Worried Sick

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Apr 02, 2026

“I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health.” ~Demetre Daskalakis

Recently I was talking to a friend and we were discussing all the damage that has been done to our institutions since January 20, 2025. I sometimes wonder what needs to happen first to start repairing the damage, when/if the felon is gone. My priorities move from restoring normal relations with our traditional allies, repairing the Department of Justice or getting rid of the ICE gestapo mentality in our Department of Homeland Security. Other days, I think about restoring the EPA and basic civil liberties.

On any given day, I wonder what needs to come first. Reports indicated 348,219 people have left federal employment in 2025, which was an 80.8% increase from the previous year, with roughly 115,900 retiring and others resigning or being laid off. I’m sure some losses might have been expected and even welcomed, but certainly not all. It’s going to take years, if not decades, to repair the damage that this administration has caused.

So I was a little surprised when my friend said Health and Human Services should be the first priority. I suppose I don’t go there, because I grew up in home with medical professionals. I’m pretty much ignoring anything the RFK Jr.’s team is saying. I’ll follow whatever the American College of Physicians, et al are recommending. HHS is pretty much a bust at this point and I chose not listen to them, since they are replacing scientists with voodoo medicine.

Don’t get me wrong. I know that western medicine focusses too much on remediation rather than prevention, so there are aspects of Kennedy’s plan that are probably worthwhile. Because I know that about western medicine, I do pay attention to what nutritionists, mental health specialists and physical fitness experts have to say. I look at websites like https://lifestylemedicine.org/ and https://www.geriacademy.com/ for information. The Mayo clinic has a good website as well.

But from what I read, RFK is destroying what was the premier health agency in the world. Not everyone does their research and many take the government websites as fact (and not opinion).

Am I worried sick? Well yes. We could be losing more children to measles; more seniors to respiratory diseases; and more citizens to chronic diseases with this group of clowns in charge.

5 worm-ridden cartoons about RFK. Jr and the CDC | The Week

“I’ve never seen an agency that is responsible for the health of 340 million Americans be so willy-nilly.” ~Daniel Jernigan, former center director, infectious diseases

Worth reading

Inside the Turmoil at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s C.D.C.

Since his confirmation in February 2025, Kennedy has taken particular aim at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a federal agency charged with safeguarding the nation’s public health. He has called the C.D.C. “the most corrupt agency at H.H.S. and maybe the government” and vigorously defended mass terminations carried out by Elon Musk’s DOGE. At least 2,400 employees, or 18 percent of the C.D.C. staff, have been fired or have resigned since January 2025.

Trump’s MAHA agenda stalled as top CDC and surgeon general roles sit empty

The Trump administration’s “Make America healthy again” (MAHA) agenda appears to be stalled as two of the government’s most influential public health positions sit empty.
Donald Trump has yet to nominate a permanent director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), leaving an agency that has been plagued by turmoil for the past year without a leader. At the same time, the president’s controversial pick for surgeon general, Casey Means, remains in limbo as her nomination stalls in the Senate.
The CDC has now been without a Senate-confirmed director for more than 210 days, the maximum length of time an acting head can manage an agency under federal law.

RFK Jr. Is Losing His Grip on the CDC

Make America Healthy Again movement and, by extension, Kennedy appear to be on the ropes. MAHA supporters are angry that Trump recently signed an executive order shielding the makers of the weed killer glyphosate from legal liability. The confirmation of Casey Means, the wellness influencer whom Trump nominated to become surgeon general, appears to be stalled in the Senate. The FDA’s vaccine chief, Vinay Prasad, will leave his position for the second time at the end of April, following a tumultuous tenure. Last week, a federal judge ruled that the CDC’s January shrinking of the childhood-vaccine schedule was probably illegal, and that Kennedy likely broke the law, too, when he remade the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel in his own image. All of the decisions made by that panel, the judge ordered, should be put on hold.

Takeaways From The Times’s Inside Look at the C.D.C.

…a department spokesman, said in a statement: “Within a year, Secretary Kennedy restored the C.D.C. on its core mission of fighting infectious disease by eliminating mission creep and replacing leaders who resisted reform.”
But current and former employees expressed fear that agency scientists are being sidelined, political appointees are taking charge and a vital public health institution is being remade into a vehicle for ideologues…
The C.D.C.’s public communications would be taken over by political appointees. Susan A. Wang, a former senior medical adviser in the global immunization division, said: “We had a very stringent scientific process for vetting information that would get published on the C.D.C. website. Everything was checked and double-checked. And for political appointees to take over the means of communication is devastating, and also dangerous. Now, some things are correct and some are not, which means that you can’t trust any of it.”

As Kennedy Takes on Food Policy, Companies Push Back

Though advocates of more thorough food oversight and their allies on the political left have long pushed for such a change, Mr. Kennedy and his team have been able to garner widespread support for food reform and have the power to implement it. Their actions are beginning to push past the industry’s comfort zone…
Whether lawmakers show the resolve to support the effort will be a test, according to Vani Hari, a leader of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement who is known on social media as Food Babe. She wants bans put in place on artificial colors as well as on a dozen more ingredients that are not allowed in other countries.
“This is an interesting moment,” Ms. Hari said. “This will determine how serious our politicians in Washington are about being behind the MAHA movement and getting the chemicals out of our food.”

RFK Jr., Creature of the Tanning Salon, Throws the Industry a Bone

It was precisely to prevent such tragedies that the Food and Drug Administration in 2015 proposed new, tighter restrictions on tanning beds. One of those restrictions would have prohibited minors from using the devices at all, on the theory that young people’s still-developing bodies were more vulnerable to the carcinogenic effects of tanning-bed light, and that their still-developing brains were less capable of assessing the risks of exposure…The official notice from the Department of Health and Human Services—of which the FDA is part—cited “scientific and technical concerns” that had come up in the comments, along with questions about possible “unintended consequences.” It was RFK Jr.’s name on the order, just as it was his lieutenants and allies at the FDA who had made the decision.