Equally as cool was the announcement of HHS Infectious Disease and HIV Policy departments being totally laid off last week.
All of the Trump funding cuts are giving an opening for tuberculosis to become a major problem in the US, not just 'over there.' Atlantic article https://archive.is/dFo34 Spoiler Still, tuberculosis is great at exploiting any advantage that humans hand it. During the coronavirus pandemic, disruptions to supply chains and TB-prevention programs led to an uptick in infections worldwide. Last year, the U.S. logged more cases of tuberculosis than it has in any year since the CDC began keeping count in the 1950s. Two people died. But in some ways, at the beginning of this year, the fight against tuberculosis had never looked more promising. High-quality vaccine candidates were in late-stage trials. In December, the World Health Organization made its first endorsement of a TB diagnostic test, and global health workers readied to deploy it. Now that progress is on the verge of being erased. Since Donald Trump has taken office, his administration has dismantled USAID, massively eliminating foreign-aid funding and programs. According to The New York Times, hundreds of thousands of sick patients have seen their access to medication and testing suddenly cut off. A memo released by a USAID official earlier this month estimated that cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis will rise by about 30 percent in the next few years, an unprecedented regression in the history of humankind’s fight against the disease. (The official was subsequently placed on administrative leave.) Research on tuberculosis tests and treatments has been terminated. Although the secretary of state and Elon Musk have assured the public that the new administration’s actions have not disrupted the distribution of life-saving medicine, that just isn’t true. A colleague in central Africa sent me a picture of TB drugs that the U.S. has already paid for sitting unused in a warehouse because of stop-work orders. (Neither the State Department nor DOGE employees responded to requests for comment.) Last year, roughly half of all international donor funding for tuberculosis treatment came from the U.S. Now many programs are disappearing. In a recent survey on the impact of lost funding in 31 countries, one in four organizations providing TB care reported they have shut down entirely. About half have stopped screening for new cases of tuberculosis. The average untreated case of active tuberculosis will spread the infection to 10 to 15 people a year. Without treatment, or even a diagnosis, hundreds of thousands more people will die—and each of those deaths will be needless. By revoking money from global-health efforts, the U.S. has created the conditions for the health of people around the world to deteriorate, which will give tuberculosis even more opportunities to kill. HIV clinics in many countries have started rationing pills as drug supplies run dangerously low, raising the specter of co-infection. Like HIV, insufficient nutrition weakens the immune system. It is the leading risk factor for tuberculosis. An estimated 1 million children with severe acute malnutrition will lose access to treatment because of the USAID cuts, and refugee camps across the world are slashing already meager food rations. For billions of people, TB is already a nightmare disease, both because the bacterium is unusually powerful and because world leaders have done a poor job of distributing cures. And yet, to the extent that one hears about TB at all in the rich world, it’s usually in the context of a looming crisis: Given enough time, a strain of tuberculosis may evolve that is resistant to all available antibiotics, a superbug that is perhaps even more aggressive and deadly than previous iterations of the disease. The Trump administration’s current policies are making such a future more plausible. Even pausing TB treatment for a couple of weeks can give the bacterium a chance to evolve resistance. The world is ill-prepared to respond to drug-resistant TB, because we have shockingly few treatments for the world’s deadliest infectious disease. Between 1963 and 2012, scientists approved no new drugs to treat tuberculosis. Doing so stopped being profitable once the disease ceased to be a crisis in rich countries. Many strains of tuberculosis are already resistant to the 60-year-old drugs that are still the first line of treatment for nearly all TB patients. If a person is unlucky enough to have drug-resistant TB, the next step is costly testing to determine if their body can withstand harsh, alternative treatments. The United States helped pay for those tests in many countries, which means that now fewer people with drug-resistant TB are being diagnosed or treated. Instead, they are almost certainly getting sicker and spreading the infection. Drug-resistant TB is harder to cure in individual patients, and so the aid freeze will directly lead to many deaths. But giving the bacteria so many new opportunities to develop drug resistance is also a threat to all of humanity. We now risk the emergence of TB strains that can’t be cured with our existing tools. The millennia-long history of humans’ fight against TB has seen many vicious cycles. I fear we are watching the dawn of another.
Got 400 kids with measles here and 398 of them are unvaccinated. A good plague would wipe us out at this point.
The Covid Alarmists Were Closer to the Truth Than Anyone Else https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/opinion/covid-fifth-anniversary.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Unvaccinated children and adolescents were up to 20 times more likely to develop Long #COVID19 than their vaccinated peers, but just 1 in 8 kids in the US got the 2024 vaccination--almost half the rate of adults. Make it make sense. medicalxpress.com/news/2025-04...— Augie Ray (@augieray.bsky.social) 2025-04-21T20:55:48.706Z
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/23/nx-s1-5372695/autism-nih-rfk-medical-records NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya told a panel of experts about the plan this week This fucking dipshit is an nih director now
Moderna's combo Covid and flu mRNA shot outperforms current vaccines in large trial A combination shot would make it easier for people to get vaccinated against Covid and the flu at the same time. www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...— Liz Szabo (@lizszabo.bsky.social) 2025-05-09T20:28:45.684Z
Will that even be made available in the United States? Are we even going to get updated flu vaccines this year?
as @beyerstein.bsky.social’s quote here notes, “be nice to antivaxxers” has not worked.— Seth Trueger (@mdaware.org) 2025-05-11T19:37:46.211Z
Could that be because the COVID alarmists were listening to fucking experts.. WEIRD HOW THAT WORKS STUPID ASS COUNTRY
When people vote Republican this always the outcome but it kills mostly people from "poorer/ethnic" backgrounds so a certain demographic doesn't care and never will
jfc, am I really going to have to go to Canada late in the year to try and get seasonal vaccinations for my family and I?
I met a wealthy Mexican couple in 2021 who were visiting the states to finally get the vaccine. Now we get to switch roles!