We know that Trump chose RFK Jr. to run the federal public health system as head of the Department of Health and Human Services. we know that Kennedy opposes vaccines. He has said that he would not ban vaccines outright but suggested that he might leave the decision about vaxxing to parents. We also know that senior Republican Mitch McConnell had polio as a child and does not like the idea of making the polio vaccine a matter of personal choice.
But we didn’t know much about what Trump believes or wants when it comes to vaccines.
Politico reports that he wants to keep vaccines, at least for adults. But he is doubtful about vaccine mandates for attending school. Public schools in every state require students to be vaccinated. If these mandates are reversed, we can expect to see a spread of the highly infectious diseases that were nearly eradicated.
Your child or grandchild might get measles or mumps or rubella or tetanus. These are deadly diseases.
This is a Politico report on a Trump press conference today:
Politico: •Vaccines: Trump said he’s a “big believer” in the polio vaccine, but he doesn’t like school mandates of vaccines (most states require vaccination from measles, mumps and rubella to attend public schools).
Here is the later, longer version.
If Kennedy, with Trump’s blessings, wipes out vaccination mandates for school attendance, deadly diseases will surge and children will die.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The historical evidence already exists in South America, after Venzuela’s democracy collapsed as a nation state, once a Putin style dictator took over like the US’s convicted rapist, fraud and felon is planning to do, and that country’s medical/health-care system, the best in South America before the crash, failed along with Venzuela.
From Rich to Refugee: The Collapse of Venezuela’s Healthcare System
“Venezuela is experiencing an extreme shortage in medicine, supplies, and equipment that is necessary to prevent, diagnose, and treat health conditions. The government has inadequately provided for the supply needs of the free public healthcare system and restricted international aid from providing assistance.”
Public Healthcare Crisis in Venezuela – Ballard Brief
How Venezuela Fell From the Richest Country in South America into Crisis | HISTORY
“Re-emerging diseases outbreaks are being reported in Venezuela since 2012/13, following ongoing political and economic crisis. Healthcare system collapse has led to an increasing incidence and mortality from communicable diseases. Increasing movement of people between Venezuela and the European Union and European Economic Area (EU/EEA) creates a need for increased awareness of the infectious disease risks and requirements for appropriate investigation and treatment of individuals arriving from Venezuela; overall risk for EU/EEA citizens is low.”
Health crisis in Venezuela: Status of communicable diseases and implications for the European Union and European Economic Area, May 2019 – PMC
Is this what Putin wants his puppet to do to the United States?
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Venezuela has a lot of oil; therefore, the U.S. government is very, very interested in bringing “democracy” to Venzuela. For many years, the U.S. government has endeavored to overthrow Venezuela’s current government. Economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. government have severely hurt Venezuela’s economy, but the sanctions have yet to cause a popular uprising, coup d’etat, or revolution hoped for by the U.S. government. Around the world, the U.S. government supports many authoritarian governments. I suspect that the only reason some Americans seem to care soooooo much about Venezuela is because corporate media constantly pushes its carefully crafted anti-Maduro narrative. Did I mention the fact that Venezuela has a lot of oil?
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Not so long ago, childhood diseases like whooping cough, chicken pox, measles, mumps and rubella claimed the lives of thousands of American children every year. Many children who survived were left with scars or chronic health problems.
Universal vaccination has been one of the most successful medical interventions in human history. By ensuring that all children are vaccinated, these terrible diseases became rare — the stuff of history lessons, not daily news.
Ed100 takes a deep dive into the research on why we need to protect our children.
https://ed100.org/blog/vaccinations-and-schools
Pls share.
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Thanks. Will do. Crazy people running our country!
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thanks. You also might like to share this one which just came out today. Timely advice on books children should read in this political climate.
https://ed100.org/blog/books-for-goodness-sake
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Nice list, Carol.
Another source to go into my post-Nov. 5 file.
Thanks
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Here’s another link – eveidence what will happen if RFK Jr. and Trump get what they want.
Resurgence of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases in Venezuela as a Regional Public Health Threat in the Americas
Resurgence of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases in Venezuela as a Regional Public Health Threat in the Americas – PMC
Some of these reports are on a federal govenrment site. If anyone wants to save them, you may want to copy them before Trump has them deleted.
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I hope Trump’s pronouncements are just stream of consciousness notions. I don’t want to call them “thinking out loud” ones because I’m pretty sure not much thought goes into them.
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We should all keep in mind that part of the Trump strategy is named:
FIREHOSING
That is, Trump, Bannon, Miller all the advisory team, like to keep EVERYONE back on their heals–in a state of shock, so they question EVERYTHING–like filing lawsuits about anything that catches their attention or that might make people get into some set of weeds of explanation or another. In this case, it’s about children and vaccines. The more they disgust and shock, they more of their fascist agenda they will get through.
Everyone is overwhelmed and cowering in the corner, just giving up before we even get challenged . . . while the bullies keep up the one-two punch, punch again, strategy. CBK
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Makes me think of the fire hoses used on the heroes who stood up for civil rights during the 1960s.
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John Ogozalek: Exactly that about the use of FIREHOSING as a metaphor for Trump Team’s strategy for keeping everyone “on their heals.”
Another metaphor: Trump’s interior life must seem like a Jackson Pollock painting–all wound around and twisted with no actually reasonable way out.
In the last few days, it has become more and more apparent to me that Trump may really not understand the difference between the nature and perimeters of truth and the truly good and those of his own extremely limited desires and fears.
It’s a comment on his socio-pathology rather than on some other GOP party members . . . who are not socio-pathetic but rather are just morally corrupt.
For instance, Trump says and acts like he thinks it’s “unreasonable” to deny a cabinet pick “on political grounds.” But he seems NOT to understand when a cabinet pick is denied because they are REALLY not qualified for the job. NOT QUALIFIED for Trump is not connected with really qualified (by experience and protocols, etc.). It means to be disloyalty to what Trump WANTS; and being opposed to what Trump DOESN’T WANT. Period.
So, in his thinking, notions of reality and good are absent. To be opposed to his wants, for him, actually can have no other “reasons” besides political reasons–then he projects his own pathology onto others by assuming that OTHER PEOPLE can only think politically also.
There is a great absence of distinction in his thinking between understanding what is or might be actually true and really good from what he or anyone else might MERELY WANT.
Remember when Trump took a sharpie and “corrected” even the weather patterns on a map, on camera, rather than understand that he might be mistaken? We all were watching a socio-pathetic personality in act. His thinking and spontaneous thinking (sometimes as a child), to him, is already right and good no matter what. For him, if he recognized the truth (as everyone else does who don’t share his mental state), he’d have to know he had made a mistake. Instead, he has no understanding of the difference between truth or the true good and what he wants (desires/fears), even about weather patterns. If his sharpie drawing differs from the weather patterns that (we know) actually occurred, then it’s the patterns and not his sharpie lines that are “off.”
In Trump’s world, at least for now, the GOP members who “fly over the coo-coo’s nest” get primaried (rather than like with other socio-path fascists, getting murdered) at least for now. And everyone, even all of the techies,” Love Trump More than Anyone else”–which serves his foot-stomping childlike needs rather than anything that resembles a regard for the truth or the truly good commonly found in mature, discerning, and sane people. And he is so jealous and/or admiring of those who attract others for whatever “reasons.”
And have a look at his picks . . . the closer you get to his “inner circle,” the more we see fewer really qualified people, or even other moral degenerates, than we see other mental monsters. CBK
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Looking forward to reading it.
Taking the dog to town as I do errands.
A warm break today….single digits this weekend. Have to enjoy this sun now while we can.
Dark days.
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There will definitely be an end to Donald J. Trump. Will he live to 100? Or maybe not last another day? But he will end.
I wonder how the U.S. will recover from this era? Will there be a period of “deTrumpfication? Will there be some sort of truth commission put in place?
Or will it all just be swept under the carpet or, rather, the world will move on at the speed of the internet? That’s much, much faster than any old broom.
We had a pandemic emerging about this time five years ago. How many hundreds of thousands of Americans died? And, where is the remembrance for them? (BTW Scranton, PA has a wonderful monument to those who lost their lives to COVID. Where else is there something like that?)
I have to wonder if there will be a generational rebellion? If there are federal budget cuts to be made, will they come at the expense of U.S. citizens under the age of 60? (Could Don and his ilk touch the Social Security and Medicare that is already being received or in the immediate pipeline?) And, how will those younger generations react when they feel the brunt of Elon Musk’s remaking of the social contract?
It can happen. Just look at how New York State revamped the teachers’ retirement system creating a Tier 6 that screws over younger educators. That’s a state controlled by the Democratic Party!
I’ve got my pension. We own our house.
Watch out for when the younger people truly realize who is holding this $36 trillion bag of debt.
So, yeah, trump is a selfish liar with his head buried up his own ass. He’s also a symbol of our times.
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John,
Trump’s braggadocio and lying are so transparent to me that I wonder why so many others are dazzled. I don’t get it. Why do so many of his rabid admirers imagine him as a super commando, muscled and lithe, ready to punch out any threat—when it’s obvious he is a fat old man who has never put himself in harm’s way.
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This post is almost “under the fold”….it’s yesterday’s news.
But to respond…
The trump phenomenon is age-old in some respects. Of course, it’s what the Ancient Greeks warned us could happen in a democracy.
But the high tech world we live in has amped up this threat in ways that we are still trying to figure out. (If we can even keep up with all the new technology!)
Historians (and people who just generally care about history) are very lucky, Diane, though we’re also a bit cursed. We can see the big picture over time….it helps us put our lives in perspective. It also shows us the true depths of how horrible moments can become.
Back in 1999, I remember historians rating World War II as the key, defining event of the 20th century. And, for me, the Holocaust is at the center , the abyss, of that global conflict.
How bad can things get in the United States? (Likewise, in other democracies around the world, too.) One need only to remember World War II.
My wife wrote a wonderful column for the local newspaper here in town. It was about her father, who served in World War II. (Her mother was also in Europe. She was an army nurse.)
At the end of the war, there was one U.S. army cook who would take the leftover food, the scraps and rubbish, and put it out for the many starving German civilians. It was the humane thing to do.
Then there was another American cook who on a different day would take that scrap food and destroy it, adding in waste oil or whatever he could find to make it inedible. It served those Germans right, he said, those men, women and children. It did not matter.
Two men. Two different impulses. This coming from the so-called “Greatest Generation” in America.
My father-in-law was a humane, thoughtful person.
But that other side of America was and still is.
It seems that on November 5 a decisive number of our fellow citizens chose the worst angels of our nature. Should it be called the devil?
Which is hard to grasp since many of these trump voters are our neighbors, friends, even family. Often very decent people.
But as you and your readers well know, very decent people are capable of despicable behaviors. That history is undeniable -no matter what web of lies trump continues to spin.
I could send you a copy of my wife’s column. I keep going back to it now.
Meanwhile…. I’m subbing in the local school this morning. Gotta run and get ready.
Stay warm on this dark December day.
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Thank you for your thoughts, John. Always appreciated.
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DIANE: I didn’t know where to post this, but the below from Newsweek is so very important because it clarifies the basic combined problems of anti-intellectualism and racism that underpin the Maga movement:
“Ramaswamy drew backlash from Trump and self-declared MAGA voters on Thursday when he voiced his support for bringing ‘highly skilled’ workers from other countries, including his native India, into the U.S. via the H-1B program, which focuses on foreign workers in specialized occupations.”
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump listens as former candidate Vivek Ramaswamy speaks at a campaign event in Atkinson, N.H., Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2024. The MAGA universe has erupted into a civil war over H-1B visa policies in the U.S. Matt Rourke/AP© Matt Rourke/AP
“The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation),” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday. “A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH: Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.” CBK
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CBK,
Actually we Americans prefer stupidity over intelligence, as witnessed by the 2024 election.
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Diane: Thanks for responding–I was writing to John when your post showed up, so I didn’t see it until I posted.
And how about that Homan guy. I’ll bet his mother is proud of him–why wouldn’t she? . . . he knows Donald Trump. CBK
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Catherine, it’s a nice feature that Diane’s blog sends me an e-mail so I could pick up on your comment from today, December 27, on this more now distant post.
Not sure how long this feature has been active here on the blog? Years, months, days, ha, ha. I live in the internet slow lane….no smartphone etc…. I was thinking of moving out into a hut deep in the woods but the teenagers in my extended family laughed in a kindhearted way and said I’m already sort of existing in that place.
Yeah….there is this great New Yorker piece from years ago that I saved somewhere. It’s about how the racism from the 1960s never really left us…well, significant aspects of it. I keep thinking I should dig through my real life, physical stuff and find it. It was just so well written.
I also had a great first person narrative I started using 25+ years ago written by a recent immigrant to the U.S…. a teenager, who talked about our culture. She was a bit insulting to the good ole U.S. of A. if I remember correctly. It was a great conversation starter when I kicked off my unit on immigration into the U.S. I have to wonder if I was still teaching 11th grade U.S. history today what the reaction would be….?
I’ll be on the road the next couple days so who knows when I’ll look at this machine again.
A real relief except for the wonderful folks on this blog, -among a few other aspects of the 21st century.
Like…what’s the name of that diner on the Taconic Parkway, again, ha, ha? (What I originally got onto this computer to find out…)
Take care!
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Hello John . . . I enjoyed reading your post. On the resurgence of racism–I remember a brief TV interview a journalist did with a young man in a bar somewhere in the south–cannot remember the details. But it was just before Obama was elected–the young many said, with intense assuredness and even vehemence, that a BLACK MAN could NEVER be elected president of the United States.
I have often wondered about that and about how many others in the U.S. probably felt that way . . . and if so, were horribly surprised when Obama actually did become President–and never got over it.
Subsequently, my guess is that there was/is a good amount of simmering and now explosive backlash emerging from that extreme and deeply embedded disappointment (manifest as political in e.g., in North Carolina), and from their realization that so many “vile democrats” (now) on the so-called left actually do not share their racist intentions, feelings, and consciousness. There is a bevy of causes for how the election turned out, but perhaps that’s one of them.
About Maga–the fact that they do not even want to document those who can add to the wealth of tech education tells us it’s so much more about racism than about what’s intelligent and excellent for the country.
And don’t tell me not to refer to Maga as stupid–they may have intelligence and even do some good in their little groups, but what are we to think of those who systematically and so obviously choose racism over intelligence and excellence? There are many words for “stupid,” but “stupid” is what that is, by definition–to pass on what is intelligent and excellent. CBK
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“It’s a comment on his socio-pathology rather than on some other GOP party members . . . who are not socio-pathetic but rather are just morally corrupt.”
Is not one who is socio-pathological by definition morally corrupt? I don’t understand what difference you are hinting at with your statement. Please clarify. Thanks!
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Duane: About the difference between socio-pathology and moral corruption.
In my expression of moral corruption is having understood and known the good-bad dimensions of human living and even identified with the moral good at some time–as is taught to and by most of us as parents and teachers and (for the most part) religious leaders; but then wrenched oneself away from it via the power of greed, or of bias or hate, or whatever, and then made a habit of ignoring, diminishing, and drying up one’s still-present conscience.
In my use of the term, Trump’s socio-pathology concerns one’s (probably early “learned”) absence of any moral training that “stuck,” or an understanding or identity-with thinking about, saying, or acting on the good/bad, of any kind. He cannot even seriously raise such questions–only if he thinks his victim wants to hear it can he embrace such questions–not because he even thinks there is anything worthwhile about it for himself, besides what he gets from sucking-in and then victimizing others. (That getting probably comes from a childhood bereft of love and caring–but that’s a whole “nuther” part of understanding someone.
But it’s like a person of possibly good basic intelligence, e.g., in figuring things out, like getting dressed, puts that intelligence at the service of a very low or even non-existent good-bad horizon (moral ethical), . . .like one can rob banks in the most intelligent way one can, or even kill. . .having been stopped at raising one’s understanding of the world, along with one’s moral development to a normatively higher field of understanding . . .and so stopped at a toddler’s stage–and so being stuck there, as if a toddler’s view (very low or non-existent moral horizon yet to be developed–just what serves his immediate wants/desires/fears) of the question of what is actually good or bad . . . for Trump, and for whatever reason, that whole realm of normative humanity never got off the developmental runway.
That’s from my field of philosophy (which concerns one’s relationship with truth, the real, and the good/bad complex of living, especially as civilized), and which may or may not completely resonate with a technical version of that term from the field of psychology. CBK
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Again, Thanks!
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“That’s from my field of philosophy (which concerns one’s relationship with truth, the real, and the good/bad complex of living, especially as civilized). . . ”
Not meaning to seem pedantic but what do you mean by “especially as civilized”?
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Duane: Civil, for my field interest, is juxtaposed with tribal. Briefly, there are two vectors of order flowing in opposite directions in everyone’s life–one (the tribal) moves from above downward; the other, civil, concerns the movement from below upwards.
Further, the two are interrelated in anyone’s real-life, and often conflictive (I taught several college classes on just that idea). But tribal consciousness is governed by the principle of generation (family (like mom and dad), group, religious, blood identities (like the old kingships), or “who” we are.
Whereas civilized consciousness is (mainly) governed by principles of intelligence and excellent where “what” you are and do and make of yourself are what count (in a civil society), regardless of who you are or what group you are identified with (e.g., gender, color, etc.). (These don’t disappear, but if they take the lead in the social order, rather than civilized principles, then “which tribe leads?” becomes a perpetual source of conflict. (Notice the conflict between the Israelis (Jews) and the Muslims, etc., in Gaza. Genocide which is clearly an aim of some on both sides is based on the tribal principal as having taken the lead).
The two are intimately related in each person as we go through life, but from a civil/(ized) focus, and point of view, one also knows WHO one is and how one and one’s group identities relate to a broad range of other people as people based on principles of intelligence and excellence, which most everyone can share, regardless of what tribe or group(s) one belongs to, if you see what I mean.
If we are to survive as people/persons, the civilizing factors in all of us have to take the lead. So that, in the prior context, the moral-ethical is intimately related to civilized being. CBK
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States, counties and cities require vaccines for school children and employees, not the US government – period. The CDC and FDA test and approve vaccines for use, well as regulating the safety of their production.
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Ned,
It’s true that states, counties and cities set the vaccine requirements but they lean on the CDC, FDA, and other federal agencies for an independent review and recommendations. If RFK Jr’s HHS tells them that vaccines are dangerous, that they should be optional not mandatory, state and local officials will listen.
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They can listen but are not obliged to take actions contrary to their good sense. Governors of states chose to ignore CDC Covid recommendations in 2020 and some, like Ohio chose to close down schools and require actions to prevent spread.
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They can ignore but many red states will placate the anti-vaxxers, make vaccines optional, and put lives at risk.
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They can do that now, at the risk of paying the price at polls, when children get sick and die. RFKjr should not be confirmed. Several hundred thousand people died because of Trump and state inaction but without direct proof, they skated free.
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Ned, the key is that state school vax regs mostly reflect CDC recommendations. This article shows the relationship between HHS and CDC, and how the first can affect the second. There is some cause for concern. https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/how-hhs-fda-and-cdc-can-influence-u-s-vaccine-policy/#:~:text=Further%2C%20the%20HHS%20Secretary%20generally,only%20rarely%20in%20the%20past.
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i was watching Togo on Disney and read about the Nome serum run, which got me to reading about diphtheria. A horrible disease like so many others that we don’t need coming back.
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Don’t be surprised if the plague returns when Russia RepubliQans are in charge.
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The other day, tRump said he’s for the polio vaccine and I think he singled that out as a CYA shout-out to ensure Mitch McConnell’s continued as*kissing (ahem, ongoing support)…
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Being “for” a vaccine is not the same thing as requiring the vaccine
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Yes, indeed, you are absolutely right. And, in reality, tRump is not even “for” people who have disabilities, including one in his own family. From Time magazine, “My Uncle Donald Trump Told Me Disabled Americans Like My Son ‘Should Just Die.” How did he expect them to do that, too –starve him? That’s called murder!!!
This is Time’s real (grossly mistaken) “Man of the Year” in 2024: https://time.com/7002003/donald-trump-disabled-americans-all-in-the-family/ who was behaving even in his first term like fascist dictator Hitler –who killed thousands of children & adults simply because they were disabled.
One of the most important things that I learned from working in Special Ed about even those with the most severe disabilities is that they can and do learn to love things in life. For example, recalling how, as a child, I loved going with friends to a coffee shop after school for fries and a coke, I used to take my deaf-blind students to a local coffee shop for that, too, after their instructional day ended, and they really adored doing it as well! And even without vision and hearing, most of my students learned how to recognize loved ones, including family members and teachers!
tRump should not be judging the value of a life, nor ever be allowed to determine who gets to keep on living and who doesn’t, since he is severely lacking in pertinent knowledge, empathy and ethics.
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Actually, starving people to death is not just murder, it’s also TORTURE, though the dimwit in chief probably didn’t think of exactly how his nephew could let his disabled child die.
Starvation was another tactic implemented by the Nazis, in order to be able to use large crews of slave laborers & slowly kill off populations they considered to be “subhuman” at the same time & for minimal costs. But the dimwit probably knows nothing about that, too.
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