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pandemic
In 'Anti-Science Move,' FDA Expected to Broadly Restrict Access to Covid Vaccines
"I think that changes like this will lead to more unnecessary deaths," said one doctor.
21 May, 2025
Public health experts on Tuesday warned Tuesday that forthcoming Food and Drug Administration guidance on the Covid-19 vaccine would "cause confusion" and result in fewer people getting inoculated against the virus that killed 350,000 people in the U.S. before the shots became available.
Dr. Vinay Prasad, head of the agency's vaccine division, and Dr. Martin Makary, the FDA commissioner, wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that the vaccine "booster" doses that have been available for the last several years to anyone aged six months and older carry "uncertain" benefits for much of the population.
The officials said the next round of shots will be available only for adults over 65 and those with certain medical conditions.
They said that before a new round of updated vaccines are made available in the fall, the FDA "anticipates the need" for new clinical trials for many patients under 65. Participants in the trial would be given either the new shots or a placebo and followed by vaccine manufacturers for at least six months to determine if the vaccines continued to provide them with protection from Covid.
Both Prasad and Makary were vocal skeptics of vaccine mandates and other public health measures during the coronavirus pandemic, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—who oversees the FDA—has spread baseless misinformation about the Covid shots and other vaccines.
Kennedy said in 2021 that the shots were the "deadliest ever made"; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found the vaccines reduce people's risk of developing serious illness, long-term symptoms, and hospitalization.
Dr. Daniel Griffin, a physician in New York, told The New York Times that the FDA's plan will ultimately "very slowly [reduce] vaccination in the country."
"I think that changes like this will lead to more unnecessary deaths," said Griffin.
Makary and Prasad made their announcement days before scientific advisers to the FDA are set to decide on the composition of the Covid vaccines that will be offered this fall.
Dr. Lucky Tran, director of science communication and media relations at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, emphasized that many Americans have conditions that raise the risk of severe illness when they get Covid—including asthma, pregnancy, diabetes, obesity, and some mental health conditions.
"However, limiting Covid vaccines to people with specific conditions only causes confusions and decreases uptake," said Tran. "Most are unaware they have a condition that puts them at risk, so many who would want to get vaccinated may not try because they think they don't qualify."
About 74% of people in the U.S. have at least one condition that puts them at higher risk for severe disease, according to the CDC.
For people without medical conditions who are under age 65, it was unclear Wednesday whether they will be able to get vaccinated in the fall—and if shots are available to them, whether insurers will cover the costs.
William Schaffner, an infectious disease physician who is on the CDC's vaccine advisory panel—which recommends who should get FDA-approved vaccines—told The Washington Post that the panel could include in this year's recommendations that healthy people under 65 can still get a shot to protect themselves.
"They could add that line... and it would allow those people very focused on prevention who would like to get the vaccine and have it paid for by their insurance," Schaffner told the Post.
But Prasad said the FDA could still limit access because the agency "can only approve products if it concludes, based on the available scientific evidence, the benefit-to-harm balance is favorable."
Pediatricians expressed concern for children's safety if vaccines become unavailable to them; the CDC reported 150 pediatric deaths from Covid over the 12-month period that ended last August.
"I think there is strong data to suggest Covid should be part of routine childhood vaccinations," Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician, told STAT News. "We vaccinate kids for things that have less morbidity and mortality than Covid, like chickenpox for example."
Tran denounced the anticipated guidance as "an anti-science move that will kill more Americans."
"The FDA is being led by people who have consistently spread misinformation about Covid and vaccines," said Tran. "Their record indicates that they cannot be trusted to implement evidence-based guidance for vaccines, and their policies will kill people and make them sicker."
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Republicans Want You to Die
Don't believe it? Just look at their record.
13 May, 2025
Let’s suppose someone decides it would be a good idea to drive 80 miles per hour through a school zone while the amber lights are flashing. If something bad happens, as it would be likely to, and he kills one or more children, how would the law treat it?
He could tell the court that he sincerely didn’t “mean” to kill anyone, but that wouldn’t exonerate him. The court would consider the case at minimum as vehicular homicide, and more likely, given the aggravating circumstance of lethal speed in a school zone, it might well result in conviction for aggravated murder.
Absent a miraculous development of telepathic powers, we can’t read people’s minds and determine their “real” mental state; we can only infer intent from their behavior. If someone commits a reckless act whose adverse consequences are clearly foreseeable, then for all practical purposes, that person willed the consequences. This principle—who wills the means wills the ends—is applicable in law, but should also be valid in everyday life. It should particularly apply to the behavior of public officials who wield power over the rest of us.
With that in mind, let’s look at President Donald Trump’s first-term record. His handling of the COVID-19 pandemic plainly indicated an unconcern for the consequences of his ignoring the outbreak in its early stages during the winter and spring of 2020. As he told Bob Woodward, he wanted to downplay the disease so as not to spook the stock market, evidence of his preference for Wall Street over human life. His refusal to recommend masking and social distancing, and encouragement of crackpot Covid deniers, took a heavy toll.
Trump’s behavior during the pandemic alone should have disqualified him from ever holding elective office again.
According to Scientific American, “In the final year of Donald Trump’s presidency, more than 450,000 Americans died from COVID-19, and life expectancy fell by 1.13 years, the biggest decrease since World War II. Many of the deaths were avoidable; COVID-19 mortality in the U.S. was 40 percent higher than the average of the other wealthy nations in the Group of Seven (G7).” That equates to 140,000 excess deaths from his contempt for human life in a crisis whose outcome was predictable.
Trump’s behavior during the pandemic alone should have disqualified him from ever holding elective office again. Alas, the American people’s memory, knowledge, and judgment being what they are, we are now being forced, like hostages at gunpoint, to endure another four years of criminal behavior, carried out with our tax money.
We have already seen enough to expect the Trump regime’s second term to be like the first on steroids. Thus, gutting the Department of Health and Human Services’ infectious disease research and forcing out the FDA’s chief vaccine expert is exactly what it looks like: an effort to see that more Americans die prematurely. This same result will certainly come as well from cutting $12 billion from state health service grants.
The secretary of HHS, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., wants to implement placebo testing of vaccines, even though this methodology had been eliminated long ago because of ethical concerns: subjects administered a placebo could be placed at considerable health risk when the overall efficacy of vaccines has been demonstrated worldwide for the many decades. So why is Kennedy doing this?
The most benign explanation is that he is a paranoid crackpot who believes in his quack medical theories (in which case, why did the Republican Senate confirm him in the face of abundant evidence of his lack of qualification and risk to public well-being?). A harsher explanation might be that Kennedy, in line with his various crank theories, sees too many human beings as pestilential, and wouldn’t mind if there were fewer of them. In either case, every senator who voted to confirm him will be just as responsible for any excess deaths occurring as he would.
The same applies to veterans’ health programs. The VA under Trump has slashed personnel, cut programs, and halted clinical trials. In recent testimony, the department’s secretary, Doug Collins, succeeded in matching his own bumbling incompetence with arrogance and nastiness. Yet the Republican senators who pretended to be critical of him in the hearing for the benefit of their veteran constituents had voted to confirm him, so if any veterans die from lack of health care, it will be their responsibility as well as that of Collins.
Why did the Trump cabal eliminate the terrorist data base at the Department of Homeland Security? Given that most domestic terrorism cases have a right-wing motivation, they must want to see more terrorism: it is useful in cowing the rest of the population. As for terrorist incidents in general, they can serve as an excuse for martial law. We can similarly conclude that wiped-out towns and lives ruined by natural disasters is the intended result of slashing FEMA.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that approximately 420 Americans die from Salmonella each year. The CDC also estimates that about 1.35 million people get sick from salmonellosis, and 26,500 are hospitalized. So why did Trump’s Agriculture Department withdraw a proposed rule that would have limited salmonella content in raw poultry and required producers to test their products before sale?
You might say it was lobbying by the poultry interests. In that case, it reflects the same attitude of willful contempt for human life on the part of Trump and his minions: that the profits of corporate contributors are more important than the safety of the American people.
Where does this contempt for human life come from? Any rational person who observed Trump over the past decade would conclude that he is a pathological narcissist who is indifferent to others. But that only leads to another question: why do so many Americans not only support him, but treat him as a near-deity?
At the core of Trump’s base are tens of millions of religious fundamentalists who believe in the Apocalypse. If the end is at hand, if in fact it could come at any moment, why worry too scrupulously over a life or two, or, for that matter, over the functioning of society at a level above that of the bronze age? The behavior of Trump’s supporters, particularly their “Covid parties” and “measles parties,” suggests an actual courting of disease and death. Their relation to Trump is like that of the ancient Carthaginians, sacrificing their children to the destroyer-god Baal.
Where does this contempt for human life come from? Any rational person who observed Trump over the past decade would conclude that he is a pathological narcissist who is indifferent to others.
There is another, more secular, source of this willingness to let people die: survivalists whose rabid fear of economic collapse, social breakdown, and anarchic violence ironically leads them to hope for the very chaos they supposedly abhor, because it would prove them to have been right all along.
Right-wing media have long egged on the paranoid with ads prophesying imminent economic or social collapse. Since the 1970s oil shock, an abiding feature on the American scene has been the right-wing survivalist, hoping for the national Götterdämmerung that will vindicate his having stockpiled 10,000 rounds of ammunition and a horde of Krugerrands.
Religious lunatics and bunkered-in survivalists have been a feature of society for decades, but what gives their vision the potential for fulfilment is a newer, third element: the neo-reactionary tech bros. What the apocalyptics and survivalists supply in numbers, the Silicon Valley billionaires provide in money: they are already a mainstay of funding for Trump’s political operations.
According to Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, tech bros like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen believe they have the money and means to carry out what the two authors call End Times Fascism. Musk’s effort through DOGE to destroy the government’s health and safety infrastructure is precisely what will bring a societal collapse nearer—and that’s a good thing in the eyes of these neo-reactionaries, because it makes survivalist prepping all the more critical while culling the unwanted.
Their goal is like something foretold in Neal Stephenson’s novel "Snow Crash" over three decades ago: the destruction of the traditional nation-state and the creation of city-states ruled by tech moguls and serviced by AI robots and whatever number of the lower orders of humanity are deemed necessary.
This nightmarish vision is now the de facto program of the Republican Party, regardless of what its official platform contains. The deaths that will occur from the cutting or elimination of the programs I have mentioned are not an accident or unforeseen consequence.
No, on the contrary: Republicans want you to die.
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Health Professionals Warn of 'Extremist' Trump Pick for NIH
"He will set American health, innovation, and science back for a generation," said one virologist of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.
27 Nov, 2024
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and Stanford University professor who shot to prominence during the pandemic due to his heterodox views around Covid lockdowns, is President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the National Institutes of Health.
In announcing his selection, Trump wrote that Bhattacharya and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been tapped to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, will work together to "Make America Healthy Again."
However, Bhattacharya's nomination was met by alarm from some health professionals who warned that the views he expressed during the pandemic make him a poor choice to run the globe's premier medical research agency.
"Despite his mild manners, Bhattacharya is a self-interested extremist who gives cover to anti-vaxxers and promotes policies that will kill people. He will set American health, innovation, and science back for a generation. He's not here to reform NIH. He's here to destroy it," wrote the virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen on X.
Biomedical scientist and public health communicator Dr. Lucky Tran wrote: "Please google Great Barrington Declaration. If it had been implemented, millions more people would have died at the start of the pandemic. Now, one of its architects will lead the NIH (if confirmed), the largest funder of biomedical research in the world," wrote biomedical scientist and public health communicator Dr. Lucky Tran.
Another doctor, Alastair McAlpine, echoed these sentiments, writing that Bhattacharya is a "terrible" choice for head of NIH.
Bhattacharya is known for co-authoring the Great Barrington Declaration, a treatise published in October 2020 that advocated for a "focused protection" approach to the pandemic.
"The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk," Bhattacharya and his co-authors wrote.
The document was named after the Massachusetts town where the three authored and signed the proposal. That work took place on the campus of a libertarian think tank, the American Institute for Economic Research.
The proposal caught the attention of Trump's White House in 2020. Trump, for his part, minimized the threat of the virus, chafed against lockdowns during the pandemic.
Public health groups criticized Bhattacharya and his co-authors, arguing that the proposal would threaten vulnerable individuals, according to reporting a the time. Then-NIH director Dr. Francis Collins, also denounced the approach in an October 2020 interview with The Washington Post: "This is a fringe component of epidemiology. This is not mainstream science. It's dangerous. It fits into the political views of certain parts of our confused political establishment."
"What I worry about with this is it's being presented as if it’s a major alternative view that's held by large numbers of experts in the scientific community. That is not true," he said.
Now, four years later, Bhattacharya has been tapped to fill Collins' former seat.
Bhattacharya has also expressed an interest in shaking up NIH itself. "I would restructure the NIH to allow there to be many more centers of power, so that you couldn't have a small number of scientific bureaucrats, dominating a field for a very long time," Bhattacharya said in a January 2024 interview with the Post.
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