It will be interesting to see how this permeates through the medical system. So it's painfully obvious now to any professional that whatever new leadership is going to sit at the CDC is going to be cooking their own recipes.
I strongly doubt hospitals are going to start prescribing beef tallow or apple cider vinegar to treat diseases (although, who knows at this point). So I wonder how the vacuum will get filled on authoritative information on diseases and outbreaks. Just a bunch of informal data from a variety of sources? Or a set of expensive privatized networks that will get passed on as healthcare costs?
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Strength is only achieved through financial or technical superiority, with a bit of time-lag. The US used to have both, so gained superior strength.
China now has both over the US, so will shortly overtake in strength too.
Frankly, even without trumps dismantling, you'd still probably be in a creek and paddle situation.
The business and political elite really don't care. They'll purchase protection from infectious disease. Voters care more about hating other voters than about their own health. Care here is defined by actions, not by words.
Pharma makes more from diseases occurring, agriculture makes more from diseases undetected.
If you believe, as capitalists do, that the highest goal of government is to protect the ability of people to make money, you support this.
> If you believe, as capitalists do, that the highest goal of government is to protect the ability of people to make money, you support this.
It's true, and the blatant mishandling of COVID throughout the pandemic (which hasn't functionally ended) by both political parties of capital is a great example.
Step 1) Manufacture consent for COVID to be 'over,' which the CDC and both political parties were absolutely part of: https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-co...
Step 2) With a facade of 'democracy,' ask the people if they want COVID to be over: https://web.archive.org/web/20240802024326/https://docs.hous...
Step 3) Meat grinder of capital interests intensifies, and everyday people pay the price
It's 2025 and new people are acquiring debilitating Long COVID every day and don't even know it. Not because they're not vaccinated, but because vaccines never stopped endless transmission in the first place. Only an N95 can do that for whoever elects to wear one. Yet practically nobody knows this, including most doctors, as designed by capital interests.
We could have used COVID as an opportunity to completely restructure society for the better, but instead we got the opposite thanks to capital interests running the show.
> Pharma makes more from diseases occurring, agriculture makes more from diseases undetected.
This is actually not true. Pharma is incredibly dependent on accurate CDC data. Same with agriculture, unless you think farmers are looking forward to the screwworm epidemic.
This benefits nobody except for the president, direct lackeys that will do his bidding, and maintaining his cult of personality. Even the powerful elites who helped put him here were themselves conned.
The elites were not conned. They knew this is where it was going. We all did. They just want the money.
Their silence and inaction is all you need to see. There are far more of these elites than there are of Trump and his administration should they care to act. He governs by the consent of the governed. Until he's got troops and ICE police everywhere, and is in the major boardrooms. Then consent is not as relevant. But it sounds like the capital class is fine with Trump taking stakes and demanding revenue slices.
"If you believe, as SOME capitalists do..."
FTFY
Under the conditions being created by Trump's administration, that will only last so long.
If vaccines are no longer being researched, then it doesn't matter how much money you have: you can't buy what doesn't exist.
If all the nonwhite scientists and doctors are being rounded up and deported or put in camps, that sharply reduces the speed at which any kind of new medical progress will continue.
If all the international students are being kept out—or staying out in fear of ICE—there's fewer new scientists.
And if every college has to pay 500 million to Trump out of operating funds to get 1 billion in restricted grants, pretty soon there won't be any left to train the scientists and doctors anyway, whatever their skin color.
What's happening right now isn't just a retrenchment of the elite in order to protect their private interests at everyone's expense. They're trying to do that, too, of course, but this is much too broad. It's essentially just destroying the possibility of a stable, healthy, improving life in the United States for the foreseeable future for everyone.
> It's essentially just destroying the possibility of a stable, healthy, improving life in the United States for the foreseeable future for everyone.
But research is being done in other countries, and healthcare research continues there. And for them, new treatments - including treatments that can be researched at private institutions, paid for by them - are within reach.
And the tariffs, visa restrictions, limitation on scientific publications if you take federal grant money, will all prevent any of that from reaching us.
Yes, but the loss of research, and research funding, here will undoubtedly be a huge blow to its speed and quality worldwide.