Trump health picks largely untested in fighting disease outbreaks

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Trump health picks largely untested in fighting disease outbreaks

They have questioned vaccines and other interventions overseen by the health agencies they have been tapped to lead.


North Dakota National Guard members administer coronavirus tests on in Bismarck in November 2020. (Tom Stromme/Bismarck Tribune/AP)

By Lena H. Sun, Dan Diamond, Rachel Roubein and Fenit Nirappil
November 24, 2024 at 11:00 a.m. EST

When the next pandemic strikes, Americans will again depend on a cadre of senior health officials to steer the nation’s response and reassure the public. But the team rapidly assembled by President-elect Donald Trump is largely untested, possesses scant infectious-disease expertise and has often questioned vaccines and other interventions overseen by the agencies they have been tapped to lead.

Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon and writer who is Trump’s pick to lead the Food and Drug Administration, has been among the agency’s most prominent critics, arguing its response to the coronavirus pandemic was heavy-handed and bureaucratic. Dave Weldon, chosen to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is a former GOP congressman who pushed debunked claims about vaccines and their safety. Janette Nesheiwat, a family and emergency medicine physician selected to be surgeon general, is best known as a Fox News commentator.

Their boss would be Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Trump tapped to lead the Department of Health Human Services and who has repeated debunked claims about vaccines.
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The emerging team of Trump health leaders have promised to tackle diabetes, heart disease and other chronic illnesses that they say have been generally overlooked. But their predecessors — including some from the first Trump administration — warn that infectious-disease outbreaks are inevitable and undermining vaccine confidence could impede a federal response during an emergency.

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[Irish_Dem]

1. The PutinGOP has no problem killing Americans or letting them die.

That is part of their game plan.

[dutch777]

2. But they will allow Ivermectin to be sold over the counter. We are on our own.

[raccoon]

3. In other words, if there's an outbreak of bird flu, we are screwn.