Measles and Bird Flu Spread as RFK Jr. Shuts Down Science - The Thursday AM Quickie 2/27/25
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Today you'll read about how Donald Trump and bootlicking oligarchs are putting America's free press under threat, how federal workers who voted for Trump are responding to their own unceremonious firings at the hands of Elon Musk, and the massive University of California healthcare strike for workers' rights and patient safety.
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THE BIG NEWS
Key Vaccine Panel Cancels Meeting as Bird Flu and Measles Spread
The anti-vaccine, anti-public health agenda of Donald Trump and his Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is already in effect, although it could take months before people feel the symptoms.
This past flu season was especially intense. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the flu put 430,000 Americans in the hospital this season, and killed 19,000 adults and 86 children. The cheap, effectively, and widely available flu vaccine kept that toll from being worse. But there may not be new flu vaccines ready for next season's variants of the virus. That's because, apparently due to RFK Jr.'s influence, the Food and Drug Administration canceled the upcoming meeting of an expert panel the government relies on to start the six-month production cycle for the flu vaccine. And the federal government is not answering questions about why the meeting was canceled.
Meanwhile in West Texas, an unvaccinated school-age child died due to a measles outbreak that has infected 124 people and counting. "It's not unusual," Kennedy told reporters yesterday. "We have measles outbreaks every year." He's lying. The Texas outbreak, which has since spread to New Mexico, is the state's largest in 30 years, and the child who died is the first measles death since 2015. The Texas outbreak is concentrated in a Gaines County Mennonite community whose members "do not maintain regular contact with the health care system" and have low vaccine uptake.
Kennedy's dismissive comments are "exactly the kind of messaging that is detrimental to public health," Phil Huang, the top public health official in Dallas County, tells the Washington Post. "I mean, we just had a kid die."
And with bird flu spreading throughout the country's dairy farms, prompting the culling of more than 166 million birds, the US Agriculture Department yesterday projected that egg prices will increase more than 40 percent this year. People are already paying more than a dollar per egg in some places, the Associated Press reports. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says she's counting on Elon Musk and his "Department of Government Efficiency to cut hundreds of millions of dollars of wasteful spending" and then somehow use the money to solve the bird flu problem. Part of the plan is to reverse the cage-free trend and put hens back in cages. Trump's team may also cancel a bird flu vaccine that's already in the works. God help us, these people are f*cking morons.