Plagues were once something that only happened in the Bible, or in some far-distant country that news anchors had to learn how to pronounce. But then COVID struck America, and we all had to reshape our lives. “Epidemic” and “Pandemic” became part of our language. Gathering places like bowling alleys and churches had to change the rules. Many gathering places went away, forever. We lived through years of social isolation, fear, and amazing technological innovation. We’re still in the process of returning to a redefined “normal”.
Throughout the changes we had to deal with, we had Trump 45. Instability became a term that the rest of the world began to associate with the U.S. He would say that Americans are safe, while attacking the doctors and scientists who were trying to keep us alive. He preferred untested science to mainstream medicine. Well, that’s not completely true. The White House recommended Ivermectin for COVID, which was an approved medicine. If you were a horse with a parasite, but not if you were a human with a virus.
Still, Trump’s scientifically challenged administration ended, and with it COVID slowly faded into history. The lack of planning, scientific fallacies, and medical mismanagement cost us over a million American lives. But it was over.
Until Trump 47. Having not learned any lessons from COVID. He set up unqualified people to be the arbiters of science. And went on a campaign to eliminate any voices of opposition. Anti-vaxers, oblivious of how vaccinations work, were put in charge of … vaccinations. People with no medical degrees were put in charge of America’s medicine. This didn’t just impact how medicine is practiced in America; it impacted the world.
You see, before Trump, scientists realized that we live in a very global world. Many plagues and health issues start elsewhere. A plane ride or cruise ship vacation later, and a new problem lands in America. When Trump closed programs that funded health care and science in other countries, he opened up new pathways for global disease and infection to travel to your hometown.
Take, for example, Ebola. By eliminating USAID and other programs that funded global healthcare programs, we allowed some very nasty pathogens to take root. Then, Trump defunded International medical conferences, and he made it very difficult for foreign healthcare experts to travel to international conferences in the US.
It never occurred to Trump’s administrators that this would cut off a vital flow of information from local doctors in the poorer areas of the world. Where a lot of plagues get started. In case you are not aware, these conferences often lead to discussions. Those discussions expose Western doctors to information on emerging threats in distant parts of the world. Get rid of these “early alerts”, and instead of learning about new health risks in conferences, you learn about plagues when your citizens start to die.
If we get a bit Biblical here, a Plague is not just a virus or a bacterium. It could be a plague of snakes, or frogs, or that all-time favorite… locusts! While locusts are not in the news today, the Screw Worm, a flesh-eating monstrosity that can wipe out herds of cattle and infect human beings, is getting a lot of news coverage.
Which is… really strange. All of the agricultural and technical news says that the screw worm was eliminated by a very clever US agriculture program decades ago. The program bred sterile male worms and distributed them in Mexico and around the Texas border. The program was incredibly effective, and for decades, no screw worms have been found on U.S. territory. It was a miracle of technology and cross-border coordination. Until Trump 47.
Trump’s chainsaw-wielding agent of cost control eliminated a variety of “wasteful” government programs at the Department of Agriculture. Including the program that protected American farmers from screw worms. Luckily, Musk and Trump chose their targets carefully, and we only need to worry about screw worms and not all of the other bio-threats.
JUST KIDDING!
We need to think about bird flu, swine flu, emergency responses to new outbreaks, termination of many “Bee Health” programs, termination of food safety committees, termination of municipal partnerships that monitor water for pathogens, termination of Federal lead poisoning investigations, international vaccine Alliances… and more.
Then there is measles, a disease the United States had essentially eliminated. In 2000, there were just 86 reported cases. By 2010, that number had dropped to 63, and in 2024 it reached only 13 cases. But as vaccination rates declined, measles made a dramatic comeback. Reported cases surged to 2,288 in 2025, and by just the first six months of 2026 had already reached 2,073. Even more telling, 93% of people infected in 2025 and 2026 were unvaccinated. The lesson is difficult to ignore: when vaccination rates fall, measles returns.
Diseases do not retire. They wait. And what do they wait for? Apparently, Trump 47.
So here we are. America has chosen political theater instead of scientifically driven health care. Vaccines work. Surveillance works. International cooperation works. Local trust works. Public health funding works. Early response works. Pretending that science is optional doesn’t work.
While Trump’s administration is driving us to new heights of absurdity, movements like the anti-vaxers have been around longer than MAGA. When you constantly treat expertise as disloyalty, the experts eventually leave the room. And without the experts, we get health care problems, we get plagues. When will the next big health care crisis hit? I wish I could tell you, but I think that government office was disbanded by Elon Musk,
What do you think? Is it just a coincidence? A run of bad luck? Or is America headed into a time of medical disasters?