Mini-roundup: Two great posts on Trump's progress
Healthcare under Trump and RFK, foreign policy under Trump and Hegseth,
Healthcare under Trump and RFK
Gregory Katz talks about what we might see from RFK’s running healthcare in America. He does a good job trying to stay neutral, giving a list of things that could go well. But he also makes it clear, that given RFK’s beliefs any good policy decisions are likely to be luck. What was news to me was that RFK apparently doesn’t believe in germ theory (that bacteria and viruses causes diseases), and that pretty much drives all of his other believes.
In 1876, Robert Koch proved that a specific bacterium (Bacillus anthracis) caused anthrax. The germ theory was born. Understanding that specific bacteria and viruses caused specific diseases led to treatments like antibiotics and preventives like vaccines, which has caused us to live 40 years longer than we did in the late-1800s.
Nonetheless, in a section in his book titled “Miasma vs. Germ Theory,” RFK Jr. continues to embrace the miasma theory, writing the following statements:
“The ubiquity of pasteurization and vaccinations are only two of the many indicators of the dominating ascendancy of germ theory as the cornerstone of contemporary public health policy. A $1 trillion pharmaceutical industry pushing patented pills, powders, pricks, potions, and poisons and the powerful professions of virology and vaccinology…The miasmist approach to public health is to boost individual immune responses.” If you want to avoid infection, according to RFK Jr., all you need to do is maintain a healthy immune system. This explains why he has said that no vaccine is beneficial, that the polio vaccine killed more people than it saved, that young parents shouldn’t vaccinate their children, that HIV does not cause AIDS, that HIV is not spread from one person to another, and that the anti-AIDS drug AZT was an example of “mass murder”. It also explains why he drinks raw, unpasteurized milk.
Depressing and scary stuff
Foreign policy under Trump, Hegseth et al
This one is a little hard to summarize, but I learned a whole bunch of new things from it. The beginning details what the US is currently doing, and compares it to what the winners forced Germany to do after losing WW1:
Imagine, for a moment, that the U.S. lost a major war against a coalition of China and Russia. What would the victorious coalition force our country to do, as the terms of our surrender? I’m not sure, but based on the settlement of World War 1, America’s list of concessions might look something like this:
Withdrawal: The U.S. would unilaterally withdraw support for countries trying to resist Chinese/Russian hegemony. Furthermore, the U.S. would stop trying to wield influence in Eurasia, instead limiting its sphere of influence to the Western Hemisphere (or simply to North America).
Disarmament: The U.S. would reduce the size and capability of its military by a significant amount.
Deindustrialization: The U.S. would cancel industrial policies designed to compete with Chinese manufacturing, and instead economically focus on delivering raw materials and agricultural goods to China.
This list is roughly similar to the settlement that Germany was forced to accept at the Treaty of Versailles after losing World War 1 — it’s only missing the large reparations payments that Germany was forced to make to the victorious powers.
Anyway, now realize that under its new President Donald Trump, America is very rapidly making moves in all three of the directions listed above.
The second section details key moves in all of these categories. After that, Noah goes into a few theories of why Trump and his allies might be doing this. They are interesting, and most of them don’t bode well.