I know nothing about biology, I know that I know nothing, so if someone decided for whatever reason to appoint me to the position it would be fairly harmless because I would defer extremely heavily to people who actually know about this stuff.
If he had appointed someone with proper medical or biological training, that would be fine because they actually know about stuff and can make informed decisions.
RFK Jr. is the absolute worst person because he thinks he knows a lot about biology, but he actually knows nothing, and is largely informed by a lot of conspiratorial nonsense, meaning he has the potential to cause a lot of irreparable to the US healthcare system. He's not going to defer to actual expertise, he's going to defer to idiotic blog posts filled with anecdotes about how a friend of a friend of theirs got a vaccine and it was bad.
I cannot imagine that this attempt at chicken eugenics will work as intended. I suspect that if this were a good idea, it would have been tried already.
in a system with high regulatory capture, you would be defering your power to the industry's interests.
You can cultivate state capacity and independent expertise to reduce regulatory capture, not replace it with a kakistocracy where regulatory capture is instead by woo-woo morons.
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/01/22/nx...
Since the US has by far the sickest human population on Earth (it's not even debatable), I guess the current system has been a spectacular failure. I don't think that RFK is the right answer either, but "continuing on the same path as before" is a bad idea just as well.
> independent expertise to reduce regulatory capture
What is independent expertise exactly? Where do you find virgin experts completely devoid of external influence? I have yet to meet any expert who has never had grants or speaker engagements.
Within the scope of "people who would realistically actually be appointed", he is the absolute worst case scenario.
But really it wasn't all that realistic. Sure it happened, but just 'cause it happened doesn't make it realistic.
And the republicans in the senate approved the halfwit because they all fear getting primaried.
It's a legitimate and popular republican strategy, I forgot the exact name. They did the same thing with the EPA during the last Trump administration - appointing an actual oil tycoon to head it. I imagine it's pretty difficult to just find an oil tycoon. The idea is to derail the agency from the inside out.
Seems like a rather devastating flaw.
They published a "report" claiming that vaccines cause autism that was lazily created with ChatGPT that had fake citations, or citations that actively go against what they're saying. Everything in the administration is half-assed.
"Letting the virus spread to pass on the genes" seems like an idea that would come from a conversation when two drunks who are discussing how they'd solve all the world's problems.
This administration is the best argument for DEI I’ve ever seen in my life, if it had anything to do with avoiding this.
Just the other day, RFK’s top vaccine nutjob (new chair of ACIP, Robert Malone) tweeted something to suggest that the Amish’s existence despite waves of infectious disease and ~no~ low vaccination is evidence that vaccines aren’t necessary.
Apparently ignorant[0] of the fact that the Amish are notoriously cloistered and isolated from the rest of society.
[0] By “ignorant” I don’t mean “has never heard the idea,” but that the degree of motivated reasoning has rendered his mind actually incapable of integrating this fact — like many others — into his world view. I’m drawing this distinction because I don’t think this is a matter of smart people pretending to believe stupid things. They are actually, at rock bottom, very stupid people, rendered such by their own ideological commitments if nothing else.
I'm going to steal and re-use this beautifully succinct observation in as many ways as I appropriately can.
100 internet points to you.
What a strange argument. Did anyone suggest that people would stop existing if there weren’t vaccines? We haven’t had vaccines throughout most of human history.
People just (correctly) think that not being vaccinated will lead to a lot of unnecessary deaths.
Right, they've essentially implemented reverse DEI: always hire the agreeable white man, no matter what. Which was essentially the status-quo in the fucking 60s.
Now we have a bunch of old white men who can drink more than they can read running our government into the ground. They're all very horribly unqualified. But, they are essentially breathing doormats, which I think is vital to an authoritarian regime.
I think it makes them stronger in the short term, but much weaker in the long term. (Of course, we have to survive the short term to get to the long term...)
I don't know anything about biology so admittedly I'm speaking out of my ass here, but that's certainly what it seemed like to me.
[edit]: misspelled "imagine"
The producers and the audience prefer it that way. It's less effort for everyone involved.
Also babymetal admits he didn't read the book. How can anything he says of the book be trusted?
I read the book. Actually there are two stories in the book, the first mostly about Fauci and COVID-19 and the second about Fauci and AIDS. FWIW I'm glad RFK is in power now.
It’s just so incredibly dumb to listen to recurrent (and especially unrepentant) liars. Even if you know they’re lying, your brain subjected to that will break down. Propagandists and conmen through all of history have discovered it. All you’ve gotta do is say it over and over again and hope there are people dumb enough not to stop listening the first 15 lies.
It's why Fox News works, it's why "flood the zone" is a shrewd tactic, and why "alternative facts" was Yet Another Milepost along our journey to the full-blown post-truth America of today.
I thought their fairly brief comment was pretty clear.
"I'm glad (the guy who drove to the beach to cut of a stranded whale's head with a chainsaw) is (in charge of our health) now"
"I'm glad (the guy who dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park and threw a bicycle on top to put the blame on those pesky bikers after doing a photo-op with his hand in the dead cub's open mouth) is (responsible for medical research programs) now"
"I'm glad (someone who has been thriving financially on bogus claims to disparage vaccines) is (overseeing vaccination policies in the US) now"
"I'm glad (another incompetent creep) is (joining the gang of criminals known as The Trump Admin) now"
It's in the spirit of hn to attack the person rather than the specific proposal?
2. babymetal claims to be a bookseller and, if true, they offered a specialist's insight into the quality of the information disseminated by a person being discussed at HN. (Though, their observation was off topic -- like most comments in most HN discussions.)
3. You want HN users, who are mostly code monkeys, to criticize a proposal to address viral diseases?
I'd like to see a world where animals are treated better though. I don't really understand why food and food production has to be so shit.
I guess you know that the reason of shitty treatment is price, would you rather buy 20x priced eggs ? There’s many family farms that would be happy to deliver them anywhere at that rate.
Isn't this just switching from, if you detect any infections you're required to kill your flock, to if you have any infections your flock will die of illness? Your flock is still dead either way.
And guess what, America will have next to no say in the animal welfare of the source of the eggs.
The article says allowing the virus to rip through flocks could kill "billions of birds" [1]. Is that really OK with the movement?
___________
[1] Allowing widespread infection of commercial flocks would kill billions of birds, drive poultry and egg prices up, as well as destabilize local economies and global trade through import restrictions imposed on U.S. products, the authors wrote. Simultaneously, it could also foster reservoirs of H5N1, increasing the virus' odds of making the leap to humans — and gaining the ability for human-to-human infection.
The midterms can’t come soon enough. That is our only hope of putting some real checks on this administration any time soon.
It risks the entire local US chicken / egg production industry. They'd have to re-onshore it.
>> What's more, the mortality rate of H5N1 is extremely high among common poultry, reaching 100% in domestic chickens.
9283409232•8h ago
amanaplanacanal•8h ago
gruez•8h ago
So... animal husbandry?
BuyMyBitcoins•7h ago
This even happens to species we don’t intend to practice “eugenics” on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vavilovian_mimicry
thomquaid•7h ago
9283409232•6h ago