Episode #18 Deep Dive – Sicker today sicker tomorrow: RFK Jr. continues the rampage

A deep dive into last week's episode of Paging America

RFK Jr. cuts funding for mRNA research by $500MM

On August 5, RFK Jr. announced that the government is pulling a half billion dollars in funding to develop new mRNA vaccines in order to focus on "safer, broader vaccine platforms." Experts call the move “reckless” and “a huge blow to our national security.” NIH director Jay Bhattacharya says the reason for pulling the funding is because “a large fraction of the population distrusts” the mRNA “platform”. This is unsurprising, given the rhetoric from so many people in the Trump administration and leaders in the so-called MAHA movement, including Kennedy himself (although the word “large” in “large fraction” is clearly doing a LOT of work here.)

Some researchers are worried about the chilling effect this decision may have on the development of new cancer treatments:

Researchers have registered more than 120 clinical trials to evaluate the potential of mRNA-based approaches for treating many types of cancer, including lung, breast, and prostate, as well as more challenging types like pancreatic and brain tumors.

STAT: HHS cites list of studies as scientific justification for cancellation of mRNA vaccine contracts

On Friday, when asked if the Department of Health and Human Services had a scientific justification, a spokesperson provided a link to a 181-page list of studies compiled by a number of people, including a current Trump administration adviser who served in the president’s first administration and was the subject of controversy for pushing unproven Covid-19 treatments.

The other contributors are people who have all previously criticized Covid-19 public health interventions, such as lockdowns and mRNA vaccines.

Taken together, the studies cited generally appear to advance research that has been disputed by other scientists, who argue that mRNA vaccines are overwhelmingly safe.

Shooting at the CDC

Last Friday, after breaking into his father’s gun safe to take five weapons and ammunition, a man who believed Covid vacEcines are dangerous opened fire on buildings in the CDC’s Atlanta, GA campus. He fired nearly 500 rounds and killed a police officer before killing himself.

Although investigators found documents at his home that “expressed the shooter’s discontent with the COVID-19 vaccinations” and that he wanted the world to know about it, RFK Jr. contradicted law enforcement officials, saying, “we don’t know enough about what the motive was.”

Given the anti-vaccine rhetoric coming from Trump administration leadership, some are saying it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. Kennedy himself once compared the use of vaccines to “Nazi death camps”:

At the 2013 AutismOne question-and-answer session, when asked about the CDC’s motives for failing to acknowledge autism as an epidemic, Kennedy made a comparison to the Holocaust.

“To me this is like Nazi death camps, what happened to these kids,” Kennedy said of the rising number of children diagnosed with autism and what he described as a link to vaccines — which had been debunked over a decade earlier. “I can’t tell you why somebody would do something like that. I can’t tell you why ordinary Germans participated in the Holocaust.”

Jerome Adams, surgeon general during Trump’s first term, says the shooting must be a wakeup call. “[I]t took more than 18 hours for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to issue a public statement condemning the violent act”, he wrote in an op-ed for STAT. “Kennedy’s delayed and tepid response, coupled with his own record of inflammatory claims, has only deepened the wounds and amplified a dangerous sense of betrayal among America’s frontline public health workers.”

The Veterans Administration is cancelling union contracts with most of its unions

Via Military.com:

The Department of Veterans Affairs announced Wednesday it was ending collective bargaining agreements with most federal unions -- a move that affects roughly 80% of its total workforce.

Members of the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, the National Association of Government Employees, the National Federation of Federal Employees, the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United and the Service Employees International Union will no longer have the labor protections negotiated by their organizations.

They can still be members, but the VA will not recognize the contracts that have been negotiated on behalf of the workers by these groups.

As of September of last year, over 122,000 of the VA’s 483,000 employees were veterans themselves.

VA Secretary Doug Collins defended the move, saying, “Too often, unions that represent VA employees fight against the best interests of veterans while protecting and rewarding bad workers.”

FEMA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services have also canceled their collective bargaining agreements.

Related from ProPublica: Veterans’ Care at Risk Under Trump as Hundreds of Doctors and Nurses Reject Working at VA Hospitals:

Amid concerns about the stability of the agency, records show nearly 40% of the doctors offered jobs at the VA from January through March of this year turned them down — quadruple the rate of rejections for the same period a year earlier.

Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that the agency has lost thousands of ‘core’ medical staff under Trump:

The Department of Veterans Affairs has lost thousands of healthcare professionals deemed “core” to the system’s ability to function and “without which mission-critical work cannot be completed”, agency records show.

The number of medical staff on hand to treat veterans has fallen every month since Donald Trump took office. The VA has experienced a net loss of 2,000 registered nurses since the start of this fiscal year, the data show, along with approximately 1,300 medical assistants, 1,100 nursing assistants and licensed practical nurses, 800 doctors, 500 social workers and 150 psychologists.

Trump to make prescription drugs more expensive with huge tariffs

Via The Hill:

President Trump on Tuesday threatened to impose tariffs of up to 250 percent on pharmaceutical imports, the highest rate he’s discussed to date.

“We’ll be putting a, initially, small tariff on pharmaceuticals,” Trump told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“But in one year, one in a half years maximum, it’s going to go to 150 percent, and then it’s going to go to 250 percent, because we want pharmaceuticals made in our country,” Trump said.

Health economist Jeromie Ballreich told Newsweek, “A 250 percent tariff on pharmaceuticals would have a significant impact on drug prices” and that for branded pharmaceuticals, higher costs from the tariffs will be "passed on to consumers and most likely will be indirect through higher prescription drug insurance premiums."

According to analysis by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, branded drugs account for 15% of U.S. prescriptions, but nearly 90% of drug spending already. The inevitable outcome of huge pharmaceutical tariffs appears to be higher drug costs:

To preserve their market share, high-profit drugmakers could choose to absorb the cost of the tariffs rather than pass higher prices on to the consumer. They also could opt to relocate to the U.S. and avoid tariffs, but may choose in that case to “incorporate some of the costs of relocation into the price of their product.” [...]

Either way, the price hikes will be passed on to insurance companies, who may in turn change their policies and raise their premiums. Higher prices would also be “passed through to the Medicare program” and result in higher prices for Medicare Part D premiums.

Marta Wosińska, a senior fellow at the Center on Health Policy at Brookings told Marketplace that manufacturers that make branded products will respond differently than those that make generics:

It would be easier for those companies to move more production to the U.S if necessary than it would be for makers of cheaper generics, she added.

Mariana Socal, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, said that it would also be easier for makers of brand-name drugs to absorb tariffs.

“But for generic drugs, you know, they are not patented — very cheap drugs. The markup for the drug manufacturer is not that high, and manufacturers are already squeezed in their profits for these drugs,” she said.

So, with tariffs, they could start losing money, noted Marta Wosińska at Brookings.

“The cost that I worry about,” she said, “is not that prices for generics might increase, it’s that manufacturers just might throw their hands up and say, ‘You know, I don't want to sell in the U.S. market.’”

RELATED: Trump claims he’s already slashed drug prices, telling reporters this week, “You know, we’ve cut drug prices by 1,200, 1,300 and 1,400, 1,500%. I don’t mean 50%. I mean 14- 1,500%.”

Trump federalizes Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department and sends in National Guard to take over law enforcement

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Trump said this week that “Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs, and homeless people”:

Violent crime is at a 30-year low, according to Justice Department data, but Trump says he wants those city residents dealt with harshly. Trump said Metropolitan police will operate more aggressively under federal control for at least the next 30 days. Trump said cops will be allowed to do "whatever the hell they want."

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that, “Homeless individuals will be given the option to leave their encampment, to be taken to a homeless shelter, to be offered addiction or mental health services, and, if they refuse, they will be susceptible to fines or to jail time.”