Watch Out. The Plague Years Start Now - Canada Food imports at risk

Donald Trump has destroyed US public health with breathtaking speed. Here’s what’s coming next, and how Canada can prepare. Watch Out. The Plague Years Start Now Ill-timed cuts to health services Observers quickly noted that such cuts were ill-timed, since the United States is currently facing an ongoing H5N1 avian flu outbreak in both poultry and dairy cattle, a severe flu season with 24 million cases and 13,000 deaths, a serious tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas and measles outbreaks in Texas, Georgia, Alaska, Rhode Island, New York City and New Mexico. In related news, just as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as U.S. secretary of health and human services, Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who teaches at Harvard Medical School, noted that the state of Louisiana will no longer promote mass vaccinations. Dr. Faust also pointed out that the Trump-ordered “Make America Healthy Again Commission” did not even mention the two chief causes of U.S. children’s deaths — firearms and automobiles. Dismantling USAID and threatening millions While most of these measures chiefly affect Americans, Trump also began dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. Its 10,000 employees were reduced to 290. Trump referred to its leadership as “radical left lunatics,” while his State Department ordered the freeze of all programs — including the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, a program created by President George W. Bush that provides life-saving HIV-AIDS medication and treatment for 20 million people, including 500,000 children, worldwide. A Trump-appointed judge issued a temporary restraining order against the freeze, and Doctors Without Borders warned that uncertainty about PEPFAR has compromised its ability to prevent new HIV-AIDS cases. The question inevitably arises: What nation would do this to itself? And what is all this in the name of? “Efficiency”? “Cutting waste”? “Saving tax dollars”? These are pretexts, lies made by known liars like Donald Trump. They’re not even for the gullible voters who might believe them; they’re intended to remind skeptical voters that Trump can do this, lie to them and get away with it. Dismantling U.S. health science will have other effects besides the simple display of unchecked power. Research funds that would have gone to thousands of universities and laboratories will cease, forcing project cancellations and layoffs of highly skilled scientists and technicians. Many leading universities may not survive the loss of research funding. That will be convenient for the Trump regime. U.S. university towns have dramatically moved left in the past 25 years, even in Republican-dominated states. A financial crisis in universities will force their faculty and staff to spend their time hunting for new jobs rather than digging up information on health threats. In his first term, Trump discouraged case counts as COVID-19 spread; his premise was that if you don’t count it, it doesn’t count. Meanwhile, Kennedy as the head of Health and Human Services will be able to downplay outbreaks as mere rumours while calling attention to imaginary vaccine hazards — further confusing and alarming both health-care providers and their patients.