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Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
Defense against dangerous epidemic outbreaks requires constant vigilance. With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump headed to Washington, D.C., we are entering very troubling territory.
Elvis Presley hardly seems a likely candidate for the pantheon of public health heroes. But in October 1956 the ascending rock idol lent his considerable stardom to helping save lives.
His little remembered role is a cautionary tale as incoming President Trump advances a series of farright and unqualified appointees to major public agencies. The most dangerous is likely to be conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, augmented by like-minded, perilous public health heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Federal Drug Administration (FDA), and his choice for Surgeon General.
For a century, polio epidemics made it one of the world’s most terrifying diseases. A 1916 outbreak in New York City killed over 2,000 people; another in the U.S. in 1952 claimed over 3,000. Children were especially targeted, over 60,000 infected yearly, facing lifelong severe spinal injuries requiring braces, crutches, and wheelchairs, and the dreaded iron lung, an artificial respirator, or premature death.
Wealth and status proved no barrier, as evidenced by President Franklin Roosevelt who was diagnosed at age 39 in 1921 with polio and endured it the rest of his life. What was a safeguard was the first vaccine, developed by virologist/medical researcher Jonas Salk. The announcement on April 12, 1955 by University of Michigan School of Public Health scientist Thomas Francis, Jr., who declared it “safe, effective, and potent,” was greeted as a national celebration, spread rapidly over radio, television, and wire services.
Parents lined up to vaccinate their young children, plenty did not. Teen immunization levels stagnated at just 0.6 percent. Enter Elvis. He agreed to go on the popular Ed Sullivan TV show, not to sing, but to get publicly vaccinated, viewed by millions. Vaccination rates among American youth soared to 80 percent in just six months. Overall annual cases of polio plummeted within a year from 58,000 to 5,600. By 1961, only 161 cases remained. After an oral vaccine followed, polio disappeared in the U.S. completely.
Yet polio never vanished globally, especially in underdeveloped nations, as in Africa, and in war zones, including in Gaza today—driven by Israel’s decimation of public health protections during its catastrophic and ongoing assault. In 2022, the first U.S. case in decades was reported by the New York State Department of Health.
Defense against dangerous epidemic outbreaks requires constant vigilance, and public support for full embrace of public health safety measures, including vaccinations. The experience of Trump’s first tenure is far from reassuring, especially his abominable failure in the face of Covid-19, the worst global pandemic in a century which ultimately cost the lives of over 1.2 million Americans.
Initial skepticism over the polio vaccine has a long antecedent in the U.S., described early in the Covid pandemic by what Los Angeles Times writer Carolina Miranda aptly termed “toxic individualism” and rugged individualism. It is traceable to a virulent brew of misguided notions of individual liberty that undermine and sabotage the public good, or a commons of national and community interest. Much of its roots are linked to structural racism, as in the resistance to Civil Rights Movement measures, and continuing today in white opposition to reforms such as expansion of health care and other public programs, immigration rights, and other societal benefits.
That history provides context for the eruption of the anti-vax, anti-public health measures that exacerbated and prolonged Covid suffering and death and seeded the ground for opposition to other essential vaccines. It’s true, as medical ethicist Arthur Caplan writes, that much of “the damage to getting Americans to vaccinate has already been done… There are almost no serious state mandates for childhood vaccines. Parents who want to opt out are easily doing so, as can be seen by the resurgence in measles and whooping cough. Nearly 40% of teenagers are not up to date on the HPV vaccine even as Australia and Scotland are on the verge of eliminating cervical cancer thanks to serious immunization campaigns.”
Further, he adds “Democrats avoided vaccination as an issue this election year because they knew that, post Covid, vaccination has become something of a political third rail. Could Kennedy and [CMS nominee Dr. Mehmet] Oz make things worse—absolutely. But are matters already bad—sadly, yes.”
The Kennedy-Trump threat
Yet Kennedy and his coterie of other department heads can make matters much worse. With the imprimatur of a President-elect already lionized by an often-fawning base will likely discourage more resistance to vaccines that can turn schools into major disease vectors and hasten the spread of new epidemics sure to come.
Even in the wake of Covid, Kennedy, with his power as HHS Secretary has said he would pause NIH’s drug development and infectious disease research and shift its focus to chronic diseases that do need attention but not at the expense of combating global epidemics.
Kennedy has also indicated a desire to shutter “entire” FDA departments, which oversee safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs and vaccines. And he has threatened to purge FDA staff for “aggressive suppression” of unsafe products and therapies, such as raw milk, and discredited COVID treatments, including hydroxychloroquine.
There’s his lurid, scientifically refuted linkage of vaccines to autism and other conspiracies, such as his claim that Covid was bioengineered to exempt Chinese people, already targeted by Trump rhetoric that fueled hate crimes, and Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe origin, reinforcing right-wing antisemitic bigotry.
And that’s not including his attack on fluoride in drinking waterwhich promotes oral health, as cited in a letter by 77Nobel Prize winners opposing Kennedy, or his speculated doubt that HIV causes AIDS and the effectiveness of AZT therapy.
Anti-vax consequences
Still, it is his fanaticism on vaccines that prompts the most alarm.
During the COVID-19 epidemic, Children’s Health Defense, a group Kennedy founded and led, petitioned the FDA to halt the use of all COVID vaccines. In a 2023 podcast, Kennedy proclaimed there is “no vaccine that is safe and effective,” and disputed CDC’s guidelines about if and when kids should get vaccinated.
The implications are alone enough for a mass movement to escalate pressure to block confirmation of Kennedy, and Trump’s nominees to lead the CDC, CMS, FDA, NIH and Surgeon General who mostly share his chilling views on vaccine safety. Multiple studies document what is at stake.
The World Health Organization estimates vaccines have protected 150 million lives over the past 50 years, and that 100 million were infants. About 4 million deaths worldwide are prevented by childhood vaccination every year. More than 50 million deaths can be prevented through immunization between 2021 and 2030. By 2030, it is estimated that measles vaccination alone can save nearly 19 million lives.
In November 2013, University of Pittsburgh researchers issued a similar study. It documented that about 103 million cases of disease had been prevented by vaccination since 1924. The disease with the most cases prevented was diphtheria, 40 million cases. Second was measles, 35 million cases.
Globally, reported Scientific American, measles vaccines, preserved 94 million lives over the past 50 years. It cited a 2024 Lancet study published in October that vaccines against 14 common pathogens protected 154 million people over the past five decades—that's a rate of six lives every minute. They have cut infant mortality by 40 percent globally and by more than 50 percent in Africa. Throughout history vaccines secured more lives than almost any other intervention.
Lancet found that each life defended through immunization contributed to 66 years of full health, without long-term linked to disease.Vaccines impact nearly every measurement of health equity, from improving access to care, to reducing disability and long-term morbidity, to preventing loss of labor and the death of caretakers.
Writing in Forbes, hardly a left-wing Trump critic, earlier this year, ER doctor/health researcher Arthur Kellerman also cited the Pittsburgh study, as well as Johns Hopkins data of nearly 88 million cases of illness. In 1900, he wrote, 30 percent of deaths in the U.S. occurred in children under 5 years of age. In 1999, they accounted for only 1.4 percent. "Vaccines," he concluded, "played a vital role in this progress.”
Measles, a highly contagious childhood disease that can lead to pneumonia and fatal brain swelling, declined rapidly after the first measles vaccine was introduced in 1963. But, the CDC cites 16 measles outbreaks in 2024. Kennedy’s alleged role in promoting vaccine misinformation during a deadly measles outbreak in American Samoa in 2019, which he denies, has also been widely reported. Unvaccinated families, writes Kellerman, “tend to cluster in communities defined by faith, culture or political ideology. When a highly contagious disease gets into such a community, an outbreak can occur. We’ve already seen localized outbreaks of measles, rubella, mumps, and pertussis.”
In 2022, Kennedy’s attorney and close advisor Aaron Siri petitioned the FDA to revoke approval of the polio vaccine for further study despite its long history of success.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who endured polio as a child, has denounced the push “to undermine public confidence in proven cures” like the polio vaccine. Only a “miraculous combination of modern medicine and a mother’s love” saved him from paralysis he said in a statement. “The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and held out the promise of eradicating a terrible disease. Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed—they’re dangerous,” McConnell said.
Yet McConnell, and similar Republican critics have yet to publicly oppose Kennedy and his similar malefactors of health (to borrow FDR’s “malefactors of wealth” frame).
We can no longer count on Elvis to protect our children, families and communities. It is up to the rest of us.
"Our real problem is not so much a healthcare crisis as it is a political and economic one," he wrote in an op-ed.
Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has an ambitious New Year's resolution: a nine-point policy proposal to "Make American Healthy Again" by reforming the United States' "broken and dysfunctional healthcare system."
In an op-ed published in The Guardian on Tuesday, Sanders said his ideas were informed by his time serving as the chair of the U.S. Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which will end in 2025.
"We are the wealthiest nation on Earth," Sanders wrote. "There is no rational reason as to why we are not the healthiest nation on Earth. We should be leading the world in terms of life expectancy, disease prevention, low infant and maternal mortality, quality of life, and human happiness. Sadly, study after study shows just the opposite. Despite spending almost twice as much per capita on healthcare, we trail most wealthy nations in all these areas."
"Working-class Americans live far shorter lives than the rich because of the stress of trying to survive on a paycheck-to-paycheck existence."
Sanders first prescription for a healthier nation? Medicare for All.
"Healthcare is a human right," Sanders argued. "The function of a rational healthcare system is to guarantee quality healthcare to all, not huge profits for the insurance industry. The United States cannot continue to be the only wealthy nation that does not provide universal healthcare."
The other eight reccomendations on Sanders' list are:
In the aftermath of the killing and the online response, Sanders called for a political movement to reform the nation's healthcare system.
"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," he said at the time. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together and understanding that it is the right of every American to be able to walk into a doctor's office when they need to and not have to take out their wallet."
Sanders' agenda is also a clear rejoinder to Trump supporter Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) campaign. Kennedy, who President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has a record of pushing dangerous health-related conspiracy theories, in particular by questioning the effectiveness and safety of vaccines. While Kennedy has voiced criticisms of the food, agriculture, and chemical industries shared by many environmentalists, he has also advocated for harmful practices such as drinking raw milk and downplayed the climate emergency.
Trump has signaled that any environmental policies Kennedy might implement during his administration would take a backseat to his commitment to Big Oil.
"Bobby, stay away from the liquid gold," he said in his election night victory speech. "Other than that, go have a good time, Bobby."
Sanders, in contrast, made tackling the climate emergency one of his priorities and called out the fossil fuel industry specifically.
"The fossil fuel industry cannot be allowed to continue making us sick, shortening our lives, and destroying the planet," he wrote Tuesday.
He also emphasized working conditions as a public health issue.
"Working-class Americans live far shorter lives than the rich because of the stress of trying to survive on a paycheck-to-paycheck existence," he wrote in his call for a higher minimum wage.
In general, Sanders argued that it was not possible to tackle health without tackling corporate power.
"Our real problem is not so much a healthcare crisis as it is a political and economic one," he wrote in The Guardian. "We need to end the unprecedented level of corporate greed we are experiencing. We need to create a government and economy that works for all and not just the wealthy and powerful few."
In his email to supporters, Sanders spoke even more directly about the need to "take on powerful special interests who make billions in profits by making us sick and shortening our lifespans."
He portrayed wealthy individuals and corporations as the force ultimately standing in the way of a healthier nation.
"The truth is that their ideology of greed requires them to want more, and more, and more. And if that greed makes us sicker or shortens our lives, that's the price they require us to pay," he wrote. "But we say NO. We are fighting back. We can and will create a government and economy that works for all, and not just the few. We can and will create a society which enhances human health and well-being, and not the wealth and power of the billionaire class."
"So if you're wondering if Donald Trump is trying to kill your kids, yes, yes he is," said one critic.
Public health advocates, federal lawmakers, and other critics responded with alarm to The New York Timesreporting on Friday that an attorney helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. select officials for the next Trump administration tried to get the U.S. regulators to revoke approval of the polio vaccine in 2022.
"The United States has been a leader in the global fight to eradicate polio, which is poised to become only the second disease in history to be eliminated from the face of the earth after smallpox," said Liza Barrie, Public Citizen's campaign director for global vaccines access. "Undermining polio vaccination efforts now risks reversing decades of progress and unraveling one of the greatest public health achievements of all time."
Public Citizen is among various organizations that have criticized President-elect Donald Trump's choice of Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, with the watchdog's co-president, Robert Weissman, saying that "he shouldn't be allowed in the building... let alone be placed in charge of the nation's public health agency."
Although Kennedy's nomination requires Senate confirmation, he is already speaking with candidates for top health positions, with help from Aaron Siri, an attorney who represented RFK Jr. during his own presidential campaign, the Times reported. Siri also represents the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) in petitions asking the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) "to withdraw or suspend approval of vaccines not only for polio, but also for hepatitis B."
According to the newspaper:
Mr. Siri is also representing ICAN in petitioning the FDA to "pause distribution" of 13 other vaccines, including combination products that cover tetanus, diphtheria, polio, and hepatitis A, until their makers disclose details about aluminum, an ingredient researchers have associated with a small increase in asthma cases.
Mr. Siri declined to be interviewed, but said all of his petitions were filed on behalf of clients. Katie Miller, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kennedy, said Mr. Siri has been advising Mr. Kennedy but has not discussed his petitions with any of the health nominees. She added, "Mr. Kennedy has long said that he wants transparency in vaccines and to give people choice."
After the article was published, Siri called it a "typical NYT hit piece plainly written by those lacking basic reading and thinking skills," and posted a series of responses on social media. He wrote in part that "ICAN's petition to the FDA seeks to revoke a particular polio vaccine, IPOL, and only for infants and children and only until a proper trial is conducted, because IPOL was licensed in 1990 by Sanofi based on pediatric trials that, according to FDA, reviewed safety for only three days after injection."
The Times pointed out that experts consider placebo-controlled trials that would deny some children polio shots unethical, because "you're substituting a theoretical risk for a real risk," as Dr. Paul A. Offit, a vaccine expert at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, explained. "The real risks are the diseases."
Ayman Chit, head of vaccines for North America at Sanofi, told the newspaper that development of the vaccine began in 1977, over 280 million people worldwide have received it, and there have been more than 300 studies, some with up to six months of follow-up.
Trump, who is less than six weeks out from returning to office, has sent mixed messages on vaccines in recent interviews.
Asked about RFK Jr.'s anti-vaccine record during a Time "Person of the Year" interview published Thursday, the president-elect said that "we're going to be able to do very serious testing" and certain vaccines could be made unavailable "if I think it's dangerous."
Trump toldNBC News last weekend: "Hey, look, I'm not against vaccines. The polio vaccine is the greatest thing. If somebody told me to get rid of the polio vaccine, they're going to have to work real hard to convince me. I think vaccines are—certain vaccines—are incredible. But maybe some aren't. And if they aren't, we have to find out."
Both comments generated concern—like the Friday reporting in the Times, which University of Alabama law professor and MSNBC columnist Joyce White Vance called "absolutely terrifying."
She was far from alone. HuffPost senior front page editor Philip Lewis said that "this is just so dangerous and ridiculous" while Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan declared, "We are so—and I use this word advisedly—fucked."
Ryan Cooper, managing editor at The American Prospect, warned that "they want your kids dead."
Author and musician Mikel Jollett similarly said, "So if you're wondering if Donald Trump is trying to kill your kids, yes, yes he is."
Multiple critics altered Trump's campaign slogan to "Make Polio Great Again."
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) responded with a video on social media:
Without naming anyone, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a polio survivor, put out a lengthy statement on Friday.
"The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and held out the promise of eradicating a terrible disease. Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed—they're dangerous," he said in part. "Anyone seeking the Senate's consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts."