Attacks on Public Health in the US: A Intentional Policy with Deadly Consequences
Recent actions by US health officials are escalating a decades-long trend of policies that demonstrably harm public health, leading to increased morbidity and mortality, especially among vulnerable populations. This trend has been significantly exacerbated as the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As 2020,the United States has experienced over 1.5 million excess deaths compared to comparable nations. Currently, over 400 million people in the US are living with the effects of long-COVID. Despite this ongoing crisis, a currently unfolding eleventh wave of the pandemic is going largely unreported and unacknowledged by health authorities. Emergency room visits for COVID-19 increased by 15.2 percent last week, with a rising national positivity rate, yet the situation is being actively downplayed despite evidence of spread in forty states.
Contributing to this crisis,current governance policies are systematically dismantling the infrastructure necessary for monitoring and responding to the pandemic. Access to COVID-19 vaccines has been drastically restricted. As taking office, mass layoffs within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have affected over 20,000 employees. Furthermore, approximately $500 million in research and progress contracts for mRNA vaccines have been terminated, and access to mRNA COVID-19 vaccines is reportedly slated for complete cancellation within months.
The justification for these policies, framed by officials as a Christian crusade against scientific skepticism, represents a risky departure from evidence-based medicine.
This dismantling of public health measures has sparked resistance within the scientific community. Over 1,000 current and former HHS employees have signed petitions demanding the resignation of key officials, citing the appointment of “political ideologues” and the revocation of emergency use authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines without scientific justification as endangering public health. Concerns also center on the broader dismantling of the public health infrastructure.
A critical point consistently overlooked is that public health is fundamentally a matter of collective social responsibility, not solely individual choice. Mass vaccination protects not only individuals but the entire community, particularly those most vulnerable. Attacks on this principle embody a dangerous libertarian ideology that prioritizes individual freedom over scientific knowledge and collective action.
These policies are not isolated incidents but part of a broader pattern indicative of a deliberate strategy to prioritize capitalist profit over human life. Addressing this requires a mass movement of the working class, both in the US and internationally, integrating the fight for science and public health into the broader struggle for world socialism.
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