Epidemics

Subterms

    Latest story

    113 Shares41 Views

    A Skeptical G.O.P. Senator Makes His Peace With Kennedy

    by

    After voting to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary, Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor and Republican of Louisiana, is embracing the “gestalt” of Kennedy’s measles response.Perhaps no vote was as agonizing for Senator Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican and medical doctor, than his vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as President Trump’s health secretary. Mr. Cassidy wondered aloud for days how Mr. Kennedy, the nation’s most vocal and powerful critic of vaccinations, might handle an infectious disease crisis.Now, as a measles outbreak rages in West Texas, Mr. Cassidy has found out. It all comes down, he said, to “the gestalt.”On Monday, days after the Texas outbreak killed an unvaccinated child, Mr. Cassidy, the chairman of the Senate Health Committee, was clipping down a Capitol corridor when he was asked about Mr. Kennedy. He pointed to a Fox News Digital opinion piece in which Mr. Kennedy advised parents to consult their doctors about vaccination, while calling it a “personal” decision.“That Fox editorial was very much encouraging people to get vaccinated,” he said.Reminded that Mr. Kennedy had described it as a personal choice, Mr. Cassidy thought for a moment. “If you want to like, parse it down to the line, you can say, ‘Discuss with your doctor,’” Mr. Cassidy said. “He also said, ‘We’re making vaccinations available. We’re doing this for vaccination. We’re doing that for vaccination.’ So if you take the gestalt of it, the gestalt was, ‘Let’s get vaccinated!’”Mr. Cassidy’s assessment — that the whole of Mr. Kennedy’s message was more than the sum of its parts — reflects how the measles outbreak has put a spotlight on how Mr. Trump’s unorthodox choice to run the country’s top health agency has brought a once-fringe perspective into the political mainstream, creating discomfort for some Republicans.As the founder and chairman of his nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, and later as a presidential candidate, Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly downplayed the benefits of vaccination. He has also repeatedly suggested that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine causes autism, despite extensive research that has found no link.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 75 Shares114 Views

      in Elections

      Kennedy’s Anti-Vaccine Views Don’t Represent America

      by

      There is very little that Americans can agree on these days. Half of people report that religion is very important to them, while more than a quarter say it’s not. Just under half of parents are satisfied with the quality of their children’s education, while the other half are not. Even sports, often considered America’s pastime, draw the interest of only a little over one third of Americans.But one thing nearly everyone agrees on? Vaccines are good.This simple fact has been overshadowed by fears about what will happen to vaccine policy under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new secretary of health and human services. Mr. Kennedy has a long history of vaccine skepticism, and critics fear his leadership could lead to interference with vaccine programs or even withdrawal of vaccines from the market. Such moves are already roiling some state health programs. In Louisiana, the Health Department will “no longer promote mass vaccination,” instead leaving vaccine education to medical providers.What has been overlooked in discussions about Mr. Kennedy’s future agenda is one key fact: Vaccines remain enormously popular. Given this broad support, politicians should think twice about targeting something so widely valued.Recent reports in the news media and medical journals highlight a decline in the proportion of kindergartners who have received the measles, mumps, rubella shot. In the last five years, national coverage has fallen to 93 percent, from 95 percent, and in some states like Idaho, it is as low as 80 percent. But while these numbers fall short of the national goal of 95 percent required to maintain herd immunity for measles, they remain a resounding show of confidence.This confidence extends not just to the M.M.R. vaccine. Some 92 percent of American children received the polio vaccine by age 2, and more than 90 percent were vaccinated against hepatitis B. And it’s not just because of school requirements. Nearly nine in 10 Americans — including 86 percent of Republicans — say the benefits of childhood vaccines outweigh the risks.Unlike children, who typically have regular checkups and managed vaccination schedules through their pediatricians, many adults don’t have a doctor checking in with them on immunization. Yet nearly eight in 10 adults have still received at least one Covid-19 vaccination. Four in 10 get the annual flu vaccine, which prevents severe illness but not infection. That number rises to 70 percent among older adults, the population most at risk. While there is room for improvement, these numbers are solid indicators that vaccines are in good standing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      A. Cornelius Baker, Champion of H.I.V. Testing, Dies at 63

      by

      Working inside the government and out, he lobbied to improve the lives of people with H.I.V. and AIDS, particularly those who belonged to minority groups.A. Cornelius Baker, who spent nearly 40 years working with urgency and compassion to improve the lives of people with H.I.V. and AIDS by promoting testing, securing federal funding for research and pushing for a vaccine, died on Nov. 8 at his home in Washington. He was 63.Gregory Nevins, his companion, said the cause was hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.Mr. Baker — who was gay and who tested positive for H.I.V. — became active in Washington in the 1980s, during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. He soon distinguished himself as an eloquent voice for people with H.I.V. and AIDS. A policy wonk and health-care expert, he held positions in the federal government and with nonprofits, including serving as the head of a clinic for the L.G.B.T.Q. community.“He was very kind, very embracing and inclusive — his circles, both professionally and personal, were the most diverse I’ve ever seen, which was driven by his Christian values,” said Douglas M. Brooks, a director of the Office of National AIDS Policy during the Obama administration. “His ferocity appeared when people were marginalized, othered or forgotten.”In 1995, as the executive director of the National Association of People with AIDS, he helped establish June 27 as National H.I.V. Testing Day. “This effort was designed to help reduce the stigma of H.I.V. testing and to normalize it as a component of regular health screening,” Mr. Baker wrote in 2012 on the website of FHI 360, a global health organization for which he served as technical adviser.As an adviser to the National Black Gay Men’s Advocacy Coalition from 2006 to 2014, Mr. Baker worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health to help fund research for the care of Black gay men with H.I.V. and AIDS.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      A Bird Flu Pandemic Would Be One of the Most Foreseeable Catastrophes in History

      by

      Almost five years after Covid blew into our lives, the main thing standing between us and the next global pandemic is luck. And with the advent of flu season, that luck may well be running out.The H5N1 avian flu, having mutated its way across species, is raging out of control among the nation’s cattle, infecting roughly a third of the dairy herds in California alone. Farmworkers have so far avoided tragedy, as the virus has not yet acquired the genetic tools to spread among humans. But seasonal flu will vastly increase the chances of that outcome. As the colder weather drives us all indoors to our poorly ventilated houses and workplaces, we will be undertaking an extraordinary gamble that the nation is in no way prepared for.All that would be more than bad enough, but we face these threats gravely hobbled by the Biden administration’s failure — one might even say refusal — to respond adequately to this disease or to prepare us for viral outbreaks that may follow. And the United States just registered its first known case of an exceptionally severe strain of Mpox.As bad as the Biden administration has been on pandemic prevention, of course, it’s about to be replaced by something far worse. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s pick to lead the nation’s vast public health agency, has already stated he would not prioritize research or vaccine distribution were we to face another pandemic. Kennedy may even be hastening its arrival through his advocacy for raw milk, which can carry high levels of the H5N1 virus and is considered a possible vector for its transmission.We might be fine. Viruses don’t always manage to adapt to new species, despite all the opportunities. But if there is a bird flu pandemic soon, it will be among the most foreseeable catastrophes in history.Devastating influenza pandemics arise throughout the ages because the virus is always looking for a way in, shape shifting to jump among species in ever novel forms. Flu viruses have a special trick: If two different types infect the same host — a farmworker with regular flu who also gets H5N1 from a cow — they can swap whole segments of their RNA, potentially creating an entirely new and deadly virus that has the ability to spread among humans. It’s likely that the 1918 influenza pandemic, for example, started as a flu virus of avian origin that passed through a pig in eastern Kansas. From there it likely infected its first human victim before circling the globe on a deadly journey that killed more people than World War I.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      How Will Trump’s Covid Contrarians Handle the Next Pandemic?

      by

      President-elect Donald J. Trump had already succeeded in rattling the nation’s public health and biomedical establishment by the time he announced on Tuesday that he had picked Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to run the National Institutes of Health. But amid growing fears of a deadly bird flu pandemic, perhaps no one was more rattled than experts in infectious disease.Dr. Bhattacharya, a Stanford University medical economist and outspoken opponent of lockdowns, masking, school closures and other Covid-19 mitigation measures, and Mr. Trump’s other health picks have one thing in common. They are all considered Covid contrarians whose views raise questions about how they would handle an infectious disease crisis.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mr. Trump’s choice for health secretary, has said he wants the N.I.H. to focus on chronic disease and “give infectious disease a break for about eight years.” Dr. Martin Makary, the president-elect’s choice to run the Food and Drug Administration, incorrectly predicted in 2021 that the nation was “racing toward an extremely low level of infection.”Dr. David Weldon, a Republican former congressman who is Mr. Trump’s choice to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has espoused the debunked theory that thimerosal, a mercury compound in certain vaccines, causes autism. As a congressman, he introduced legislation that would strip the C.D.C. of its role in ensuring vaccine safety, saying the agency had a “conflict of interest” because it also promotes vaccination.And Dr. Mehmet Oz, the talk show host who has been picked by Mr. Trump to run Medicare and Medicaid, prodded officials in the first Trump administration to give emergency authorization for the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19. The F.D.A. later revoked the authorization when studies showed the drug carried risks, including serious heart issues, to coronavirus patients.Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he wants to focus on chronic diseases rather than infectious diseases as head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      How Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Could Destroy One of Civilization’s Best Achievements

      by

      Even among the chaos generated by Donald Trump’s recent cabinet picks, one stands out for the extensive suffering and lasting institutional damage it may cause: his choice of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Health and Human Services Department.Modern public health is one of civilization’s great achievements. In 1900, up to 30 percent of infants in some U.S. cities never made it to their first birthday. Since that time, vaccines, sanitation and effective medications have eliminated many previously commonplace illnesses and consigned others to extreme rarity. It’s easy to take much of that for granted, especially as those days have receded from living memory, but those achievements are fragile and can be lost.The danger isn’t merely that Kennedy — who has almost no experience in government or large-scale administration, and who has shown a sometimes breathtakingly loose connection to the truth — would be incompetent or misleading. At the helm of a department with over 80,000 employees and a $3 trillion budget, one that oversees key agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, he would have control over the nation’s medicines, food safety, vaccines and medical research. With that power he could inflict significant harm to the public health system — and to the public trust that would be needed to rebuild it once he’s gone.Kennedy has brought attention to some worthwhile public health concerns, such as the downsides of ultraprocessed foods and the value of exercise. But beyond those reasonable issues, he has filled the internet and the airwaves with views on vaccines, food safety, medicines and supplements that are a mix of grave misrepresentations and far-fetched conspiracies.His opposition to vaccines has attracted the most attention. He doesn’t say just that they merit closer scrutiny, as some “vaccine skeptics” claim. Last year he told a podcaster that “there’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.” When it later became expedient, he denied that he had ever said such a thing. The truth is that he has long promoted the lie that vaccines cause autism, and the extravagantly false claim that “researchers have done very little to study the health” of children after they get shots for once-common diseases.Outside of the medical community, few people still know about all the diseases whose safe and effective vaccines he is lying about, so let me remind you about one of them: diphtheria. Once known as “the strangling angel of children,” it causes its young victims to slowly and painfully suffocate, turn blue and gasp as a thick film fills their throat. They lie dying for many agonizing days. The disease has been all but wiped out, but in Spain a few years ago, it cost the life of an unvaccinated boy of 6. His distraught antivax parents promptly vaccinated their surviving child.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Gilead Agrees to Allow Generic Version of Groundbreaking H.I.V. Shot in Poor Countries

      by

      Many middle-income countries are left out of the deal, widening a gulf in access to critical medicines.The drugmaker Gilead Sciences on Wednesday announced a plan to allow six generic pharmaceutical companies in Asia and North Africa to make and sell at a lower price its groundbreaking drug lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injection that provides near-total protection from infection with H.I.V.Those companies will be permitted to sell the drug in 120 countries, including all the countries with the highest rates of H.I.V., which are in sub-Saharan Africa. Gilead will not charge the generic drugmakers for the licenses.Gilead says the deal, made just weeks after clinical trial results showed how well the drug works, will provide rapid and broad access to a medication that has the potential to end the decades-long H.I.V. pandemic.But the deal leaves out most middle- and high-income countries — including Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, China and Russia — that together account for about 20 percent of new H.I.V. infections. Gilead will sell its version of the drug in those countries at higher prices. The omission reflects a widening gulf in health care access that is increasingly isolating the people in the middle.Gilead charges $42,250 per patient per year for lenacapavir in the United States, where it is approved as a treatment for H.I.V. The company has said nothing about what lenacapavir will cost when used to prevent H.I.V. infections, a process called pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.The generics makers — four companies in India, one in Pakistan and one in Egypt — are expected to sell it for much less. Researchers at Liverpool University found the drug could profitably be produced for as little as $40 per patient per year, if it were being purchased in large volumes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      W.H.O. Authorizes Mpox Vaccine, Clearing Way for Use in Africa

      by

      The decision is a crucial step in getting shots to the Democratic Republic of Congo, the center of the outbreak.The World Health Organization has given its authorization to a first vaccine to protect against mpox, a decision announced in such haste on Friday that it caught even the head of the company that makes the vaccine by surprise.The vaccine, made by the Danish company Bavarian Nordic, has been approved by the regulatory authorities in Europe as well as the United States and other high-income countries since a global mpox outbreak in 2022. But low- and middle-income countries rely on the W.H.O., through a process called prequalification, to determine which drugs, vaccines and health technologies are safe and efficient uses of limited health funding, and the organization had declined to act until now.The W.H.O. had come under increasing criticism for declaring a global public health emergency for mpox last month without giving a vaccine that prequalification stamp of approval, or a more provisional form of approval called emergency use authorization. Bavarian Nordic first submitted its safety and effectiveness data on the vaccine, called Jynneos, to the W.H.O. in 2023. The W.H.O. had defended its slow pace of review, saying that it needed to subject the vaccine to careful study because it, and two others that have been used to protect against mpox, were originally designed as smallpox immunizations, and because delivering it in low-resource settings such as Central Africa would involve factors different from those relating to its use in high-income countries.But on Friday morning, the W.H.O. suddenly said it was authorizing the shot.“This first prequalification of a vaccine against mpox is an important step in our fight against the disease, both in the context of the current outbreaks in Africa, and in future,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O. director general, said in a statement.Paul Chaplin, Bavarian Nordic’s chief executive, said he was among the many who had been caught off guard.“We’ve got there eventually — I don’t know quite how,” he said. “But it’s good news. It’s going to make the regulatory pathway much easier.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Why House Republicans Are Targeting China Weeks Before the Election

      by

      The G.O.P. pushed through an array of legislation to get tough on China, seeking to persuade voters that they are the party that will protect Americans from economic and military threats from Beijing.The House this week tackled a long-promised package of bills to get tough on China, but few if any have a chance of becoming law after Republicans opted to prioritize a handful of politically divisive measures that Democrats oppose.For months, House leaders had promised a bipartisan show of force against the United States’ biggest economic and military adversary, including curtailing investments in sensitive Chinese industries, clamping down on data theft and espionage, and ensuring more Chinese imports were subject to taxes and forced labor standards.But only some of those proposals made it to the floor this week. Instead, Republican leaders added a handful of partisan measures that appear to be aimed at portraying their party as stronger on countering China and Democrats, including the Biden administration, as weak.It comes weeks before the elections in which the White House and control of Congress are up for grabs.“Because the White House has chosen not to confront China and protect America’s interests, House Republicans will,” Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, told reporters on Tuesday.Here’s a look at what the House did, and why.Subjecting international pandemic agreements to Senate treaty approval.Republicans, who have castigated the World Health Organization for its response to the coronavirus pandemic, pushed through a bill that would require Senate ratification of any W.H.O. agreement on pandemic preparedness. The organization is exploring ways to streamline the international response to the next pandemic.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More