Why control disease anyway?
The chaotic dismantling continues.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dissolved into further turmoil on Thursday when guards escorted three top officials [out of] the agency’s Atlanta headquarters during the continuing standoff with the Trump administration over whether the C.D.C. director would keep her job.
The White House said late Wednesday that Dr. Monarez, an infectious disease researcher who was sworn in less than a month ago, had been dismissed. But her lawyers, who said she had chosen “protecting the public over serving a political agenda,” insisted that she remained C.D.C. director until President Trump fired her personally.
The dispute now appears to be in the hands of Mr. Trump, who has not weighed in publicly. A spokesman for the White House did not respond to an inquiry about whether the president would fire Dr. Monarez.
So he’s a cat playing with a mouse. Cute.
The three officials who were ushered out the door by security on Thursday had resigned en masse. C.D.C. employees had planned to gather at agency headquarters in Atlanta at 2:45 p.m. for a “clap-out” send-off to honor them, but they were rushed out before it could happen.
The officials had decades of government experience and all influenced vaccine policy. Dr. Debra Houry, the C.D.C.’s chief medical officer, coordinated the various arms of the agency. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis ran the center that oversees respiratory illnesses and issues vaccine recommendations. Dr. Daniel Jernigan supervised the center that oversees emerging diseases and vaccine safety.
A fourth official, Dr. Jennifer Layden, who resigned a day earlier, led the office of public health data.
So it’s only respiratory illnesses and vaccine recommendations and emerging diseases and vaccine safety and public health data. So that’s fine. We don’t need any of that stuff.
Jumping to the end –
Two experts in vaccine policy left the agency in June, saying they feared for the lives of Americans if Mr. Kennedy were to continue unchecked.
Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos oversaw the Covid vaccine working group before she resigned in June. “It’s heartbreaking to witness such important, nuanced work being led by someone who has shown publicly at the A.C.I.P. meeting that he not only doesn’t understand the data, but is also dedicated to baseless conspiracy theories,” she said about Dr. Levi on Thursday.
He doesn’t understand the data because he has zero education or qualification in the field. None. He’s a random opinionated ignoramus who should not have any job that requires medical expertise, let alone this one.
This is particularly annoying to me, as I’m still struggling from the effects of a very nasty GI virus which brought me down on Monday. I’ve been as careful as I possibly can be not to pass it on, but I would willingly make an exception in the case of certain members of the US government/executive branch in particular.
Perhaps a dose of this is exactly what they need as a reminder of exactly how horrible diseases can be.
It started with chest pain Monday lunchtime, which subsided after an alarming and seriously unpleasant half an hour; but which returned immediately after dinner, causing me to expel my entire stomach contents then, and every two hours for the next eighteen hours; then every four hours for the next twelve hours, then sporadically until I finally stopped vomiting last night. It was so bad that my GI tract shut down, and my GP prescribed me some medication to get everything moving again. I was delirious with pain, and hallucinating.
And that’s not even a lethal disease (although it’s close with me – I’ve been suffering cardiac symptoms as a direct response to my inability to take in any useful calories, but expending loads, for the best part of three days).
Hey, I’m reasonable – if they succumb, I’ll happily administer the enema! (◠‿◕)
Good god, dalling, that’s HORRIBLE. All the sympathy.
I hope, tigger, that things go very well for you, and that you recover well.
I suspect that behind RFK’s and some other policies of this regime is the spectre of eugenics, that now haunts the right. The ‘weak’ who succumb to readily preventible diseases (which are not being prevented now) deserve to die, leaving only the genetically ‘strong’, who supposedly triumph over any illness they happen to get, as survivors. Poverty (together with the lack of sensible health services) has nothing to do with any susceptibility to illness & disease, is also the result of bad genes, and is therefore the individual’s fault.
So much for the germ theory of disease.
Thanks for the sympathy, people. This evening I’m feeling much better,and I’ve suddenly started to feel hungry – quite an improvement, considering how I haven’t been able to face food for four days and had to force myself to drink sips of clear broth yesterday (even after the vomiting had stopped hours before) just so I wouldn’t starve.
We need vaccines. The benefits to humanity are incalculable, but just off the top of my head I can think of several.
Massive reduction in suffering. If I had been vaccinated against that virus, I wouldn’t even have known it was circulating in my vicinity.
Productivity. I would have stayed well all week and been able to do the things I had planned to do, and my daughter wouldn’t have had to take over my chores in addition to her own, plus taking care of me, and driving around delivering samples and collecting medication.
Population stability. Women whose children are vaccinated have fewer children, because they don’t worry about them dying young. Just look at graveyards from a century ago and earlier; the death toll and accompanying misery were terrible. Small families will become the norm once everyone can have a reasonable expectation that all their children will reach adulthood.
Education. Vaccinated children can learn better, because they don’t lose time off school to nasty diseases, and don’t have long periods of convalescence where their brains aren’t working at 100%. This makes the lives of teachers and other students better, too, because the teacher doesn’t have a significant amount of time and attention taken from the rest of the class by struggling children.
Healthcare management. Vaccine-preventable diseases are expensive and very labour intensive to treat. A vaccinated child won’t need those resources, freeing them up for the treatment of disorders for which we currently have no prevention.