During the COVID-19 pandemic, Emergency Room Dr. Rob Davidson became a strong voice in Michigan — and nationally — against medical disinformation as the head of the Committee to Protect Health Care. Now we have one of the biggest anti-vaxxers in the country running the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He recently announced he’s halting $500 million in mRNA vaccine research for cancer and other diseases.
“He is the purveyor of the misinformation and disinformation that has led to people losing faith [in vaccines], right?” notes Davidson. “… So they're the ones who are breaking it, and then they come and say, ‘Well, it's broken, so we've got to go back to something different.’"
It’s the ultimate bad-faith argument — and it’s going to mean that more people will needlessly get sick and die. And it’s all part of the Trump administration’s authoritarian playbook.
"You control the flow of information and you try to cut off the most accurate information, whether it serves you, whether it serves your supporters, whether it serves the people you're supposedly representing or not,” Davidson says.
That’s one of the reasons why Davidson has launched his new Substack, Paging America. He and other physicians are taking their real-world experience to make sure that people get factual information about what’s happening to health care in our country, from cuts to scientific research to millions of people losing health insurance under Trump’s budget.
Davidson talked to Lincoln Square Executive Editor Susan J. Demas about the consequences of the budget: Hospitals will close, especially in rural areas, people will die due to longer travel times to get emergency care, and many patients who don’t have insurance will delay treatment due to the cost.
None of this will result in the cynical Trumpian slogan to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA). Let us know what you think in the comments.
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