Public health has been bracingly terrible since the start of the second Trump administration, with certified freakshow Robert F. Kennedy Jr. leading the Department of Health and Human Services. But it feels like these creeps are now hitting their stride—and it’s real bad.
Acceding to whines from the nursing home industry, the government is looking at undoing COVID-era mandates that require such facilities to track and report respiratory infections on a weekly basis. The former Biden administration had made those requirements permanent as it wound down, but we live in hell now, so they’re probably going away.
Yeah, we wouldn’t want to know if another pandemic is bubbling up or if a particular chain of facilities is especially unsafe. Knowing stuff is for suckers.
Per the industry, it’s just too gosh darn burdensome to track such things. Perhaps you have trouble keeping track because your industry let its facilities become raging hotbeds of infection during the COVID pandemic?
But this isn’t just about the administration’s usual desire to let big business do whatever it wants at the expense of Americans’ health. It’s also about how if you don’t have any requirement to report COVID numbers, you don’t have to deal with any reports of rising COVID numbers.
And speaking of rising COVID numbers …
Though this season’s COVID-19 vaccine is theoretically available, the administration has been sitting on providing it to the federal Vaccines for Children program. Eleven states and one territory are “universal” users of that program, meaning that all children get vaccine access through it. In other states, it provides vaccines for Alaskan Native and Native American children, un- and under-insured kids, and kids on Medicaid.
All told, about 52% of children are eligible for vaccination through VFC, according to a 2024 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Apparently unable to resist the idea that they could harm millions with ease and have that harm fall disproportionately on lower-income families, the administration dragged its feet on providing the COVID vaccine to the program.
However, on Wednesday, after nearly a month of limbo, The Washington Post reported that there will be access through the program again soon, whenever that may mean. Nevertheless, the whole episode raises the grim specter that this may be only the beginning, and that the administration may decide to withhold additional vaccines from the program.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is also gleefully kicking 760,000 people off the Affordable Care Act plans for “fraud.” Exactly what constitutes “fraud” in this case—well, the administration hasn’t made it clear.
Oh well. If we just up our peptides or our nootropic stack or eat way more meat or something, that will probably fix everything. Or maybe just coat ourselves in beef tallow. Hear that stuff works wonders.
We’ll get straight to the point: The financial hardships that Daily Kos is facing this year are tough.
We continue to be paywall-free. We continue to be supported by our readers, not billionaires or corporations. But we need to bring in more revenue. We are leaning on our community more than ever to help make ends meet.
