Latest news with #measlesoutbreak
Bloomberg
21-07-2025
- Health
- Bloomberg
Is Summer Camp a Petri Dish for Measles?
This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, the nation's foremost peddler of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. Sign up here. In 2025, summer camp — traditionally a time for kids to unglue themselves from their screens and be one with nature — has been hijacked by a series of unfortunate events. Between the deadly floods at Camp Mystic and the worst measles outbreak since the early 1990s, the list of parental nightmare scenarios seems to be growing longer by the day.
Yahoo
19-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Why MAGA hates science so much
Against all the evidence of horrific, devastating weather around us, climate change is still a 'hoax.' A measles outbreak sparked by anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists now extends beyond Texas to 34 states. Republicans are doing all they can to shut down funding for medical research. Why does MAGA hate science? Shall we count the ways? Because scientific advances don't discriminate between the 'worthy' and those considered unworthy, and because some in the billionaire class think they deserve to live much longer than you do. As they prep their fancy-shmancy bunkers or delude themselves that they can one day head off to Mars to escape their wanton destruction of the Earth, the billionaire bros know they can avail themselves and their children of lifesaving vaccinations and other health care services that they are putting out of reach for many of us. But it's not just the small — and small-minded, and small-hearted — wealthy libertarian or right-wing elite. Working people who choose to wear MAGA red caps hate science for their own reasons: It tells them things about disease and environmental destruction and, say, women's reproductive health that they cannot bear to face. Scientific findings often do not jibe with their religious beliefs. If you believe the Earth is 6,000 years old and were never taught how to distinguish between faith and knowledge, you're naturally going to have a testy relationship with science. By its nature of openness to new ideas, scientific inquiry exemplifies the secular worldview of liberals. Science levels the playing field. It's woke. Scientists discriminate about the significance of evidence, but they do not discriminate about the significance of different human beings. (That is what the MAGA faithful think their religion is for — because Republicans have spent a long time perverting Christianity, too, to justify their greed and bigotry.) From reading the writers of the Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson knew science was evening out the social playing field. In an article for Smithsonian magazine, historian Stephen E. Ambrose notes that amid all the contradictions of his personal life, Jefferson never relinquished his idealism about all men being created equal: In his last message to America, on June 24, 1826, ten days before he died on July 4 (the same day that John Adams died), Jefferson declined an invitation to be in Washington for the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. He wrote, 'All eyes are opened, or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them.' There's the danger to those who consider themselves superior — by race, color, creed or position on the Forbes annual list of billionaires — to the mass of men and women. Scientific advancements make us ever more aware that we are all the same and should enjoy the same basic rights to education, health care, civil liberties like voting, freedom of and freedom from religion, and the freedom to read or otherwise consume whatever opinions or cultural works we choose — the very things that the current occupant of the White House and his MAGA followers are working to take away from us. Beyond the historical friction between science and religious beliefs (for which earlier scientists could be imprisoned or burned at the stake), the main reason MAGA hates science is human-caused global climate change. Al Gore famously called global warming an 'inconvenient truth,' but Donald Trump persists in calling it 'a hoax,' while defunding climate research, green technology, NOAA and FEMA. The COVID pandemic gave MAGA followers many more incoherent reasons to distrust science, while watching 'their favorite president' politicize every aspect of the response. Apparently, millions would rather suffer mightily — or even die, as many willfully unvaccinated people did — than admit they were wrong. It's a sad aspect of human nature to feel we have such sunk costs in our often-wrongheaded opinions that we are willing to perish for them. I was a biology major in college for a few years, with vague plans of medical school, vaguely until I switched to journalism. I would not pretend to be a scientist based on that curtailed education, but I did spend 36 years in medical publishing. As a production editor and later as a submission systems manager, I came to understand the significant work of researchers and the selfless work of the many peer reviewers who help editors determine which studies merit publication. For many journals I worked with, the acceptance rates were astonishingly small. MAGA conspiracy heads might call that publication process elitist, and claim that people with worthwhile ideas are being kept out of the conversation. Most people in the sciences, however, understand the process as separating the wheat from the chaff by culling out the many papers that for one reason or another — perhaps poor design or insignificant findings — fail to advance scientific knowledge. But you don't need any understanding of science to understand that what Trump and his party of grifters and religious zealots are doing to universities by withholding research funding will be economically devastating to this country, slowing scientific progress and seriously disrupting the lives and careers of many researchers, technicians, lab assistants and students. The long-term negative effects of Trump's attack on science, which are also part of the full-spectrum MAGA assault on education and the nonpartisan civil service, will likely be even worse. Students will be increasingly reluctant to pursue careers in science. Only a months ago, STEM courses in high school and college were viewed as critical to the future of American ingenuity and enterprise, a big part of what actually made America great. It's impossible to gauge just how much damage will be done as we ban vaccines, deny climate science and make measles great again. Many MAGA supporters don't want to share 'their' America with brown people who may or may not be citizens; too many of them welcome the persecution and deportation of longtime U.S. residents who put in long hours at child care centers, hotels and restaurants, construction and landscaping companies, hospitals and nursing homes, and in agricultural fields, doing the thankless and often grueling work of picking and delivering the crops that feed the nation. Britain's decision to leave the European Union — one of the worst self-inflicted wounds of recent political history — has cost the U.K. an estimated 6% drop in GDP so far. The probable result of MAGA's lust to spend billions on hiring more masked, secret police-style ICE agents to deport hard-working, tax-paying immigrants, even if we look beyond the human suffering, will be a Brexit-level recession on steroids. Ultimately, what our felonious, ever-grifting president wants to do is to destroy all expertise in this country. That's what autocrats do. The manchild MAGA leader can't stand for any so-called experts to question him when he makes idiotic suggestions about public health proposes setting off nuclear bombs inside a hurricane or tries to change the longstanding name of a geographical feature to gratify his fragile ego. He wants to claim that his supposedly big and beautiful bill is the most popular legislation in history and that he's the greatest president ever, and doesn't want to hear egghead historians tell him otherwise. Trump hates to be questioned — so he hates journalists, scientists and anyone else with the kind of education that encourages critical thinking. That's why he has surrounded himself with an entire Cabinet of white nationalist frat boys, shameless sycophants and fellow grifters — not to mention a supermajority of right-wing Supreme Court justices who appear ready to hand him absolute power. 'American Robin,' a poem by Barbara Crooker that was recently featured in George Bilgere's 'Poetry Town' newsletter, is about our inability to respond appropriately to the devastation of human-made climate change. But it applies equally well to all the anti-science, misogynist, racist, Dark Enlightenment nonsense coming from the right that seeks to rob you, your children and your grandchildren of a financially and environmentally secure future. It begins this way: Here's that bird again, launching from the rhododendron, banging his forehead on my living room window. Thump. Thump. Does he see his own reflection in the glass or does he see a rival, a threat to his nest? I hang a black raptor silhouette in the middle square, but that does not deter him. Knock yourself out, I keep thinking. Next, I try cardboard, then a sheet of newspaper smeared with its terrible news. He comes back. Do I admire him for his persistence or shrug at his stupidity? Thunk. Thunk. Read the whole poem; I'll wait. One could read Crooker's dismay at the American robin's thumps and thunks against her windowpane as a rhyme for the name of a certain infamous conman turned populist demagogue. But that is perhaps unfair — to the poet and the bird. This article previously appeared in slightly different form at Medium. Used by permission. The post Why MAGA hates science so much appeared first on Solve the daily Crossword
New York Times
18-05-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Energized by Kennedy, Texas ‘Mad Moms' Are Chipping Away at Vaccine Mandates
Rebecca Hardy and Michelle Evans helped found Texans for Vaccine Choice with a group of like-minded women in 2015, as measles was spreading in California. They defeated legislation tightening Texas school vaccine requirements, and helped oust the lawmaker who wrote it, earning a catchy nickname: 'mad moms in minivans.' Now, as a measles outbreak that began in West Texas spreads to other parts of the country, the 'mad moms' have a slew of new allies. The 2024 elections ushered in a wave of freshman Republicans who back their goal of making all vaccinations voluntary. But no ally may be as influential as the one they gained in Washington: Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation's most prominent vaccine skeptic. More than five dozen vaccine-related bills have been introduced in the Texas Legislature this year. Last week, the Texas House passed three of them. Those bills would make it easier for parents to exempt their children from school requirements; effectively bar vaccine makers from advertising in Texas; and prevent doctors from denying an organ transplant to people who are unvaccinated. The Association of Immunization Managers, a national organization of state and local immunization officials, is tracking 545 vaccine-related bills in state legislatures around the country, 180 more than last year — evidence, the group's leaders say, that Mr. Kennedy is changing the national conversation. After peaking at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the number of vaccine-related bills had come down in recent years. But the big fear of public health leaders that began during the pandemic, and accelerated with Mr. Kennedy's political rise — that states will undo school vaccine mandates — has so far not come to pass. 'For the 10 years that Texans for Vaccine Choice has existed, we have had a federal government that has been wholly irrelevant or working against us,' said Ms. Hardy, the group's president. 'We're excited about having individuals in the federal government who will actually cooperate with us. But what exactly that means, we don't know.' The women of Texans for Vaccine Choice have long been inspired by Mr. Kennedy. When the Texas bill that would have tightened vaccine requirements was introduced in 2015, he spoke out vigorously against it. 'I don't think it's appropriate to force people to undergo, or to have their children undergo, a medical procedure in this country,' he said then. In 2019, the group hosted Mr. Kennedy for an event at the State Capitol in Austin. Then came the 2024 election. Ms. Hardy said that after a decade of watching political speeches, she rarely gets emotional. But last year, when she watched Mr. Kennedy announce that he was merging his campaign with Donald J. Trump's, 'I had tears in my eyes.' As health secretary, Mr. Kennedy has broken with his predecessors by refusing to advocate for vaccination. In response to the measles outbreak, he acknowledged that vaccines 'do prevent infection,' but cast the decision to vaccinate as a personal one. Testifying before Congress last week, he refused to say whether, if he were a new parent, he would vaccinate his children against measles, polio or chickenpox. 'I don't want to seem like I'm being evasive,' Mr. Kennedy said, ' but I don't think people should be taking medical advice from me.' With vaccination rates already dropping, public health experts say it may not matter whether bills eroding vaccine mandates become law; all states already offer either religious or philosophical exemptions to school vaccine requirements. But the vocal activism surrounding the bills is encouraging more parents to seek those exemptions, experts say. Public health leaders say that could be dangerous, and they point to the current measles outbreak as proof. Since the first cases emerged in West Texas earlier this year, measles has killed two unvaccinated children and one adult, and sickened more than 1,000 people in 30 states, making it the worst measles outbreak in the United States in 25 years. 'It used to be that we would see a bill introduced as a message bill — the intent was never to become law,' said Brent Ewig, the chief policy officer of the immunization managers group. 'What we're concerned about now is that some of those message bills are clearly intended to reduce parents' confidence in vaccination, and that will lead to lower rates. And that just invites more tragedy.' In Republican-led states around the country, vaccine debates are playing out much as they are in Texas: The anti-vaccine movement is energized but advancing in fits and starts. 'They are making these small, incremental gains at the edges, tweaking language that makes it easier to obtain exemptions or raising the visibility that exemptions exist,' said Northe Saunders, executive director of the SAFE Communities Coalition, a pro-vaccine advocacy group. 'The castle stands, but they are chipping away at the mortar around the base.' Idaho last month became the first state in the nation to outlaw vaccine mandates, after having the highest school vaccine exemption rate in the country, 14 percent, during the 2023-2024 school year. But the 'Idaho Medical Freedom Act,' signed into law by Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, includes exemptions for hospitals and existing school mandates. In West Virginia, Gov. Patrick Morrisey, a Republican who has appeared with Mr. Kennedy to condemn sugary beverages and food dyes, recently issued an executive order providing religious and philosophical exemptions to school requirements for vaccines. But the legislature refused to codify the order to give it the force of law. As opponents of vaccination have turned their rhetoric away from vaccine injuries and autism and instead emphasized personal freedom, they have picked up Republican support. The coronavirus pandemic accentuated the trend, making vaccination a partisan issue. Rekha Lakshmanan, the chief strategy officer of The Immunization Partnership, a Texas nonprofit that advocates for vaccination, noticed the shift in 2015. Until then, she said support for immunization was bipartisan. The defeat of the bill that moved Texans for Vaccine Choice to action, she said, was 'when you could see the switch flip.' Ms. Evans and Ms. Hardy said they were on defense, 'killing bad bills,' for the next eight years. But in 2023, they helped pass five pieces of legislation. As a result of their work, state law now requires doctors who accept reimbursement from Medicaid or the federal Children's Health Insurance Program to treat unvaccinated patients. Businesses cannot be sued for failing to comply with public health recommendations during a pandemic, and Covid-19 vaccine mandates are against the law. The vaccine exemption bill that passed the Texas House last week is the group's top legislative priority this year. The measure would enable parents to download and print their own 'reasons of conscience' vaccine exemption forms from home and deliver them to their child's school. The current system is more cumbersome; the Texas Department of State Health Services must send a form, and requires it to be notarized. 'There's no other medical procedure where you have to get permission from the state to say no,' Ms. Hardy said. 'And that's a barrier to liberty and free exercise of your deeply held beliefs.' On a sunny day in March, Ms. Evans, the Texans for Vaccine Choice political director, roamed the corridors of the State Capitol in Austin, trying to drum up supporters for the measure. Her path to advocacy, she said, began with her second child, a daughter who received a diagnosis of autism after her first birthday. Ms. Evans began exploring the proposition, now discredited, that there is a link between autism and vaccines. She also worked on a 2016 documentary, 'Vaxxed,' that questions vaccine safety and was produced by Del Bigtree, who later became Mr. Kennedy's communications Ms. Evans is a familiar figure at the State Capitol. State Representative Shelley Luther, a freshman Republican and Texans for Vaccine Choice ally, greeted her with a hug. Ms. Luther, who was jailed in 2020 for opening her hair salon in violation of Covid restrictions, wrote the bill that would effectively ban vaccine ads in Texas. Mr. Kennedy, too, favors banning pharmaceutical ads from television. 'Great minds!' Ms Luther exclaimed. Other Republicans were equally enthusiastic about the health secretary. State Representative Nate Schatzline, another freshman Republican and a Christian pastor who had recently moved back to Texas from California, said Mr. Kennedy's 'Make America Healthy Again' agenda 'won over a lot of middle class moms,' including his wife. Still, the Texans for Vaccine Choice legislative agenda faced hurdles. Its high priority bills were not getting hearings in the Texas House Committee on Public Health; the panel's Republican chairman, State Representative Gary VanDeaver, was standing in the way. He said in March that he did not want to 'do anything that's going to endanger the citizens of our state in a measles outbreak.' A few weeks later, Texans for Vaccine Choice publicly accused Mr. VanDeaver of 'stonewalling.' Before long, both the organ transplant bill and the medical exemptions bill received hearings, clearing their way for last week's passage in the House. (Ms. Luther's bill, on vaccine advertising, was handled by a different committee.) Ms. Hardy is optimistic that all three measures will soon pass the Senate and become law. Her 'dream agenda,' she said, 'is getting to a place where your vaccination status is irrelevant to your participation in society in Texas.' Five years ago she did not believe that would happen in her lifetime. Today, she is optimistic that it will. Still, Ms. Evans says that even with Mr. Kennedy in office, it may take years to get there. 'I know we're going to have to chip away at this very slowly,' Ms. Evans said. 'Every session, we get closer, inch by inch. But I don't think I'll be putting myself out of a job anytime soon.'
