Vaccination and Immunization

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      Review: In ‘Eureka Day,’ Holding Space for Those You Hate

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      A hilarious new Broadway production asks: Can the superwoke vaxxers and anti-vaxxers at an elite private school learn to get along?Just in time, laughter is making a big comeback on Broadway. Better yet, it comes in several varieties.For catty yowling, check out Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard, wringing necks in “Death Becomes Her.” For helpless giggles, there’s Cole Escola as that cabaret legend Mary Todd Lincoln in “Oh, Mary!” And if you enjoy the hysteria of family fireworks, “Cult of Love” should leave you gasping.But the funniest character now on Broadway isn’t even a human being — or not exactly. Getting the biggest belly laughs in Jonathan Spector’s “Eureka Day,” which opened on Monday at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, is a yellow thumbs-up emoji.The emoji appears — chipper then aggravating then weirdly insidious — in a livestream meeting of parents and executive board members at Eureka Day, an upscale private school in Berkeley, Calif. As Don, the principal, tries to handle a looming crisis, using every banality at his new-age disposal, the conversation in the chat veers correspondingly out of control. His attempt to “unpack” issues calmly has instead disgorged a torrent of personal attacks, vulgar language and childish invective. By the end of the scene, the third of the play’s quick seven, the thumb seems like a different finger entirely.Spector’s hilarious poison-pen satire of educational wokeism has led us to that point with great care. A Manhattan Theater Club production, directed bracingly by Anna D. Shapiro, it begins, in 2018, with a kind of dramaturgical canapé to whet our appetites for the main dish. As the lights come up on the school’s bright library, prominently featuring a social justice collection, Don (Bill Irwin) is leading the board in a discussion about a proposed addition to the drop-down menu on the prospective parent application. Should it include “transracial adoptee” as an option among the many other ethnic identities offered?The point is argued with elaborate courtesy bordering on incomprehensibility. Meiko (Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz) says “the term itself is not offensive,” but Suzanne (Jessica Hecht) thinks it might be offensive “when you contextualize it in that way.” Eli (Thomas Middleditch) feels that failing to add the term would amount to a kind of erasure, given that “our Core Operating Principle here is that everyone should Feel Seen by this community.”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

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s Health Secretary Pick, Is Set to Meet with Lawmakers

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for health secretary, is set on Monday to begin a series of meetings with Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill to make his case for a spot in Mr. Trump’s cabinet.Mr. Kennedy will almost certainly be questioned about his longtime anti-vaccine advocacy. He has said that he does not want to take away access to vaccines, but has repeatedly questioned their safety, trying to link them to a rise in autism in children — a debunked theory.On Friday, The New York Times also reported that a lawyer helping Mr. Kennedy vet appointees for the incoming Trump administration had petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine.Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader and a survivor of polio, could be a key vote in Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation bid. In a statement Friday that did not name Mr. Kennedy, Mr. McConnell suggested that the petition could jeopardize his confirmation.“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,” Mr. McConnell said.Once nominated by a president, candidates for top-level positions in an administration must be confirmed by the Senate. Republicans will control the chamber, but their 53-47 majority means they can lose only a few votes and still confirm Mr. Trump’s picks.Mr. Kennedy is set to meet with Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a more moderate Republican, and some physicians in the party’s conference, including Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas.Mr. Kennedy, who ran for president as a Democrat and independent before dropping out of the race and endorsing Mr. Trump, will probably also be asked about views on abortion access.Former Vice President Mike Pence has called on Republican senators to reject Mr. Kennedy, citing his record of support for abortion rights.“On behalf of tens of millions of pro-life Americans, I respectfully urge Senate Republicans to reject this nomination and give the American people a leader who will respect the sanctity of life as secretary of Health and Human Services,” Mr. Pence said in a statement. More

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      Trump Plans Jan. 6 Pardons and Deportations as First Acts in Office

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump said in a new interview that he will use the opening hours of his presidency to pardon people convicted of participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol assault, begin deportations of undocumented immigrants and increase oil production.He also said during the interview, which Time magazine published on Thursday, that he might supporting getting rid of some childhood vaccines if data shows links to autism. He declined to answer a question about whether he had talked with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia since the November election but said Ukraine should not have been allowed to fire U.S.-made missiles into Russia.Speaking of pardons in Jan. 6 cases, he said: “We’re going to do it very quickly, and it’s going to start in the first hour that I get into office.” He said the pardons would go to “nonviolent” people who were at the Capitol, which was overrun by Trump supporters after he lost the 2020 election. “A vast majority should not be in jail, and they’ve suffered gravely,” he said.The president-elect’s comments came during a wide-ranging interview conducted on Nov. 25 as part of the magazine’s choice of Mr. Trump to be its person of the year. In the interview, which the magazine said lasted more than an hour, the president-elect bragged that he had run a “flawless” campaign and that Democrats were out of touch with Americans.He also said he planed a “virtual closure of Department of Education in Washington,” though he did not explain what that meant. And he said that he might reverse President Biden’s expansion of Title IX protections, which includes prohibitions against harassment of transgender students.Americans “don’t want to see, you know, men playing in women’s sports. They don’t,” Mr. Trump said. “They don’t want to see all of this transgender, which is, it’s just taken over.”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

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      ‘Shoot Me Up With Everything’

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      For a reporter who covers infectious diseases, vaccines are an indispensable news gathering tool.Vaccines are an indispensable news gathering tool. They permit reporters to travel to areas where fatal or debilitating diseases are prevalent; exactly the places that warrant coverage by The New York Times.That’s why the Museum at The Times displays a carton that once contained the vaccine Ixiaro. It prevents Japanese encephalitis, which is related to yellow fever, dengue and West Nile virus. Mosquitoes spread the disease. It is considered endemic in much of Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific region.“The symptoms can be anything from a mild fever to, in rare cases, seizures and death,” Donald G. McNeil Jr. wrote in an email last week. “There’s no treatment. The vaccine isn’t recommended for most travelers to Asia, but if you go to rural areas and sleep in rooms with no A.C. or window screens — as I sometimes did — it’s protection.” He donated the Ixiaro carton the museum.Mr. McNeil is the author of “The Wisdom of Plagues: Lessons From 25 Years of Covering Pandemics” and is a frequent contributor to the website Medium. He worked for The Times from 1976 to 2021, covering many infectious diseases, most recently Covid-19.Many of his Times assignments took him to tropical areas. In 2014, aware that new vaccines had been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, he went to the New York Center for Travel and Tropical Medicine.“Shoot me up with everything,” Mr. McNeil said.Five jabs followed: Ixiaro; RabAvert, for rabies; Typhim Vi, for typhoid; a booster shot of a vaccine for tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough; and probably an inactivated polio vaccine. (The clinic didn’t enter the fifth injection on Mr. McNeil’s yellow vaccine record card.)“I don’t remember any bad side effects,” Mr. McNeil wrote. “The worst side effect I’ve ever had from a shot was from my second shingles shot — and all it did was make me feel sort of nauseous and flu-ish and I went to bed without supper. I’ve been very lucky that way.”“The rabies shot was one of those ‘it wouldn’t hurt to have it’ decisions. I’m not a dog cuddler, and I definitely don’t pet strays. But they’re often hanging around in poor countries, and I did have to get up close to village dogs in rural Chad for a piece on how Guinea worm, a human parasite, was establishing a reservoir in dogs. And in some of the places I’ve slept, it wasn’t unthinkable that I might be bitten by a rat or a bat.” More

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      Trump’s Choices for Health Agencies Suggest a Shake-Up Is Coming

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      The picks to oversee public health have all pushed back against Covid policies or supported ideas that are outside the medical mainstream.A longtime leader of the anti-vaccine movement. A highly credentialed surgeon. A seven-term Florida congressman. A Fox News contributor with her own line of vitamins.President-elect Donald J. Trump’s eclectic roster of figures to lead federal health agencies is almost complete — and with it, his vision for a sweeping overhaul is coming into focus.Mr. Trump’s choices have varying backgrounds and public health views. But they have all pushed back against Covid policies or supported ideas that are outside the medical mainstream, including an opposition to vaccines. Together, they are a clear repudiation of business as usual.“What they’re saying when they make these appointments is that we don’t trust the people who are there,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and an adviser to the Food and Drug Administration.Some doctors and scientists are bracing themselves for the gutting of public health agencies, a loss of scientific expertise and the injection of politics into realms once reserved for academics. The result, they fear, could be worse health outcomes, more preventable deaths and a reduced ability to respond to looming health threats, like the next pandemic. “I’m very, very worried about the way that this all plays out,” Dr. Offit said.But other experts who expressed concerns about anti-vaccine views at the helms of the nation’s health agencies said that some elements of the picks’ unorthodox approaches were welcomed. After a pandemic that closed schools across the country and killed more than one million Americans, many people have lost faith in science and medicine, surveys show. And even some prominent public health experts were critical of the agencies’ Covid missteps and muddled messaging on masks and testing.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

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      Dr Martin Makary Chosen to Head the FDA

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Friday that he would nominate Dr. Martin A. Makary, a Johns Hopkins University surgeon with a contrarian streak, to be commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.In a post on social media, Mr. Trump said: “F.D.A. has lost the trust of Americans and lost sight of its primary goal as a regulator.” He said that Dr. Makary would work under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the president-elect’s choice for the cabinet-level role as health secretary, to “properly evaluate harmful chemicals poisoning our nation’s food supply and drugs.”“I am confident that Dr. Makary, having dedicated his career to high-quality, lower-cost care will restore the F.D.A. to the gold standard of scientific research and cut the bureaucratic red tape at the agency to make sure Americans get the medical cures and treatments they deserve,” Mr. Trump said in a statement.Mr. Trump announced two other top health picks on Friday evening as well. He chose Dr. Dave Weldon, a physician and former congressman from Florida, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.For years, Dr. Weldon championed the notion that thimerosal, a preservative once used widely in vaccines, caused an explosion of autism cases around the world. In 2007, he backed a bill proposing to take vaccine safety research out of the hands of the C.D.C. Health officials reject the idea that research shows any link between thimerosal and autism.Mr. Trump also put forward Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a physician and Fox News contributor, to be surgeon general. She worked caring for patients after Hurricane Katrina, an announcement from Mr. Trump said, and on the front lines of the Covid pandemic in New York City. She also markets vitamin B and vitamin C dietary supplements.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

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      Florida Surgeon General Urges End to Fluoride in Water, Backing RFK Jr.’s Push

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      Florida’s surgeon general issued guidance on Friday that called for a halt to adding fluoride to the water supply, backing a similar push by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, who was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, cited recent research that highlighted the potential risk of heightened exposure to the chemical — including lower I.Q.s in children. Health experts agree that excessive exposure to fluoride over a long period of time can cause health problems, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Dental Association say that fluoridated water does not pose any of these risks at the level currently recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency.“Due to the neuropsychiatric risk associated with fluoride exposure,” Dr. Ladapo’s guidance said, “particularly in pregnant women and children, and the wide availability of alternative sources of fluoride for dental health, the State Surgeon General recommends against community water fluoridation.”Dr. Ladapo has played a prominent role in Mr. DeSantis’s administration, often supporting the governor in political fights over pandemic-era health policy. More recently, Dr. Ladapo called for a halt to the use of Covid vaccines earlier this year, citing widely debunked concerns about contaminants in the vaccine.He also contradicted widespread medical guidance about the spread of measles, sending a letter to parents after an outbreak of the disease at an elementary school that said it was up to parents and guardians to determine when their children can attend school, even if those children have not been vaccinated for measles.The guidance on fluoridation in Florida follows heightened attention on the issue after recent statements by Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has no medical or public health degrees, and Mr. Trump. Mr. Kennedy declared on social media this month that, as president, Mr. Trump would advise communities to stop adding fluoride to drinking water. Mr. Kennedy described the chemical as “an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders and thyroid disease.”In a recent interview with NBC News, Mr. Trump said the idea of doing away with fluoridation “sounds OK to me.”Sheryl Gay Stolberg More

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      Jared Polis Wants to Win Back the Hippies

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      It’s such a bother when politicians have to go and complicate your clean narrative about why they’re succeeding.Last week, I spoke to Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado. Polis’s state was, if not a bright spot for Democrats, a less-dark one. In New York, Democrats lost 11 points off their 2020 margin; in New Jersey, 10 points; in Massachusetts, nine and a half points; in California, nine points (though votes are still being counted); in Illinois, seven points. In Colorado, the difference was two and a half points. What is Polis, who won re-election in 2022 by a 19-point margin, doing right?One answer — and this, to be honest, was the answer I’d gone looking for — is focusing relentlessly on the cost of living. “You can’t just do one policy and expect, somehow, people will know it,” Polis told me. “But they generally understand the drumbeat of 30, 40 things you’re doing, each of which reduces costs in a different way. And so that’s been our strategy: to flood the zone with this work to reduce costs.”Polis points with pride to his successful efforts to expand pre-K and kindergarten and get a public insurance option onto the Colorado health exchanges — but also to his rejection of proposals to add benefits that would drive up costs. He’s happy to brag about reducing the tax rate for both businesses and individuals, walking me through every decimal-point reduction he achieved, and the many bills he’s signed to make it easier to build homes.“When you say something a lot, it means you generally believe it,” Polis said. “So here’s a line I often use: We want the best solutions from the left and the right to save people money.”But during our conversation, and in the days after, another answer emerged — and for Democrats this one is a little more challenging. Polis is a dissenter from the trends that swept through Democratic governance during the pandemic. He was unusual among Democratic governors for the emphasis he put on both personal responsibility and personal liberty. Colorado opened early, sparking a tourism boom, and Polis tried to rely more on information than compulsion.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