Dr. Doom
He’s certainly no doctor, but he has doomed us all.
For those wondering whether Donald Trump has won, you might start by looking at RFK, Jr. The before and after make for a black-and-white comparison. Before Kennedy got his hands on the CDC, it was the premier source of medical expertise. It established the protocols for childhood vaccination, kept its eye on approaching pandemics, and led the research on dire illness. If you had a child with inoperable brain cancer, the CDC couldn’t save your family, but there was someone in its labs who was working on a cure. That’s the thing about a great government agency. It doesn’t dismiss the consensus on measles. It appreciates the miracle of mRNA technology. It collects the best human talent and raw material and maps out strategies for research and development. Nothing was perfect during the COVID years, but the effort led by the CDC was lifesaving for millions of vulnerable Americans.
After Kennedy, not so much. I just tried to organize my next shot for COVID. The CDC has no clear recommendation and nobody seems to know if you need a prescription. Our local pharmacies won’t stock the new iteration until long after kids are back in school. That is not the way to ensure herd immunity. It should have been ready at the beginning of August. But kids will probably not get immunized anyway. Certainly not in the State of Florida, which has just trashed its program of mandatory vaccination and where old people will likely suffer the consequences. Old people in Florida? The state is made of them.
But even if you’re old, COVID will be tricky. Because our secretary is a moron conspiracy theorist, you’re going to have to present credentials. I hear that you’ll need to be a right-handed male born on the same day as Donald Trump. Payment has to be made in Trumpian bitcoin and don’t bother to come unless you’re a Republican bundler. Even then, expect a long wait, while Kennedy tries to restaff his agency, beginning with the director he just summarily fired, calling her a liar on national TV. Her sin was refusing to pre-approve the findings of his bogus panel of vaccination de-bunkers. You have to respect the expertise of a man who sees “mitochondrial disease” in children in airports. I’m no doctor, but that’s just crazypants. Diagnosing mitochondrial disease is not the kind of thing you can do in airports.
So how did we get here in way less than a year? The two-word answer is Donald Trump, who bought off Kennedy to get him out of the race and clear the way for his election as president. Apart from that, he was a glamorous Kennedy! RFK, Jr. couldn’t win, but he might have queered the deal, keeping Trump from trouncing the enfeebled Biden. You gotta hand it to Trump for knowing his customers. I knew it when shortly after the election he told Kennedy to go out and “go wild on health.” I don’t think that’s the way it’s supposed to work. A public servant is supposed to serve the public by judicious choices and stable leadership. We will go through many presidents before the CDC recovers.
The remaining mystery is why Kennedy is allowed to remain. He took the proverbial shellacking yesterday, even from people who live in fear of Trump. During his first term, Trump was sensitive to criticism and canned a few idiots who embarrassed their boss. Sean Spicer comes notably to mind. Trump never liked the color of his suits and especially hated his mouth-foaming screeds.
But this time around, people like Kennedy endure. If I had to guess, the reason is Jeffrey Epstein, the stinking pedophile, sex trafficker, and pimp. When you’re the president of the country and you’re implicated in the files, and even your base is braying for revelations, it must be tempting to imagine that a distraction will save you, even if that distraction is named RFK, Jr. Sometimes even a man with a brainworm can play a useful role in American politics.