The CDC is pulling its Covid-19 vaccine recommendation for healthy children and pregnant women, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced.
— Politico (@politico.com) May 27, 2025 at 2:13 PM
====
A reminder that CDC's COVID-19 vaccine recommendations are directly tied to:
– requirements for what health insurance is required to cover with no out-of-pocket costs
– liability protections expanding access to COVID shots in places like pharmacies
www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-…— Alexander Tin (@alexander-a-tin.bsky.social) May 27, 2025 at 3:16 PM
====
By changing CDC guidelines on who can get the COVID vaccine
It will likely not be covered by insurance and Medicare/Medicaid
So if people want it, they’re going to have to pay for it
Meaning that those who can’t afford it are out of luck— Adam Cohen (@axidentaliberal.bsky.social) May 27, 2025 at 3:19 PM
====
From the CIDRAP Vaccine Integrity Project
Viewpoint: Making key COVID vaccine decisions without input, transparency is a public disservice
Rollout of new rules suggests that federal officials are opposed to open discussion & transparency
www.cidrap.umn.edu/c…— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) May 21, 2025 at 4:00 PM
====
FDA Commissioner Makary: "The day of rubber-stamping covid vaccines for young healthy kids is over. You cannot send us an application for a new covid booster each year with no new updated clinical trial data and expect the FDA to just blindly rubber-stamp it … people don't trust us."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 25, 2025 at 10:43 AM
====
“A CDC report found that among pregnant U.S. women infected with COVID-19, about 1 in 80 deliveries was a stillbirth — the loss of a fetus anytime after 20 weeks. That’s compared with 1 in 155 among uninfected women”
Pregnant women need access to Covid boosters.
TW for photos of Covid placenta:— Kelly (@broadwaybabyto.bsky.social) May 27, 2025 at 5:50 PM
====
“Experts have been closely watching the variant, which is now dominant in China and is on the rise in parts of Asia. Hong Kong authorities say that rates of COVID-19 in the city have climbed to the worst levels they have seen in at least a year…”
— Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social) May 22, 2025 at 9:14 PM
====
WHO adds NB.1.8.1 as SARS-CoV-2 variant under monitoring
TAG-VE said illnesses don't seem more severe and more studies are needed to further assess the risk of antibody escape.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/c…
Photo: NIAID/Flickr cc— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) May 27, 2025 at 2:55 PM
====
CDC posted updated #SARSCoV2 genomic surveillance today (<-that's good)
XFC is now showing growth, ~10% of new cases. It's a recombinant of LP.8.1 (dominant variant) + LF.7 (not the same as XFG, but related).
Unclear if this or the others in the mix (XFG or NB.1.8.1) can/will drive a wave here.— Eric Topol (@erictopol.bsky.social) May 27, 2025 at 6:25 PM
=====
A reminder that South African researchers gave the world crucial early insights into the Beta, Omicron BA.1 and BA.4/5 variants, as well as valuable ongoing work into many other pathogens/outbreaks…
— Adam Kucharski (@adamjkucharski.bsky.social) May 23, 2025 at 1:38 AM
====
Macedo and Lee are cranks.
20% of the population got COVID in 2020, pre-vaccine, and 350k died.
If we’d just thrown caution go the wind, as these crackpots suggest (views that editors should be more skeptical of), the death count would have been MUCH, MUCH higher and hosp. capacity collapsed.— Clean Observer (@hammbear2024.bsky.social) May 26, 2025 at 8:37 AM
===
Quick COVID update from me discussing latest variants and prospects for summer here.
open.substack.com/pub/christin…— Prof Christina Pagel (@chrischirp.bsky.social) May 25, 2025 at 3:15 AM
===
#USDA confirmed 2 more #H5N1 #birdflu infected dairy herds in Idaho, bringing the state's total to 107.
The cumulative national total is 1072 in 17 states.
www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-po…— Helen Branswell 🇨🇦 (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) May 23, 2025 at 12:29 PM
====
This is really stupid and unnecessary: latest on measles outbreak cases in the U.S.
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/…— Rasmus E. Benestad (@brasmus.bsky.social) May 25, 2025 at 12:02 PM
====
'A national scandal': US excess deaths rose even after #pandemic, far outpacing peer countries
The United States has been in a 'protracted health crisis' for decades, the researchers say.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/c…— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) May 23, 2025 at 1:34 PM
On The Road – Mike in Oly – Procession of the Species, Olympia, WA 2/3
Baud
Reprinted from below
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Bloody hell.
I read that downstairs and there’s still steam coming from my ears.
Dese moddafockas…
Ohio Mom
Usually I’m not thrilled about being Medicare age and having several chronic conditions but at least I’ll still be able to get Covid boosters, at least for now. Yay me.
Ohio Mom
Does Kennedy not know that other countries have medical journals? And even ones in languages other English can be translated?
That seems a more basic question than my other, which is, Does he think medical science hasn’t grappled with keeping their publications from becoming press release outlets for pharma?
Medical research may be slowed but it won’t stop. The main effects of this will be destroying the U.S.’s stature as a leader in medical research and advances.
HeleninEire
I’m in Dublin. Getting my COVID booster this afternoon. For free.
I wonder if Kennedy isn’t going to recommend flu shots in the fall.
satby
And the health and economic repercussions will last years, even if we somehow took majorities in Congress and started impeaching and removing these clowns. But since the rest of the world is now aggressively recruiting the scientists and researchers who would have worked here, the slowdown won’t be worldwide.
MagdaInBlack
@HeleninEire: I wonder if we will have any access to vaccines at all, by fall.
Baud
@satby:
I blame future Dems.
Professor Bigfoot
@Ohio Mom: That makes two of us.
Gvg
The Lancet is British in origin and independent. Not published by the US government. I thought it was British, and double checked, didn’t know it was independent with offices in multiple countries. Anyway, I checked, unlike Kennedy who has a responsible position and a staff.
Crackpot.
I do think Trump picking him has to do with Trump living in a TV tabloid culture. To him, the Kennedy name is big and having one work for him is a big ego boost. He doesn’t quite live in the real world.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: I blame white men. 😉
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
You’re doing propaganda wrong.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: But of course— I AM a Democrat, after all… 😂
sab
I always get my medical and scientific advice from midwestern history professors.
Princess
I found a fb post in my memories from I guess 2021 the other day that reported on scientific studies that, in essence, determined that if you’d had Covid or been vaccinated, you’d never get it again, and would not need boosters. That that was false drives a lot of the covid miscalculations happening now. It made people lose confidence in the whole system and what we were being told by medical research.
On the pregnant women question: if insurers think they’ll have to pay more for bad outcomes for unvaccinated pregnant women, won’t they cover the vaccine anyway? This is how single payer health care works btw — big actuarial models on thr level of the whole population.
Professor Bigfoot
@Professor Bigfoot: For anyone wondering— no, I don’t really blame “white men” nearly so much as I blame “whiteness,” the caste and the privileges; and I’m not so far removed from humanity that I don’t understand why white men cling to that caste and that privileges because who the fuck wouldn’t?
Especially when you can’t see how whiteness harms white people, too.
Princess
@Ohio Mom: I didn’t realize those journals were published by the US government. In general, academic journals can move to new institutions and even to new countries. In general agree with you that this won’t stop research — it will slow it and make the US more marginal.
Princess
@Gvg: Thanks for confirming this about the Lancet. I too thought it was British. It’s not going away.
Professor Bigfoot
Does it not seem that this administrations every action seems intended to weaken and harm America?
Vladimir Putin must chuckle himself to sleep every night at the success of his op.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
The only silver lining is that this version is self-destructive as opposed to only destroying other people.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
They hate this country because it’s too successfully liberal for them. Their expectation is for liberals to fail and prove their way right. They’re reduced to making up or exaggerating failures, and selling our their communities to right wing billionaires.
Another Scott
@Princess:
I thought the consensus pretty early on was that since COVID-19 was caused by a corona virus, kinda similar to other corona viruses that we do not have permanent immunity from (e.g. some that cause the “common cold”), that we would almost certainly need quasi-annual boosters.
E.g. TheLancet (from December 2021):
These cranks that 47 put in place are going to do a huge amount of damage to public health and continue to get lots of people killed. And they obviously don’t care, because they are following a deliberate plan to break everything.
Grr…
IANAMD.
FWIW.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
satby
@Baud: and past Dems. As so many do.
Betty Cracker
@Princess: I agree that missteps like that undermined public confidence, which gave an undeserved boost to crackpots like Kennedy. As far as I know, no one except Trump and his henchmen misled people on purpose.
It’s a novel virus, and mutations are unpredictable. I believe Dr. Fauci, Biden, et al., shared results and projections in good faith. But possibly they overestimated the public’s ability to process complex information and deal with setbacks.
That gave the lying charlatans in the wellness business an opportunity to team up with the lying narcissist ex-prez to regain power. And here we are.
satby
@Gvg: he picked RFK the lesser for that a bit; but primarily to have someone who won’t contradict him when he suggests BRILLIANT health innovations like strong lights or bleach to kill viruses internally.
Baud
@Princess:
Actual science is a slow process.
But I’m not going to blame us for the loss of faith. Trump and Republicans lie all the time without causing people to lose faith in them. The problem is that there are too many people in our society that are looking for a reason to run away from us, for largely social or cultural reasons, so they seize on whatever is available to them to justify what their heart and soul want them to do.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: All of this.
For every man bent on murder-suicide, we’d prefer he’d simply go to suicide.
Heh, and that’s exactly where we are, innit?
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
Or at least start there.
Professor Bigfoot
Oh, they care all right, because this is their intended result.
The more of us that are dead, the more that they can take for themselves.
They will kill us all rather than accept some one “lesser” to be “over them.”
rikyrah
Thank you, AL for the info
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: I believe they hate this country because of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting RIghts Act of 1965.
I believe they would absolutely LOVE a return to Jim Crow; and it seems they’re laying the groundwork for that right now.
Of course, given the influence that apartheid era soutpiel has with this administration, it is to be expected.
David_C
I wrote this on another platform (edited a bit):
The easiest prediction to make is that HHS would go hard against vaccines, and in this last week they have shown their true colors. Besides the biology and public health aspects, there are legal aspects of this sudden decision to drop the Covid vaccine recommendations for some (and undoubtedly to be followed by more restrictions). This decision came without the advice of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which provides outside, expert advice to the CDC. The announcement on X was not attended by anyone from CDC, but by RFK, Jr. (a lawyer), Makary (a surgeon) and Bhattacharya (a health economist), and there was a conspicuous lack of transparency.
Oh wait, famous blogger Vinay Prasad (and HemeOnc) and Makary* published a paper in the NEJM minimizing the efficacy of the Covid vaccine among health individuals. The best spin to put on this is that they assume that everyone is pretty much already immune to Covid and don’t need a vaccine, but there’s the sneaking suspicion that they are relying on a “survival of the fittest” strategy, since this group was long known (and therefore hired for) for their efforts to minimize the deleterious effects of Covid infection (and maximize the side effects of vaccinations). They compare the recommendations in the US to other countries, without noting that these other countries have more robust health care systems. HHS is already blaming people for things like diabetes and turn a blind eye to the socioeconomic factors that contribute to life expectancy in the US.
*Who famously predicted in April 2021 that the US would soon reach herd immunity.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud:
QFT.
New Deal democrat
Biobot showed wastewater concentrations of COVID declining again both nationally and in all regions but the West in the week of May 17., to a level lower than at any time since spring 2022. The CDC showed a very slight national decline to 1.63 particles per mL, vs. the all time low of 1.13, with increases in the South and West.
The preliminary death count for the week of May 17, at 94, was the lowest ever except for one week a year ago. The last final count, for the week of April 26, was 306, a new all-time low. This also brought the 52 week death count down another 100 to 35,800, also an all time low.
The latest variant update, from May 24, shows no significant change. All emerging variants continue to be from previous Omicron lineages.
JP Weiland expects a summer wave to start soon. There are some concerning outbreaks in Asia, but his forecast is very preliminary for the US.
The measles update from the CDC showed an increase of 45 to 1,046. 2/3’s of those have been in young children’s and teens. 12% of the cases have required hospitalization. 96% have been unvaccinated. The outbreak continues to be centered on West Texas with 729 cases. Of concern, the Texas Department of Health says in the past reporting period there has only been 1 new case there. That may mean that the outbreak is gaining footing in other States.Which, sadly, I have been expecting if it is true. And all completely unnecessary.
Like everybody else, I am disgusted but unsurprised that RFK Jr et al turn out not to be in favor of “choice” at all, but rather in favor of prohibiting as many people as possible from receiving them.
MazeDancer
GOP Health Goal: “Death to America!”
Of course, they’ll all get a COVID booster on the down low.
Have long wondered if there isn’t some expensive nasal blocker out there. Otherwise, how do all these people go in crowds- like to the Oscars or Congress – and not get COVID.
David_C
@Betty Cracker: To expand on the point: the pandemic happened quickly and at first, we were only had our priors about coronaviruses to go with. We were worried about surfaces, but the virus had other plans and airborne transmission was found to be important. We really thought we could achieve herd immunity, but the difference between real scientists and people like Makary is that real scientists will level with the public. This current administration is determined to undermine science.
catclub
I am very surprised Trump is actually expressing anger at Putin. I still think that is less useful than signing a sanctions bill. I think Trump is a coward and will not go very far in offending Putin.
Soprano2
@Baud: So, they’ll establish journals that no one except crackpots will read. I don’t think journals like the Lancet will want their crackpot studies, anyway.
catclub
In spite of which, negotiations with Iran are going nowhere. You would think Iran would appreciate their attitude.
Baud
@catclub:
I hope something real will come of it, but I’m not holding my breath.
Baud
@Soprano2:
I don’t think they’ll try to create new journals. They’ll just publish their studies in MAD magazine.
Another Scott
@Professor Bigfoot: Maybe it’s a difference of emphasis between our positions, but I think their intention is to break everything so that the federal government cannot tell them what to do (regulations, civil protections for those in the bottom 90%, etc.) and cannot collect taxes. They, blinded by their ideology, refuse to think about the real-world consequences and the reasons why we have these offices and programs in the first place.
E.g. Alpha.org – Project 2025 – A Threat to Public Health.
Excerpts:
If thousands, or millions, of people die as a direct result of their actions, hey nobody will know or care because they won’t collect the data, and they were just weak freeloaders anyway, amirite. They’ll play word games, like people dying “with COVID” rather than “of COVID”…
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Soprano2
@Ohio Mom: What he means is that those journals won’t give any space to his crackpot theories, so he thinks they’re all corrupt. These days when conservatives say “corrupt”, they mean “Won’t accept as truth the things I believe are true”.
I listened to a podcast yesterday where they interviewed Anthony Scarimucci. To say he doesn’t understand today’s politics is an understatement. He’s saying things like “The Democrats should welcome Elon Musk back, he used to be on their side, he’s a genius. They should welcome JFK Jr., why did they kick him out, he’s a Kennedy?”. These aren’t exact quotes, but they give you the flavor of what he said. He doesn’t seem to understand that Musk is a white supremacist! He doesn’t seem to know that JFK Jr. is a crackpot that the rest of the family has disowned! I hope no Democrats are listening to his “advice”.
catclub
How does that compare to deaths from ‘the usual’ flu?
My guess is that flu deaths are around 10k?
ETA: Influenza deaths are also 35k, so Covid has doubled the numbers of illnesses that kill 35k per year.
catclub
I would put it as “They will not blackball the people who disagree with me, hence corrupt.”
New Deal democrat
@catclub:
Yes, that’s it.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: They are doing immeasurable damage to American science.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: This is self defeating an own goal of epic proportions.
Betty Cracker
@David_C: You’re right — real scientists level with the public, and that’s what makes them anathema to frauds like Trump, RFK Jr. and the crackpots who are currently ruining the scientific discovery infrastructure that took the work of generations to build. Just maddening.
New Deal democrat
@catclub:
Russian state media mocked T—-p’s statement, saying: “Trump’s message leaves little room for misinterpretation
“Until he posts the opposite tomorrow morning”
https://bsky.app/profile/ronfilipkowski.bsky.social/post/3lq65jn56gc22
Meanwhile Wall Street has been rallying, and is close to making new highs again, on what is ubiquitously being called “the TACO trade,” for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” which has got to be getting under his skin.
Soprano2
@Professor Bigfoot: It isolates us. I think MAGA believes the rest of the world is harmful to us through immigration, wars and trade deals, so they want to withdraw from the world. They seem to believe the U.S. can be a self-contained unit without any input from the outside. I think they’re wrong, but I think this is what they believe.
brantl
I think it’s fair to say that RFK‘s brain worm died for lack of food. I think that’s pretty clear at this point.
Soprano2
@Baud: That would be good, because that’s where they belong.
robtrim
@Professor Bigfoot: They are political luddites – they want to destroy progressive government going back to the Civil War.
Wait till they start going after Black Colleges and Universities!!
Professor Bigfoot
@catclub: at this point, I think his “anger“ is just another cover. Nothing will come from it. He will continue to lick the hand that put him where he is.
Professor Bigfoot
@Another Scott: yours is a much more nuanced view than mine. You are a kinder human than I.
Because I hate the motherfuckers.
prostratedragon
ProPublica has an article on stillbirths among the unvaccinated:
WTFGhost
@HeleninEire: His gripe with flu shots are the same as for Covid-19 shots, but I’m not sure he’s blind enough to cancel flu shots.
@Princess: I followed Covid-19 news early on, and at no time did any respectable scientific person ever say that one infection would be enough, forever. I did see people *say* that, without a source, but usually it was someone engaging in wishful thinking, and not someone who had just interviewed an epidemiologist (for example). If news organizations presented other information to you, they were incompetent to do so, especially by 2021, when there were plenty of competent people, on the record, saying otherwise.
@Another Scott: I had heard similar things – I wasn’t sure I remembered “because it was a coronavirus” or if I’d heard “because it was a respiratory virus” or what.
@Betty Cracker: A lot of what people say are missteps, weren’t missteps by science. For example, advice on masks changed with knowledge – anyone who kept up could see the progression, but anyone who hadn’t could be confused.
At first, they thought you couldn’t caught it unless you were close enough to someone, who had a fever. At this point, the plans are to do fever checks, before crowding people, so, masking doesn’t make any sense. “Save masks for health care providers!” made sense.
Then, they discovered you could shed the virus, before showing symptoms. For many illnesses, you must show symptoms before you’re shedding. Well, that meant fever checks aren’t good enough – you should wear a cloth mask to prevent droplet spread, but still, reserve N95s and the like for health care providers.
It was only much later that it was determined that, yes, Covid-19 has airborne capabilities, and high quality filter masks are needed for safety.
For TV news especially, it’s probably hard to convey things changing so frequently, without the explanations for the changes sounding lame, but if you read enough to understand the public health implications of each step, you realize it was a more-or-less necessary progression.
It’s important to remember how much of Covid-19 coverage was driven by liars, who would decry changing recommendations without bothering to note that the new recommendations are based upon changing knowledge. For example, everyone I heard on the Republican side insisted that one infection was going to be enough to provide immunity – I never heard it from anyone competent, or on the Dem side. Et voila, as the French might say – people thought one infection was protection, and then, the lies were stripped away, and it seemed like things had changed.
The Audacity of Krope
ISWYDT
schrodingers_cat
In other news, we have stopped issuing visas to foreign students. This is not a sign of a confident country.
WTFGhost
@Professor Bigfoot: Old joke. Man catches his wife cheating. Her lover escapes, and the husband angrily points the gun at his own head. His wife starts laughing, and he says “stop laughing, bitch! you’re next!”
narya
@WTFGhost: And the challenges around masks included shortages, some exacerbated by Kushner and his pals who wanted to make bank on supplies. Part of the reason for staying home was because PPE was in short supply and needed to be reserved for medical staff as much as possible.
Professor Bigfoot
@Soprano2: in a sense, they are correct. As a continental power, everything the US needs can be found in the US.
The problem is that our entire economy is linked to the global economy and the upheaval necessary to make us entirely self-sufficient would basically destroy this economy and maybe the nation as well
That is to say it’s too late for that shit. And those dumb sons of bitches are too stupid to understand this.
Soprano2
@WTFGhost: Laypeople want certainty, which is something science can never provide. My BIL thinks all the tests are just a conspiracy by the doctors to make more money, rather than an attempt to figure out ways to help him feel better. Lots of people think this way, and Covid was a great example of constantly changing advice because it was a novel virus! It was an excuse for some people who already didn’t trust doctors to say “See, I told you they don’t know what they’re talking about!”
The Audacity of Krope
@schrodingers_cat: I suppose Harvard will just have to offer those seats to inbred Cleti now, who have been discriminated against in university admissions for too long…
Professor Bigfoot
@robtrim: and that makes it indistinguishable from a desire for full on white supremacy as in Jim Crow or apartheid.
They are driven by racial grievance and have been upset since the end of the Enslavement.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: No it’s not, it’s a sign of what I posted earlier, a country that wants to turn in on itself. That’s what MAGA wants, to shut out all the rest of the world because they think we don’t need them. MAGA has made the rest of the world their enemy to kick down on.
Soprano2
@Professor Bigfoot: Plus, I don’t think they understand how expensive that would be. Most of our clothes and shoes come from overseas, and making it all here again would be prohibitively expensive.
UncleEbeneezer
@Professor Bigfoot: I’m so much more to the left of you that I blame Zionists!
lowtechcyclist
@WTFGhost:
Of course, part of the problem for much of 2020 was that there weren’t enough N95s to give an adequate supply for the health care providers, let alone everyone else that wanted one. So reserving them for the health care providers was the right thing to do at the time.
Cloth masks, IIRC, didn’t give much if any protection to the wearer, but they did limit how much of the virus someone infected with Covid would be sharing with others who might be inhaling some of the air that they were exhaling. So they made a difference as long as almost everyone was wearing them. It was the best we could do at the time.
UncleEbeneezer
One of my tennis students (a white lady in her 60’s) told me she was worried that her husband has shingles. My response was “Oh no…is he vaccinated?” and she said “we aren’t Vaccine People.” I said “well good luck with that” and laughed.
narya
@UncleEbeneezer: Srsly. It’s hard to have a whole lot of sympathy when someone gets to the “find out” stage, after “doing their own research.” I TRY, mind you, because I’ve set myself the task of kindness and compassion, but, DAMN.
The Audacity of Krope
@narya: When people are gleefully and maliciously tearing away at the social fabric, it’s okay to root against them.
WTFGhost
@MazeDancer: Really good air movement can reduce the risk of Covid-19, especially in places where you know it’s going to be (e.g., hospitals). There are also ways to get a sense of the relative risk, given how quickly or slowly new cases are occurring; combine the two strategies, and mask when you can’t, and you won’t catch it too often. With sufficient vaccine and booster, plus Paxlovid, an infection might not be changing people’s lives as much.
@New Deal democrat: Oh, there’s one saying that Trump’s reaction is emotional overload. I was pleased, over at Mahablog, to see I wasn’t the only person who heard that, and thought “they’re calling him a hysterical woman.”
Belafon
@Princess: Actuarial tables don’t take into account that some women should be punished for choosing the wrong gender at birth and committing sins like talking when they shouldn’t and getting pregnant when they could have just stopped it with their minds. /sarc
mali muso
@schrodingers_cat: Yes, they have “paused” scheduling new visa appointments for students until they can put in place a new “social media vetting” regime. As if these visa holders were not already the most scrutinized group to begin with. International students bring about $43 BILLION dollars to the US economy, it’s one of our largest “exports”. So more destruction of the economy as well as our ability to attract the best and the brightest.
I’m spending my morning crafting a message to our incoming international students to try to see who may be able to come in the fall (already got their visa) and who is likely to be left out.
tobie
I wasn’t sure how long the COVID booster would be available for people under 65, so I got mine last Friday. It was 3 months since my last booster. My doctor said it was safe to get the booster after 3 months according to the CDC’s own reports prior to the arrival of the current admin. I wonder if this will be my last free booster for quite some time. And I wonder if there will be flu shots in the fall.
tobie
@mali muso:
This sounds wise.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
I expect the U.S. could make the transition to self-sufficiency, but it would take a generation or more to get there, and that’s assuming we stayed on the same page that long. (Ha!)
But it’s a silly goal. There’s a reason why we outsource so much work: people are willing to do the work for way less money elsewhere in the world. Who here wants to make a third-world income? Even poor Americans expect a higher standard of living than that. We’re able to outsource so much, and have immigrants do the crap labor that can’t be outsourced (anyone want to work in a chicken processing plant? A big THANK YOU to all those immigrants willing to do work like that in order to give their children a better life here!), because we’re in a privileged position at the top of the economic heap.
The U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency, so the rest of the world needs lots of dollars, and will sell us more stuff than we sell them in order to get more dollars. We only have a trade deficit if you don’t realize that dollars are our major export, and that being the world’s reserve currency pretty much requires an ongoing trade deficit in actual stuff. They send us stuff, we send them dollars, and we can keep on doing that indefinitely unless the Manchurian Cantaloupe screws it all up.
The Audacity of Krope
Considering that the Republican Party has devolved into a mutual defense pact for toxic assholes, it was inevitable that the health crackpots would eventually join their ranks.
Shame that the actual cause of making food and drugs safer, as opposed to the spurious vibes based cause, will be set back decades.
Now are there any other toxic niches for Republicans to exploit out there? Maybe we can head some of them off by highlighting ideas that will help real problems these folks allude to but don’t seemingly understand. Will work with the squishy middle along these things, at least.
schrodingers_cat
@mali muso: Its a twofer, it hurts international students and universities. A win-win for this inward looking regime
I would say that they hate the US as it currently is and want to remake it in their own image. For that they have to destroy it. Another thing they have in common with the other end of the horseshoe.
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist:
ALL OF THIS.
especially how much it is a silly goal.
UncleEbeneezer
@narya: I feel bad because I like her and she’s paying me, lol. I almost wanted to tell her “well I listen to my buddy who is a former Navy flight doctor, served in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been a practicing physician for 20 years and even studied infectious disease in med school. I trust his judgement and he’s never told me not to get any vaccine.”
lowtechcyclist
@WTFGhost:
Well then, he clearly needs a hysterectomy!
Harrison Wesley
First they came for the children and pregnant women. But because I was not a child or pregnant woman, I asked “Am I going to get a tax cut?”
Central Planning
@Another Scott: No mask guidance?
Who is forcing ICE/CBP jagoffs to wear masks? Don’t they know it’s going to injure their manliness or even kill them?
mali muso
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh it’s definitely a feature, not a bug. And in typical fashion, they are trying to frame it as “those foreigners are taking spots that should go to Americans” instead of “those students are paying full freight and subsidizing tuition for Americans.”
satby
@UncleEbeneezer: A laugh and good luck with that is the perfect response, IMO. Arguing back has been shown to harden opinions, a laughing dismissal is light mockery, which ultimately shakes the absolute confidence that people who hold these stupid views have.
Plus, to be fair, people have the right to reject medical advice. And the right to then suffer the consequences. Consequences teach lessons too, not always to the victim.
lowtechcyclist
@UncleEbeneezer:
“We aren’t Vaccine People.”
I suppose one can be a ‘not a vaccine person’ as long as everyone around you is vaccinated, so you never have to worry about being exposed to the diseases you’re not getting vaccinated for. But as we get more and more ‘not vaccine people’ that protection goes away.
People forget what life was before vaccines. Not many people alive today (including me) are old enough to remember the relief that people felt across this country when the polio vaccine was developed. Most people are too young to have had measles and chicken pox as children almost as a matter of course. (Had both, and my sister had the mumps.) As the memory fades of what life was like without all these vaccines, too many people think we just don’t need them.
Kinda like the way fascism is making a comeback in a world where few remember what living under Hitler or Mussolini was like, or remember the costs of the war we fought to defeat them, and why it was worth that cost.
satby
@mali muso: This was the subject of Paul Krugman’s Substack column this morning.
Jackie
@MagdaInBlack:
My concern, too. Or if available, still free? At this time, covid and flu vaccines are 100% covered by Medicare.
I got my 6 month covid vaccination in March, wondering if it would be my last – thanks to MAHA.
schrodingers_cat
@mali muso: I don’t like the second framing either of international students as cash cows. Its sells the advantages of welcoming international students short.
I. Its not true about many grad students and even some undergrads. There is a sizable number of international students who get fellowships and assistantships which usually involve a full tuition waiver. Most of the grunts doing work in the labs are international students and scholars. Many engineering and hard science departments will be adversely impacted because not enough Americans or GC holders want to go to gradschool.
2. International students are one of the ways we project our soft power. Some become citizens like me and some return home and become informal life long ambassadors for TEAM USA.
jonas
@mali muso: Yep. If international students go away, then enrollment management becomes about recruiting more super-rich American kids to pay full fair in order to subsidize the not-so-rich ones. Basically affirmative action for rich families — just the way Trump wants it.
Harrison Wesley
@UncleEbeneezer: Vaccine People! Wow. Does that bring back memories. Used to be a big fan when I was younger.
suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: I told my doctor yesterday that I’m a vaccine person. LOL. Used that exact turn of phrase. She agreed. Tells you all you need to know.
But look at how people turn themselves into pretzels to justify the things they want to do. Vaccines are harmful, eating only meat is good for you, running destroys your knees. Big ol’ piles of COPE!
UncleEbeneezer
@lowtechcyclist: It’s crazy because I’m only 51 and I remember having a teacher who had a really bad limp because she had polio before the vaccine. If I’m old enough to have known pre-vaccine people, then this lady (who’s at least ten years older than me) definitely is too.
satby
Emerging research indicates that vaccination compliance correlated with lower dementia risk:
“Vaccination is the right thing to do to protect yourself from flu and other infections,” says Paul E. Schulz, M.D., professor of neurology and director of the Neurocognitive Disorders Center at the McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston. “Now there is also the potential fringe benefit of vaccination, which is reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s.”
Matt McIrvin
@David_C: There’s a widespread mistrust of science for being provisional and uncertain, especially on the political right but not exclusively there. The qualifications that scientists give to their every utterance sound to laypeople like the “weasel words” added by someone who is being deceptive so you can’t nail them for lying. In a scientific context, those qualifications are a sign that you’re being careful about how much you know. Outside of science, it’s a sign that you’re hiding something or you don’t know what you’re talking about. Self-help quacks, meanwhile, always speak with prophetic certainty. Plain and categorical statements are taken by most nonscientists (and particularly by the devoutly religious) as an indication that someone is on the level.
Scientists early in the pandemic tried to provide guidance based on limited information. But I think the fact that their knowledge was incomplete made these social barriers all the worse.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: What people don’t understand becomes scary and scientific knowledge has a huge barrier to entry.
Jackie
@WTFGhost:
I will never forget the young woman blaming her father’s death from Covid for “simply believing FFOTUS’s lies about Covid” during the 2020 election campaign.
Professor Bigfoot
This pretty much describes American business practices in general, doesn’t it?
I don’t think I’m alone in that it feels like all of business these days is about the con, the grift, and the scam.
Who among us hasn’t dealt with some “small business” or other that was far more interested in collecting revenue than providing value?
Ken B
@Soprano2: That may be a reason for the announcement that they won’t publish in established journals.
They know the journals won’t print their ‘studies’ and figure it sounds better to say, “We won’t publish in those journals,” in advance than to be rejected by them.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@lowtechcyclist: Also like what dentistry was like before fluoride was in the drinking water
suzanne
Seen on X:
Remember that this is all about inchoate grievance against anyone who dared to think that being educated is good.
Soprano2
I think that’s a pretty good summation of the MAGA attitude.
Matt McIrvin
@suzanne: A lot of the LGBT people I know are poor or struggling, but they’ll always be “privileged elites” to these people, along with every ethnic minority.
Matt McIrvin
@Jackie: My aunt died of COVID. I don’t know if she was vaccinated. But based on her general politics, let’s just say I can guess.
I had a cousin who got very ill and was on a respirator for a while– in her case, she had the bad luck to catch it just a couple of weeks before she would have been able to get the vaccine.
I doubt the lack of access to boosters is going to be as obviously catastrophic as some here are predicting, because most normies not plugged into the online COVID discourse weren’t getting the boosters anyway, and impacts have been decreasing generally with every wave. But *I* was getting them and of course this move by the administration takes away our advantage of being informed and not foolish, which may be the point.
What really bothers me, though, is that children won’t be able to get the vaccine at all, and they’re more susceptible to ME/CFS from a bad case.
mali muso
@schrodingers_cat:
Point taken. I certainly don’t see them as cash cows (my husband was one of them and on scholarship) but it seems like framing things in terms of economics is often the only way to get through to philistines who don’t care about soft power, diversity or the vibrancy of perspectives they bring.
Princess
@Another Scott: by December 2021 maybe — omicron was raging then. But in spring we were definitely not given the message that vaccination would not prevent infection and that we’d need frequent boosters — although in retrospect it was obvious for the reasons you describe.
Matt McIrvin
@Princess: The initial COVID shot turned out to be far more effective against infection by the original “wild-type” virus, and by the Alpha variant, than anyone had dared hope. I think the Biden administration seized in that as a political lifeline: they could actually beat this thing by just telling people to get vaccinated and get your life back. It was a powerful, effective message–until Omicron blew it to hell. Against Omicron, the vaccine was only as effective as its developers had promised in the first place, as protection against severe illness. You’d probably still get COVID unless you strictly quarantined.
That change was the opening for all the claims that “the scientists lied” and “Biden lied”. Because scientific knowledge has to be unchanging, eternal dogma or it’s just bullshit.
Matt McIrvin
I don’t think it’s too great an exaggeration to say that the mutation that turned the original COVID virus into the Omicron variant destroyed the American republic.
sab
@Dorothy A. Winsor: My office manager laughs about that. Her kids’ friends all drink bottled water and have cavities. Her kids drink tap water and don’t have cavities.
NightSky
@Soprano2:
They seem more and more like the Taliban every day.
Matt McIrvin
@sab: I drank fluoridated tap water and brushed with fluoride toothpaste through my childhood and had a mouth full of cavities. So these things aren’t completely simple.
Now… I didn’t bother flossing, I ate sugary junk food, and I did go to the dentist but professional fluoride treatments were not nearly as good in those days. So all those things probably contributed. But I suspect I had genetics for bad teeth too, since many kids who behaved the same way had no great trouble.
Matt McIrvin
@Ken B: The idea that mainstream professional science is all corrupt is foundational for cranks, particularly right-wing ones. It’s a battle for control of learned reality.
A related idea is that engineers don’t need science any more, they can just wing it themselves and technology will march onward. Usually it’s based on a complaint that scientists won’t validate some hobbyhorse idea they have.
NightSky
@lowtechcyclist:
My mom told me I missed more than half the days in kindergarten bc of measles (2 kinds), mumps, scarlet fever, whooping cough in the 1950s before most vaccines. Luckily, I was basically healthy and survived that onslaught of viruses. Didn’t get chickenpox till our daughter brought it home from her kindergarten about 1 year before that vaccine became available. We knew people who got polio. I remember the great relief when the first polio vax became available and we kids were finally allowed to use the local HS (public) swimming pool in summer. So many people are open to wild, irrational conspiracy theories but resist learning useful knowledge about the world and ourselves.
VFX Lurker
I am also under 65. I once tried to get a booster six months after my autumn COVID shot a few years ago, but CVS refused to give me one.
Did the rules relax for the 2024-2025 vaccine? Where did you get your booster shot?
Randal Sexton
@MazeDancer: Israel has a product called ENOVID – which is a nasal spray that kills virus.
YY_Sima Qian
Glad to see the resumption of this series, A.L.!
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: Omicron shattered the machinations & designs of men everywhere. The PRC government thought it could keep COVID-19 at bay indefinitely, & it did, until Omicron (specifically the even more transmissive sub-variants that emerged in mid-2022).
brantl
@Ohio Mom: isn’t the JAMA the journal of the American Medical Association and isn’t it published by the American medical Association? It’s right in the name? And I will bet they tell Rat fucker Junior to pound sand up his ass with a sharp knife when he tells him they can’t publish anymore.
Our mistake was the first thing we should’ve made a vaccine for was stupid and then made all the other ones when people were smart enough to take them.
schrodingers_cat
@VFX Lurker: Do you ever use chalk pastels?
Ruckus
@Ohio Mom:
The main effects of this will be destroying the U.S.’s stature as a leader in medical research and advances.
shitforbrains and his cronies do not care. They are in love with money, and the more they have the happier they think they will be. But this is an almost a fallacy of epic proportions. I don’t even think shitforbrains can count any more, not with his fingers nor toes and very likely not with any of that hot air in his head. We all age out at some point – his is long ago. That does not mean we are gone, it means that just living is about all the work we can do. 9 to 5? Nope. Gardening? Not likely. Washing clothes? shitforbrains has extremely likely gotten clothes smelly and useless, but clean? Not at all likely. The list goes on and on. And think about it, this clown – OK can’t be a clown, he’s not anywhere within miles and miles of even close to that good. Or funny. Of course none of us are laughing either. I’ve been here over 3/4 of a century and this is the worst of the worst when it comes to presidents or even supermarket box boys. (For you not all that old folks, a box boy is the teen that puts your purchases in the shopping bags) Haven’t seen one in a supermarket in decades.
Bill Arnold
@David_C:
iMO RFKJr, Prasad , Makary and a couple of others should be in the control group for an experimental trial of the effectiveness of parachutes for reducing the mortality rate of falls from aircraft at 3000 meters altitude. Science!
They are mass killers, seeking a much higher body count.
Bill Arnold
@Baud:
At least there will be plenty of unemployed/underemployed world-class medical scientists with spare time to do careful peer review.
(/s)
Matt McIrvin
Anyway, we clearly have found our generation’s Trofim Lysenko, and since he’s American I guess it’s no surprise that rather than a hero of the proletariat he is a Kennedy.
VFX Lurker
I think I did in my highschool art class, which had a wonderful teacher who made sure we tried as many media as possible. I might also have used them in college.
I did not use them past school, though I remember needing to spray the finished work with “fixative” to prevent smearing. Same for anything drawn in charcoal — use spray fixative to coat the final work.
Matt McIrvin
@VFX Lurker: My daughter says one of her professors told her hair spray works better.
Ruckus
@UncleEbeneezer:
The polio vaccine came out when I was a kid. I went to school with a girl that had polio. I don’t know where but I think leg(s) because she used crutches. She walked into our 50th HS reunion without the crutches and I am amazed that she didn’t flip everyone off and walk out. She had no or at least few friends because we all saw what polio did to humans, and we all had at least the opportunity to catch it. I had adult neighbors with it. Most of us in my age range – old fart, know what polio looked like – and what the results look like. Currently have a neighbor my age who had it and she lives in a wheelchair. One leg is about 5-6 inches shorter. I’ve written this here before, likely the last time we had a discussion like this.
Medicine has come a very, very long way in the lifetime of almost all of us, even if you never saw things like the polio or smallpox outbreaks. Medicine has taken HUGE leaps in my lifetime. Even if some doctors are complete and utter assholes. (Had one of those at a VA clinic – once. I’m amazed that he didn’t get the shit kicked out of him by at least one vet. Or 3 or 4…..which might have included kind, little ole me! If I recall I did lodge a complaint -and never saw him again.) BTW, shitforbrains has said he wants to screw over vets by getting rid of the VA. It is of course a waste of money. Just ask him. OK he didn’t say screw over but that’s exactly what will happen. And I doubt he has a micron of a clue. Of course one can say that about any subject involving his majesty – shitforbrains.
Bill Arnold
@brantl:
Pretty sure he was saying that he would(might) order HHS medical scientists to not publish in those top journals. In addition to pre-submission review for ideological correctness.
schrodingers_cat
@Bill Arnold: Too many Indian American nutjobs, I bet they are bhakts as well. Bhattacharya definitely is.
schrodingers_cat
@VFX Lurker: Do you use any blending tools?
OT I colored some Koi. And more Koi
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Not if you want the stuff to last. It damages the paper long term.
dnfree
@lowtechcyclist: We had high-quality cloth masks (several layers of different fabrics, snug-fitting). And the only time we caught Covid was when we went to an event where we didn’t mask. These masks even have a special pocket to add a filter when we go to especially crowded events.
We’re still wearing those masks at the grocery store etc.. So our anecdata is that cloth masks work pretty well if they’re good quality and fit well.
VFX Lurker
I’m all digital now (iPad Pencil; XP Pen display/tablet). I think the most blending I ever did when I used traditional media might have been with a kneaded eraser.
VFX Lurker
I remember using hair spray! In my case, it was because hair spray cost less than fixative.