Two stories from yesterday are definitely dumbest timeline fodder.
Via Reuters: Inside RFK Jr.’s push to dismantle decades of U.S. vaccine policy.
Early this year, Kennedy went to his director of the NIH, Jay Bhattacharya, with a costly proposal, according to two officials familiar with the request: The research agency should spend $5 billion studying the link between vaccines and autism. That would have dedicated more than a tenth of the NIH’s annual budget to investigating a hypothesis already refuted by scientists worldwide.
Kennedy ultimately dropped the plan, which likely would have required congressional approval, after Bhattacharya convinced him the agency had dedicated enough resources to researching autism’s causes, including a $50 million effort launched in September, the officials said.
He is exactly who we thought he was: a crank with fringe views who has been given an incredibly important position. As a result, public health in the United States is being set back substantially (decades? a generation? more?) while he wastes time and money pursuing a blatantly anti-science agenda.
The health secretary has rejected studies involving millions of people over the past two decades which have concluded there is no credible link. Leading medical organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Medical Association say Kennedy’s refusal to accept such findings both increases vaccine hesitancy and devalues more evidence-based efforts to help families struggling with autism.
Who needs research when Kennedy, you know, just knows there’s a problem?
And all those lives saved by vaccines? A pittance compared to his crusade to save us form austism, which, by the way, he clearly doesn’t even understand.
But wait! There’s more where that came from.
Via NBC News: U.S. military will test service members’ testosterone levels, Pete Hegseth says.
This sounds more like something from a supplement commercial than serious policy. Next up, testicle tanning!
Oddly enough, he is who we thought he was, a weekend TV host of limited intellect who shouldn’t be in charge of the military (or, really, anything).
Side note: the notion that serious policy is promulgated through Twitter videos underscores the fact that these people see themselves more as content creators than actual professionals in charge of important portions of our government.
BTW, Pete, how’s the war in Iran going? Maybe if we send some high-T warriors over there, we can get things back to the status quo ante.
It is stunning how utterly ridiculous this administration is.
