old Kennedy also remarked on how no one in his large family had diabetes, food allergies or autism when he grew up.  “I’m looking at kids as I walk through the airports today, as I walk down the street, I see these kids that are just overburdened by mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation,” said the conspiracy theorist and one of the nation’s biggest vaccine skeptics. “You can tell from their faces, from their body movements and from their lack of social connection.”

Kennedy spouted an endless stream of false figures on children with autism, and  claimed that there are more children today with diabetes and autism than when he was little.  A few months ago, Kennedy also shared similar remarks about seeing children with “mitochondrial challenges” at the airport.

To be specific (and factual), mitochondrial disorders are complex medical conditions caused by defects in the mitochondria, which are the energy-producing parts of cells. These disorders can affect multiple organs, particularly those with high energy needs like the brain and muscles. Detailed medical analysis (not casual observation, Bobby), is how these serious diseases are diagnosed. Kennedy’s “anecdotal claims” have notably been dismissed by critics who point out that  “autism and food allergies were far less frequently diagnosed by medical professionals in decades past,” the San Antonio Current noted.

Critics roasted the unlicensed and un-credentialed Kennedy mercilessly over his walk-by medical diagnosis method:

 

 

 

Chaos at RFK's HHS as Top CDC Leaders Resign

The US’s top public health agency has been plunged into chaos after the Trump administration moved to oust its leader Susan Monarez, sworn in less than a month ago, as her lawyers said she would not resign and that she was being “targeted” for her pro-science stance.

Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was ousted on Wednesday evening, according to a statement from Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that offered no explanation its decision.  “Susan Monarez is no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We thank her for her dedicated service to the American people,” HHS said in an unsigned statement posted to social media. Her lawyers pushed back in a statement, saying she had “neither resigned nor received notification” from the White House of her termination.

Monarez appears to have run afoul of HHS secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr., after she declined to support sweeping changes to vaccine policies, according to reporting from the Washington Post and the New York Times.

“First it was independent advisory committees and career experts. Then it was the dismissal of seasoned scientists. Now, Secretary Kennedy and HHS have set their sights on weaponizing public health for political gain and putting millions of American lives at risk,” her lawyers, Mark Zaid and Abbe David Lowell, said in a statement. “When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted.”

Surgeon General Tripping It Out

Convicted felon Donald Trump’s new pick for surgeon general wrote in a recent book that people should consider using unproven psychedelic drugs as therapy and in a newsletter suggested her use of mushrooms helped her find a romantic partner.

Dr. Casey Means’ recommendation to consider guided psilocybin-assisted therapy is notable because psilocybin is illegal under federal law. It’s listed as a Schedule 1 drug, defined as a substance “with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” Oregon and Colorado have legalized psychedelic therapy, though several cities in Oregon have since banned it.

The surgeon general’s job is to provide Americans with the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce their risk of illness and injury. Means refers to psychedelics in her book as “plant medicine.” She describes how she took mushrooms for the first time around Jan. 1, 2021, after she was inspired by “an internal voice that whispered: it’s time to prepare.” 

In a newsletter she published in October, Means said she had also used psychedelics to help her make “space to find love at 35.” She wrote that she “did plant medicine experiences with trusted guides” to become ready for partnership, punctuating the line with a mushroom emoji.  Gives new meaning to the term "baby boomer" I guess! 

 

Proof That Vaccines and COVID Restrictions Work

Flus return every year. But one type seems to have become extinct. According to WHO data, not a single case of Yamagata influenza B has been confirmed since the spring of 2020.

The Yamagata flu was common every season. The graph above shows its annual peaks in China and the total Northern hemisphere, with thousands of cases identified in 2018 and 2019. But in 2020, it vanished. The most likely explanation is that COVID-19 measures — masking, social distancing, travel restrictions — slowed its spread from person to person, so the strain failed to spread and eventually disappeared.

This is extraordinary proof that it is possible to suppress a virus globally. Various organizations, including the WHO, the European Medicine Agency (EMA), and the Centers of Disease Control (CDC), recommend eliminating this strain from flu vaccines, which would make room for other, more relevant variants, and make them more effective.

Kennedy's Vision for America

Overeducated Kennedy Moron Making Measles Outbreak Even Worse

In a sweeping interview, HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 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.  Kennedy offered conflicting public health messages as he tried to reconcile the government’s longstanding endorsement of vaccines with his own decades-long skepticism.

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

The rapidly worsening measles outbreak, which has largely spread through a Mennonite community in Gaines County, Texas, has so far infected 223 people in Texas and 33 in New Mexico, and killed a child-- the first such death in the United States in 10 years.  Another suspected measles death has been reported in New Mexico, where cases have recently increased in a county that borders Gaines County.

Kennedy said he’d been told that a dozen Mennonite children had been injured by vaccines in Gaines County—a claim that has never been documented.  The MMR vaccine itself has been thoroughly studied and is safe. There is no link to autism, as the secretary has claimed in the past.  Kennedy added to his lies by saying (my comments added), “We don’t know what the risk profile is for these products (actually we do). We need to restore government trust (which has been eroded by anti-vaxx morons like RFK). And we’re going to do that by telling the truth, and by doing rigorous science to understand both safety and efficacy issues (which has already been done).”  The suggestion that vaccines cause autism hasbeen discredited by dozens of scientific studies.

Maga Measles

Vaccine Denier Leads the HHS as Measles and the Bird Flu Ravage the Nation

Vaccine denier Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is reportedly laying off nearly half of the public health workforce, which handles responding to emergencies like the measles outbreak unfolding in Texas.

Employees at the Epidemic Intelligence Service, a vaunted training program run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are among the nearly 1,300 health workers being terminated. The EIS focuses on investigating disease outbreaks both domestically and internationally.

“This will destroy the EIS, which is one of the absolute crown jewels of global public health,” Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, told State news.

Along with firings at the National Institutes of Health, Politico estimates that RFK Jr., Elon Musk, and convicted felon Donald Trump have targeted at least 3,600 federal health workers in a downsizing effort of administrative infrastructure. Most of these initial HHS firings are of workers with the CDC and NIH. "This is absolutely tragic," one CDC employee told NPR. "If we lose these people, we lose important capacity and in a very real sense we lose our CDC future."

"The country is less safe,” former top-ranking CDC official Anne Schuchat told CBS. “These are the deployable assets critical for investigating new threats, from anthrax to Zika.”

Meanwhile, Texas is experiencing one of its worst measles outbreaks in decades. The number of confirmed cases, which started in the state’s under-vaccinated Gaines County, has routinely doubled. The Houston Chronicle reports that Texas health officials fear that 200 to 300 people have already been infected.  “HHS is following the Administration's guidance and taking action to support the President's broader efforts to restructure and streamline the federal government. This is to ensure that HHS better serves the American people at the highest and most efficient standard,” HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon said in a statement to NPR.

The dismantling of public health under the Trump administration continues as the United States also faces an ongoing avian flu outbreak, affecting livestock across the country and resulting in egg shortages and skyrocketing prices.