The blatent ignoramus - https://newrepublic.com/article/205954/kennedy-maha-anti-vaccine-flu
Viral LoadHow RFK Jr.’s “MAHA” Quackery Is Making Flu Season Worse
Across the country, the staggering costs of vaccine denialism are piling up, to deadly effect.
Last month, cases of flu reached their highest levels in the United States in 25 years. Many hospitals were unprepared for the surge; as emergency wards filled with flu patients, health care workers were left to weather the impacts. As of February 6, there have been at least 22 million reported cases, 280,000 hospitalizations, and 12,000 deaths from flu so far this season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many of those afflicted are being hospitalized due to severe postviral complications, such as pneumonia, antibiotic-resistant staph, and even fatal brain swelling.
And while rates have since subsided, we’re not out of the woods yet, with flu B now on the rise. As epidemiologist Marisa Donnelly said, “We’re still in the thick of the season.”
What explains why recent flu seasons have been so severe? There are several factors.
In this political climate, the first thing that may come to mind is the anti-vaccine policy coming from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services, which has sown confusion around vaccines, leading to lower rates of vaccination for the flu and other diseases—not to mention massive preventable measles outbreaks. But it’s also true that the dominant strain of flu may not be well matched to the existing vaccine.
However, a less discussed aspect behind the high rates of flu and disease severity is a slew of recent research finding that prior Covid-19 infections can damage immune responses—and most Americans have been infected with Covid at least once by now.
“It is clear that at least some of what we’re seeing right now is likely related to that immunity problem from Covid-19 infections,” Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis, and co-author of a study on the subject, told The New Republic.
He’s not the only doctor to connect these dots. According to Dr. Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez, chair of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Texas, El Paso, “Prior Covid-19 infection can lead to persistent immune dysfunction, which may increase susceptibility to subsequent influenza infection and severity of disease.”
Despite this, there is a “pervasive nonchalance” about the surge in flu and spread of other respiratory viruses like Covid among the public, as Al-Aly put it—and RFK Jr.’s moves at HHS are in part to blame, he said. On top of that, hospitals are refusing to adequately staff their wards or protect health care workers from infection, increasing the burden of disease and putting the public at risk. And this week, the FDA decided not to consider Moderna’s application for a new mRNA-based flu vaccine—a decision handed down by the agency’s notorious anti-vaxxer Vinay Prasad.
Overall, under Kennedy’s watch, there has been more chaos, more confusion, and less vaccination—and the consequences have been deadly.
And, the ultimate responsibility? Trump's. He appointed the quack. Knowingly, Trump did it because Kennedy Jr. dropped his Presidential run and endorsed Trump. It had nothing to do with anything else, and ignored Kennedy's incompetence for the job.
Trump only thinks "Trump" and that is a dark area of thought.
(In fairness, the "far, far more" of the headline is an expectation, a guess, without second-source pinning down any numbers. Crabgrass does not even know if, under Kennedy, reliable numbers have been tabulated or released, but in the opening paragraph above, 12,000/month is highlighted. The item did start out stating "record numbers" of flu cases, suggesting it likely the 12,000 deaths resulting from infections also is peaking to a 25 yr high. Also, Noem's goons actions, prior to their publicized invasion of Democrat cities, are not reliably publicized, or believed not to be. How many deaths along the border were caused by Border Patrol, i.e., what their kill rates were in non-public contexts without phone video documentation - make your guess. The guess here is greater cruelty and license taken along the border, and Bovino's consistency is a fact. As a guess, it is presumed that the border area Noem death-rate is in the thousands, However, flu whacked 12,000 in a month, so make your own guesses. Crabgrass stands on the far, far more headline. Prove me wrong.)