Trump and Infectious Disease. Reason for Grave Concern.

[TLS Guy]

In my previous thread I posted about Trump musseling NIH lecturers.

Now we have even more reason to worry. The bird flu is at inflection point in terms of danger to humans.

6 cattle herds in Nevada are now infected with this worrying H5N1 variant. This is the new variant most transmissible to humans and is a cause for concern. According to this mornings AMA wire, we are now at an inflection point in the epidemic.

The CBC weekly Morbidity and Mortality report was muzzled. This vital publication keeps us medics and other health professionals current on the impact of infectious disease. It is a publication absolutely vital to the public health. Somehow the heroic staff have managed to get a publication out today. It is unclear if this is with the approval of the Trump administration or not, but likely not. During this period a lot of courage and civil disobedience is going to the required.

This is something that should be of grave concern to us all.

 

[j_garcia]

RFK is our real threat now, if appointed. That guy is going to get people killed.

A friend of mine got a routine flu shot a few years back, before covid. They did not mention to him that it included H5N1 that year, which he is very susceptible to, and it almost killed him. He was in the hospital for about a month and a half before recovering.

 

[Trell]

Krugman just wrote an article RFK Jr. and the MAGA Death Trip: The war on science is turning deadly where he's not happy with RFK Jr nor the decades long Republican anti-science.

>>>...
But there’s also a lot to be learned by asking how we managed to build the canal in the first place. Yes, it was a spectacular feat of engineering. But even more important, it was a triumph of medical science and science-based policy. To build the canal, America first had to conquer yellow fever and malaria. This meant understanding how these diseases were spread, then implementing widespread preventive measures that ranged from isolating infected patients with mosquito netting to eliminating sources of standing water in which mosquitoes could breed.

The success of these measures was an extraordinary achievement. But then, for much of the 20th century America led the world both in medical research and in the application of that research to public policy. This one-two punch of knowledge and knowledge-based action led to an incredible decline in the rate of death from infectious disease:

But that was the America that was.

Now Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a crank who rejects vaccines in particular and medical science in general, is on track to become the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The National Institutes of Health have effectively been shut down. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have stopped releasing crucial data. If you go to CDC’s website, there’s a banner across the top reading “CDC’s website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders,” which mainly means purging anything that hints at concern over social inequality.

I don’t know this for sure, but my prediction is that the current purge of language will eventually turn into a purge of people, with the administration firing anyone suspected of being more loyal to science than they are to Donald Trump.

And all of this is highly likely to lead to many preventable deaths — hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. ...<<<

 

[ski2xblack]

Agreed, Doc, this is taking penny wise pound foolish of The Stupid to deadly extremes. Maybe the FAFO karma will kick in and RFKjr will catch it from the raw unpasteurized milk he believes is so healthy.

This variant (D1.1 6) is the one that exhibits one more of the several mutations necessary for human transmission. Of the confirmed cases I know of, one was a fatality in Louisiana, and the other was a teenager in Toronto that ended up spending time in the ICU but unsure of the outcome for her.

I miss Swerd right now, he could explain the nuances of the mutations in this variant, and what further mutations that will make it even worse, which seems inevitable under the circumstances. Maybe TLS will indulge the forum with a lesson.

But it's no joke. At the outbreak of covid19, while the healthcare structure was taxed, with bodies accumulating in hospital halls and refridgerated trucks, we were able through various emergency spending to keep the gory details somewhat contained. I think this prevented the general public from realizing just how close to collapse the healthcare system was, and the grave threats presented by future outbreaks. The present regime is both unwilling and unequipped to do anything about it. It wouldn't take much to exceed the demands that cvid imposed.

 

[mtrycrafts]

RFK is our real threat now, if appointed. That guy is going to get people killed.

A friend of mine got a routine flu shot a few years back, before covid. They did not mention to him that it included H5N1 that year, which he is very susceptible to, and it almost killed him. He was in the hospital for about a month and a half before recovering.

I would add, he will continue killing people. Don't forget what he did in the pacific islands a number of years ago, a bunch of children died no matter how he tries to exonerate himself because of his stupidity.

Courts are relatively slow, and, in the meantime, democracy disappears slice by slice.

 

[Mr._Clark]

In my previous thread I posted about Trump musseling NIH lecturers.

Now we have even more reason to worry. The bird flu is at inflection point in terms of danger to humans.

6 cattle herds in Nevada are now infected with this worrying H5N1 variant. This is the new variant most transmissible to humans and is a cause for concern. According to this mornings AMA wire, we are now at an inflection point in the epidemic.

The CBC weekly Morbidity and Mortality report was muzzled. This vital publication keeps us medics and other health professionals current on the impact of infectious disease. It is a publication absolutely vital to the public health. Somehow the heroic staff have managed to get a publication out today. It is unclear if this is with the approval of the Trump administration or not, but likely not. During this period a lot of courage and civil disobedience is going to the required.

This is something that should be of grave concern to us all.

According to news reports, the latest CDC report omitted three bird flu studies:

>>>(CNN) – The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention published its weekly research report Thursday, the first time since President Donald Trump took office.

However, three studies about H5N1 bird flu were missing from the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

That’s according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity.

Those missing studies come as bird flu continues to spread in dairy cattle, poultry and other animals across the U.S.

<<<(emphasis added)

Weekly CDC report returns, omits bird flu studies

The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention published its weekly research report Thursday, the first time since President Donald Trump took office.

www.wistv.com

Some of the data was apparently posted, then deleted.

>>>FRIDAY, Feb. 7, 2025 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists are calling on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to disclose data about the risks of bird flu to people and pets that was posted briefly online Wednesday and quickly deleted. . . . A copy of the deleted data table obtained by The New York Times revealed that a cat infected with the H5N1 virus may have spread it to another cat and to a human in the same home. In a second case, two days after an infected dairy worker showed symptoms, a cat got sick and died the next day. . . .

A day after his inauguration, Trump ordered federal health agencies to put a hold on communications with the public for an indefinite time. . . .

The CDC website has a prominent advisory that it is "being modified to comply with President Trump's Executive Orders."<<<(emphasis added)

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2025-02-07/cdc-posts-then-deletes-data-on-bird-flu

What the [bleep] is going on? (that's a rhetorical question, of course).

 

[trochetier]

Agreed, Doc, this is taking penny wise pound foolish of The Stupid to deadly extremes. Maybe the FAFO karma will kick in and JFKjr will catch it from the raw unpasteurized milk he believes is so healthy.

This variant (D1.1 6) is the one that exhibits one more of the several mutations necessary for human transmission. Of the confirmed cases I know of, one was a fatality in Louisiana, and the other was a teenager in Toronto that ended up spending time in the ICU but unsure of the outcome for her.

I miss Swerd right now, he could explain the nuances of the mutations in this variant, and what further mutations that will make it even worse, which seems inevitable under the circumstances. Maybe TLS will indulge the forum with a lesson.

But it's no joke. At the outbreak of covid19, while the healthcare structure was taxed, with bodies accumulating in hospital halls and refridgerated trucks, we were able through various emergency spending to keep the gory details somewhat contained. I think this prevented the general public from realizing just how close to collapse the healthcare system was, and the grave threats presented by future outbreaks. The present regime is both unwilling and unequipped to do anything about it. It wouldn't take much to exceed the demands that cvid imposed.

If any H5N1 variant jumps to pigs we should be real worried.

Operation Warp Speed under Trump 1.0 got the Covid-19 vaccines made and approved for use in record time. Something he could really crow about and take credit for. US total death from Covid 19 was 1.2 million, it could possibly have been more without the vaxes.

 

[mtrycrafts]

If any H5N1 variant jumps to pigs we should be real worried.

Operation Warp Speed under Trump 1.0 got the Covid-19 vaccines made and approved for use in record time. Something he could really crow about and take credit for. US total death from Covid 19 was 1.2 million, it could possibly have been more without the vaxes.

An interesting history:
Operation Warp Speed - Wikipedia
Pfizer started Jan 2020 called lightspeed, well before Trump's warp speed.