It has been reported that, under the ardent anti-vax Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has named Lousiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham as its new principal deputy director. His track record speaks fro itself: Under Abraham’s leadership, the Louisiana health department waited months to inform residents about a deadly whooping cough (pertussis) outbreak. Earlier this year, Abraham told a Louisiana news outlet that he doesn’t recommend COVID-19 vaccines because, as he put it: “I prefer natural immunity.” In February, Abraham ordered the health department to stop promoting mass vaccinations, including flu shots, and barred staff from running seasonal vaccine campaigns. Abraham also is a big fan of using the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine and the de-worming drug ivermectin to treat COVID-19, despite studies finding both ineffective against the viral infection. In 2021, Abraham was the seventh-highest prescriber of ivermectin out of 12,000 practicing physicians in his state. This fits with his record of troubling prescriptions. In 2013, he was one of the top opioid prescribers.
Furthermore, Abraham believes the Affordable Care Act should be repealed and opposes the expansion of Medicaid. On the topic of COVID-19, Abraham has said that masking, lockdowns and vaccination requirements “were practically ineffective.” He said that the adverse effects of COVID vaccines were “suppressed”, that “we don’t know” whether recipients of COVID vaccines can safely donate blood, and suggested that COVID vaccines may be linked to miscarriages. Abraham issued a directive in February 2025 instructing Louisiana state workers to end long-standing mass vaccination clinics and stop promoting seasonal vaccines.
Of course, Abraham’s views are well-aligned with Kennedy’s. Abraham has even spoken out against adding fluoride to water, like the health secretary. Kennedy is diligently working to reshape the CDC to fit his anti-vaccine views, conspiracy theories, and unproven ideas. This was made very clear recently, when Kennedy directed the CDC to rewrite one of its webpages to falsely link vaccines to autism.
As soon as the appointment had been announced, experts started protesting against it. “Dr. Abraham is unqualified,” said Thomas Farley, who served as health commissioner in both New York City and Philadelphia. Dr. Nirav Shah, an epidemiologist who served on the CDC under the Biden administration, criticized the appointment on X. “Dr. Abraham has been on the wrong side of several important public health issues over the past decade,” Shah wrote. “His track record, which includes undermining confidence in vaccines and minimizing the risk of outbreaks, disqualifies him from steering an agency charged with protecting all Americans.”
12 Responses to The demolition of US public health continues: the new deputy director of the CDC prefers “natural immunity” to vaccines
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
JFK Jr. swimming in C. diff–contaminated water should tell us what else we may all eventually face.
TWiP 270: They bake my noodle (Minute 1:49) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcrSVArCDuY
Well, that makes perfect sense, en fits right into the Make America Healthy Again policy(*).
The reasoning is as follows: the simplest and cheapest way to increase the overall health of a population is to take away their vaccines, their healthcare and their food benefits, and just wait a while. The weaker and older part of the population will die in large numbers, and what you’re left with is ‘naturally healthy'(**) – ta-daa!
*: As well as Trump’s racist and misogynistic agenda – because coloured people and women have traditionally always been more at risk health-wise than the white male population, and Trump’s decrees makes things much, much worse. Women have already died because doctors could not help them without risking 99 years in prison.
**: This eugenic argument is of course mostly false. Most of the children who contract vaccine-preventable disease do not die, but instead run a risk of chronic, often debilitating complications – e.g. hearing loss as a result of measles, or male infertility as a.result of mumps. And old folks who will contract flu in much larger numbers because they are denied their annual flu shots do not all die, but can be left with chronic lung disease as a result. And don’t forget the mental trauma that can result from serious suffering.
Surviving a serious disease generally does not leave people stronger, but rather the contrary. Which is why it is absolutely infuriating to see how these incompetent morons in the US are tearing down everything geared towards preventing disease.
I’m not convinced this is merely a matter of incompetence.
What we’re witnessing may reflect psychopathic tendencies—or, at the very least, an epigenetic anomaly or dysfunction in an underdeveloped or poorly compensated adult prefrontal cortex.
It could also involve a disruption in the balance between the ventral and dorsal prefrontal systems—one that, in cases like this, makes empathy virtually impossible.
“The Psychopath Inside”, by James Fallon.
@Sieglinde
You are of course correct: this incompetence is a characteristic of the administration as a whole.
Trump himself is far worse, and exhibits almost every single bad character trait that we know of:
– Malignant narcissism
– Sociopathy
– Delusions of grandeur
– Pathological lying
– Wanton cruelty
– Extreme greed
– Extreme corruptness
– Vindictiveness
– Hatefulness
– Misogyny
– Racism
– Stupidity
– Impulsiveness
The problem is that many of these traits can make him attractive to the, erm, ‘less discerning’ voter: they see a guy who is always 100% sure of himself, does everything right (by his own account), makes everything great (by his own account), and promises that he will life great too for everybody – just do as he says, but don’t do as he does. And of course he takes on the victim role and blames others for anything that goes bad.
These voters either don’t see that the man is lying about everything, or, worse, they don’t care. Either way, they made a serious dent in the confidence that I used to have in people – stupid and smart people alike, because an awful lot of (previously?) smart people also voted for this monster.
Voters—both highly educated and less so—may also lack empathy due to genetic factors, such as variations in the GCH1 gene affecting tetrahydrobiopterin production.
This can lead them to blindly follow anyone or anything that stimulates their dopamine system.
@Sieglinde
I don’t think that a large part of the American electorate is devoid of empathy. But what Trump did manage to accomplish is infecting those people with his personal hatred and disdain for anyone who doesn’t adore him. Which effectively redirects the everyday empathy that most people in the same country have for each other towards exclusively like-minded people, and first and foremost to the person least deserving it: Trump himself.
So now many of these brainwashed Trump-voters actually feel bad for Trump if the man whines that e.g. he ‘inherited a disastrous economy from Biden’ to explain why prices went up instead of down (instead of blaming Trump’s insane tariffs). And of course they now hate the guts of everyone who Trump doesn’t like. OK, they may still tolerate their Democrat neighbours, but more generally, they are parroting Trump’s game of Blame the Woke Left for Everything Bad.
No doubt, when the catastrophic consequences of the current health policies begin to manifest themselves, Trump will find a way to blame the Woke Left or the Old Elite or whatever – but not the utterly incompetent idiots that he picked for those positions.
Maybe instilling all this hatred and distrust in Americans against other Americans is even more damaging in the long term than destroying science-based healthcare. I mean, you can restore agencies such as the CDC and FDA in a couple of months by tossing out the idiots who are currently running them into the ground and bringing in some good scientists – but restoring the trust that people used to have in each other and in said agencies may take years … 🙁
I am amazed and appalled by how easy it has been for one man, Trump, to destroy what was once the preeminent public health agencies in the world. We were far too optimistic and trusting in the good sense of the American voter. Who would have thought so many would have embraced such a con man.
A truly regrettable situation — it’s time for Europe to reinvest in and prioritize scientific progress. At the same time, I see no long-term future under the current administration.
Just yesterday, I sent the following letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune in hopes of having it appear in the paper:
Guilty of murder?
United States Secretary of Health and Human Services RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccination policies, based on uninformed impulses that defy the body of scientific knowledge, are rapidly approaching the point at which mass mortality will become a reality!
No advance in medical science has saved more lives than vaccinations, which have essentially eliminated diseases that once eradicated populations. They may well represent the single greatest single advance in the history of science-based medicine!
A man who has literally no scientific training or background has somehow decided that he knows more than mainstream medical practitioners is now responsible for adding to the belief that inoculations are not only ineffective, but that they do more harm than good.
Since we appear to be on the threshold of serious numbers of avoidable deaths, I wonder if Kennedy in some way could be tried for crimes against humanity.
excellent!
Yes Kurt:
It is conceivable that Kennedy could be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, should medical professionals from all disciplines unite in the pursuit of accountability.
Such an action could establish a significant precedent for holding public figures accountable for medical misinformation or harm.
@Richard Rasker
“Trump did manage to accomplish is infecting those people with his personal hatred and disdain for anyone who doesn’t adore him.”
Trump’s influence appears to lie in his ability to externalize and normalize a deep-seated need for adoration, often symptomatic of unresolved early emotional deprivation.
This dynamic tends to resonate most strongly with individuals exhibiting similarly dysregulated affective structures, particularly those shaped by experiences of neglect or unmet attachment needs. There is a substantial body of psychological and psychoanalytic literature that explores the relationship between early attachment disruptions, narcissistic defense structures, and susceptibility to authoritarian figures.