Egg Prices High? Let’s Totally Gut the Government!

Most folks agree Trump won because Americans believe he’ll be better at directing our economy. OK, but how does that jive up with everything else this guy, who won less than half the votes, is doing?

All this because of the price of groceries?

We’re going to drastically cut federal services and regulations that provide aid and protection to those who need it, turn our legal agencies into Donald Trump’s personal SS unit, hit both enemies and allies with tariffs, cuddle up to Vladimir Putin, force schools to become centers for political and religious propaganda, and force millions of black and brown folks who came here seeking a better life into internment camps.

All this and more because the price of groceries and gas are up, and it took a while to recover from a pandemic that sickened more than 107 million Americans and killed 1.2 million? Nobody seems to remember that Donald Trump, the guy now seeking to strangle our government after winning less than half of our votes, slow-walked our first medical response to the virus.

Worst of all, at least to this former health editor, is that it appears we may be ready to ignore years of scientific studies and chase half-baked medical theories pushed by a former heroin addict with a history of sexual harassment who has falsely linked vaccines to autism and cancer.

Smallpox, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, hepatitis, diphtheria and more ... do you know anybody who has suffered with any of these lately? I don’t. I suspect vaccination has prevented more illness, and been as heavily researched over the years, as any other aspect of health care.

In naming new leaders for the FDA and CDC, Donald Trump insisted that both health agencies “have lost the trust of Americans.”  But have they really? Perhaps that’s just the Americans who slavishly follow Fox News’s right-wing spin and been inundated by misinformation from hard-right online bloggers.

Not surprisingly, two of the doctors nominated for federal health jobs on Friday are regular Fox News contributors, a theme in Trump’s selections across the government.

Remember, half of Americans aren’t fans of Fox, the network that paid $787 million for promoting lies about the 2020 presidential election, or MAGA’s online bomb throwers. The nation is split politically and only 41% of Americans believe Trump will bring us together, according to the latest Pew survey. Less than half of Americans think Trump is honest, according to the survey, or that he cares about the needs of ordinary people.

Right. And he’s about to be our next president.

Trump followed up the naming of anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services chief by nominating Dr. David Weldon to lead the CDC and Dr. Martin A. Makary to be the FDA chief.

While in Congress, Weldon pushed the notion that thimerosal, a preservative in some vaccines, caused high rates of autism. The problem: Autism continued to increase at about the same rate after thimerosal was removed from vaccines, which is the opposite of what would be expected if Weldon’s theory was correct.

So, basically, we now have anti-vaxxers on parade.

Makary, meanwhile, has been critical of Covid-19 guidance by health agencies in the past, gaining him a Fox News spotlight. He argued that the U.S. would reach herd immunity by April 2021, which it didn’t, and that face masks “increased levels of carbon dioxide in the blood” in children, a view for which no scientific evidence exists.

Now, let’s stop for a moment and consider what this terrible, terrible FDA has done in the past in terms of food safety, generic drugs, drug safety and the ongoing battle against rare diseases.

FDA management of the Food Safety Modernization Act dramatically updated food safety oversight, using genome tracking tech to reduce foodborne illnesses. The agency’s approval of safe generic drugs has saved the health system about $1.67 trillion. And the FDA has established strict standards for the design, conduct, and analysis of trials while implementing key safety measures for certain drugs.

Meanwhile, the Orphan Drug Act overseen by the FDA provides financial incentives to manufacturers, including tax credits and marketing exclusivity in order to persuade them to produce solutions for rare diseases.

OK now, how about the terrible, terrible CDC, initially created to prevent malaria from spreading across the nation?

An early win for the CDC came in the nation’s battle against an epidemic of toxic-shock syndrome. The CDC documented a link with a certain brand of tampons, and that brand was withdrawn from the market. The CDC also worked with other federal agencies to remove lead from gasoline, drastically reducing exposure in children and leading to improvements in cognitive development, and the reduced risk of neurological issues.

When AIDS emerged, the CDC helped lead the response by precisely characterizing the syndrome and defining risk factors. The CDC’s Cancer and Steroid Hormone Study assessed the risks for breast, cervical, and ovarian cancers tied to oral contraceptives and estrogen replacement therapy.

And here’s one of my personal favorites: The CDC studied the health effects of service in Vietnam, leading to development of a serum test for dioxin, yes the bad stuff in Agent Orange.

The result: Congress enacted the Agent Orange Act that made Vietnam veterans eligible to receive treatment and compensation for conditions linked to dioxins, including certain cancers, type II diabetes mellitus and Hodgkins disease, among others. And speaking of veterans, the CDC now funds a program in 23 states to evaluate and implement evidence-based prevention strategies to address suicide risk, with a focus on high-risk populations.

Yes, I’m cherry picking some of the good stuff, but there’s been many other successes for these agencies that just won’t fit in this article. There may, indeed, be adjustments that can improve how our health agencies operate, but are these the folks best suited to handle that?

The question moving forward is whether we live in a nation whose health decisions are based on medical science, or one based on the politics of the moment. And frankly similar questions should be asked about every aspect of our government moving forward.

I know Trump wasn’t elected president just because of the price of groceries, that it was equally because middle-America felt the need to give the finger to Washington and the so-called coastal elites. But every time Trump says Americans “don’t trust” something, people need to understand that he’s referring to just the half of Americans who support him, not the rest of us.

Where do you stand in this dichotomy?