SaturTabby
- Via Cato At Liberty: Trump’s Trade Wars Harm Farmers and Taxpayers.
- Via CNBC: Weekly jobless claims surge to 241,000, more than expected, in latest sign of economic trouble.
- Via Axios: Amazon denies tariff pricing plan after White House calls it “hostile and political”. This is pure capitulation. If they can list sales taxes, why not tariffs? Further, why should the Trump administration care, since I have been told that the foreign countries pay the tariffs? Maybe some Trump whisperer can explain it to me.
- Via The Hill: Trump fires Doug Emhoff, Biden appointees from Holocaust museum board.
- Via The Hill: Gabbard won’t rule out 2028 presidential run. Whew! This was keeping me up at night!!
- Via the NYT: Kennedy Orders Search for New Measles Treatments Instead of Urging Vaccination.
With the United States facing its largest single measles outbreak in 25 years, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will direct federal health agencies to explore potential new treatments for the disease, including vitamins, according to an H.H.S. spokesman.
[…]
Critics have said Mr. Kennedy has focused too much on untested treatments — such as cod liver oil supplements — and offered only muted support for the measles vaccine, which studies show is 97 percent effective in preventing infection.
[…]
Scientists have already thoroughly studied various vitamins and medications as potential treatments for measles, said Michael Osterholm an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota.
Decades of research have turned up no miracle treatment for the measles virus, which can cause pneumonia, making it difficult for patients to get oxygen into their lungs, and brain swelling, which can cause blindness, deafness and intellectual disabilities.
“It’s not that there’s been a lack of studies,” he said.
There is a weird hubris that allows a person to assert that medical science needs to be prodded to study some simplistic cure for diseases. Vitamins?! Why didn’t we think of that?!!!!
- Meanwhile, via The Guardian: World may be ‘post-herd immunity’ to measles, top US scientist says. That sounds bad.
Measles vaccination is believed to have saved more than 93 million lives worldwide between 1974 and 2024 and reduced overall childhood mortality.
But just imagine if they had just taken cod liver oil!
JFK Jr. rejects the germ theory of disease:
RFK Jr. rejects cornerstone of health science: Germ theory
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So fucking stupid. Instead of looking at the amazing civilization we’ve built, flawed as it is, that is allowing an unprecedented level of comfort and wealth to an unprecedented number of people, they’ve decided to go around removing the pillars and seeing what collapses. Because they don’t understand anything other than grievance.
So, she isn’t on board with the Trump Third Term? That sounds disloyal. Someone should ask Trump about this.
@Stormy Dragon: Since RFK Jr. prides himself on how healthily he lives, I’m sure, as an opponent of germ theory, he would have no problem downing a protein shake laced with Ebola and salmonella.
You know, I thought that Cato’s independence had been completely destroyed after the Koch brothers took it over by replacing Ed Crane.
So, what do these tea leaves mean?
As kooky as RFK Jr. is, does his ascendancy mean that there is a great deal of suspicion and hostility toward Big Pharma, which is merely misplaced? I mean, Big Pharma has had several very public scandals lately. The whole insulin pens thing, and then the oxycontin horrorshow.
I feel this means MAGA has stolen an issue that should be owned by Democrats. (It’s not the only one, either. Robert Reich is insisting that support for Trump and for Bernie Sanders comes from the same group, and that Democrats need to capture more of the “the game is rigged” vibe.)
@Jay L Gischer: The dislike of big pharma is nuanced. It’s OK if big pharma makes lots of money on stuff of which they approve, just not things they dont like. That would be stuff like vaccines and psychiatric medicines. They also dont like not being able to promote their quack cures that their tribe prefers. It’s not a coincidence that the famous quack Dr Oz was supported by Trump to run for senator. It’s not a coincidence that Ben Carson was selling a miracle cure for “Brain Heath”. Not a coincidence that so much of right wing media features ads for miracle supplements including vitamins and superfoods.
Steve