Campaign 2024 series: the stakes, not the odds
Imagine an illness that is so contagious that 9 out of 10 people who simply walk by an infected person will get sick if they have no immunity (vaccine or prior illness).
An illness that causes permanent brain damage in one of every 1,000 infections. That kills more than 200,000 people around the world, mostly children, every year.
An illness that is preventable by vaccination and that has been eradicated in the U.S. since 2000 because of required vaccines.
Yet Donald Trump believes that public schools should not require vaccinations:
I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate…
Richmond, VA. Mar. 2, 2024
Trump has a checkered history with vaccines. The New York Times reported in 2020 that “he once blamed vaccines for autism.” Then as president he pushed high speed development of vaccines for COVID-19.
Look. Mandated and mass vaccinations led to our eradicating small pox.
But measles, the unnamed disease above, remains a threat due to statements like Trump’s at that Virginia rally. Johns Hopkins Medicine reports that we are more susceptible to measles because fewer children are getting the measles vaccine.
In the U.S. one-in-five people who contract measles lands in the hospital.
As of Feb. 29, measles infections have been reported in 16 states: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York City, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington. Remember: 9-in-10 people exposed to measles who have no immunity will get sick.
- In calendar 2023, 20 jurisdictions reported measles infections.
- In calendar 2022, it was six jurisdictions.
- In calendar 2021, it was five jurisdictions.
- In calendar 2020, it was eight.
“Measles is a huge concern and directly related to declining measles vaccination rates,” according to Priya Soni, MD, a pediatric infectious disease specialist with Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s. “There is no scenario where getting the actual measles infection is somehow better for your child then getting the vaccine.”
CBS News has “identified at least 8,500 schools where measles vaccination rates among kindergartners are below that 95% threshold that the CDC identifies as crucial for protecting a community from measles.”
If elected, Trump promises to pull federal dollars from any public school that mandates vaccines. This is the “pro-life” party?
Hoping he doesn’t really mean it, since it would create a public health catastrophe for the nation… https://t.co/ChYJuDctOW
— Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) March 3, 2024
Let’s be clear: Trump was not talking about COVID-19. He was, however, talking nonsense. Nor is this the first time he has ranted about vaccines and K-12 curricula.
On day one, I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender and Saturday [sic] other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content onto our children. And I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate. I will keep men out of women’s sports. 100%.
Critical race theory (CRT) is “an academic and legal framework… that recognizes that racism is embedded in laws, policies and institutions that uphold and reproduce racial inequalities.” It is not a subject of K-12 schools, despite MAGA talking points and FOX News claims. It is a “graduate-level academic framework.”
What is “inappropriate” content? “I know it when I see it” was Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s answer to that question when directed aat obscenity and pornography.
It wasn’t a good answer in 1964, and 60 years later it still isn’t.
Trump sandwiched his dunking on vaccines between “get[ing] rid of slums … and tent cities” and “fully upholding” the Second Amendment against “the cheaters” in November.
This transcription of his rally rambles, via Microsoft Office online, is not an aberration:
Our goal will be one day voting with paper ballots and voter ID. But until then, Republicans must win. We have to win to get it done, and we want a landslide that is too big to rig. Too big to rig. That’s what we need. Because they’re going to be cheating and they’re cheaters and we’re going to be watching them and we’re gonna prosecute. We’re gonna, if we get in, we’re gonna catch them, and we’re gonna do things that were never done before. If you look and took the ten worst presidents, remember. There’s never been anything like this. You could take. It started off. I used to use this expression all the time. It started off with five and I said, wow, take the five worst, not close. And I said make it 10. And still I could make it more. There’s never been destruction like this done to our country before. Never.
.
Watch the stump speech on YouTube.
.
Cartoon by Kathy E. Gill with Photoshop, MidJourney and DALL-E.
This is the first in a periodic series focused on the stakes facing voters in this presidential election.
.
.
Talk to me: BlueSky | Facebook | Mastodon | Twitter
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com