Trump’s plague czar
If you’re feeling this morning like Alan Bates at the end of King of Hearts, join the club.
There is a nugget of what I’m looking for in the terms below, but none of them quite captures it. I’m not the only one looking for a word to properly describe government by the insane.
plutocracy? : government by the wealthy
kakistocracy? : government by the worst people
oligarchy? : government by the few
kleptocracy? : government by those who seek chiefly status and personal gain at the expense of the governed
autocracy? : the authority or rule of an autocrat (such as a monarch) ruling with unlimited authority
idiocracy? : a society governed or populated by idiots
When pre-MAGA conservatives like Grover Norquist mused about rolling back the 20th century to the McKinley era, they imagined rule by Gilded Age plutocrats. I don’t think they considered it might mean a return to an age of crippling and disfiguring disease.
But with the Second Coming of Trump, that’s just what they may get (New York Times):
The lawyer helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pick federal health officials for the incoming Trump administration has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, which for decades has protected millions of people from a virus that can cause paralysis or death.
That campaign is just one front in the war that the lawyer, Aaron Siri, is waging against vaccines of all kinds.
Mr. Siri has also filed a petition seeking to pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines; challenged, and in some cases quashed, Covid vaccine mandates around the country; sued federal agencies for the disclosure of records related to vaccine approvals; and subjected prominent vaccine scientists to grueling videotaped depositions.
WTF? Remember polio? A friend who’s walked with a limp since childhood does. At least she survived hers.
We covered this ground a few weeks ago, but let’s hit it again with this quote from Star Trek graphic designer Michael Okuda:
Go to an old cemetery. See all the baby graves from before the 1950s & 60s? After that, hardly any. That’s when people started vaccinating their children against deadly childhood diseases. If you’re unsure what to do to protect your kids, the answer is literally written in stone.
The vaccine Luddites Trump proposes entrusting with your family’s health are something out of a zombie apocalypse film or 1950s science fiction, maybe A Worm Ate His Brain.
RFK Jr. is now an extinction-level threat to federal public health programs and science-based health policy – Science-Based Medicine, Nov. 4, 2024
Us oldsters grew up with required vaccinations, some at ages so young we don’t remember getting them. What we also don’t remember (like the Great Depression) are the scourges of plagues modern medicine all but eradicated, like smallpox.
Apologies in advance, but this is smallpox:
You may not remember your smallpox vaccination, but Samoans remember when Trump’s proposed plague csar visited their islands:
In the small island country of Samoa, lives have been forever altered by an outbreak of the disease in 2019 that caused at least 83 deaths and 1,867 hospitalisations, mostly of babies and young children. Thousands more fell sick. The preventable illness was able to spread through the small, closely knit population of about 200,000 due to record low vaccination rates – stemming from a medical vaccination error, the Samoan government’s public health mismanagement, and fuelled by anti-vaccination sentiment, including by Donald Trump’s pick to lead the US health department, Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Norquist meant to roll back 20th century. Trump and his acolytes mean to take a wrecking ball to it, and not just around vaccines. Federal deposit insurance? What do you need with that Depression Era protection?
UPDATE: Emily Baumgaertner at the Times reminds readers (gift link) of six childhood scourges we’ve forgotten about because vaccines virtually eliminated them.