Op-Ed
We Are About to Learn What a Post-Truth Approach to Public Health Feels Like
Trump and Musk are slashing global vaccination efforts, funding for medical research and access to health information.
By Schuyler Mitchell ,February 15, 2025
Donald Trump speaks alongside Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before Kennedy is sworn in as secretary of Health and Human Services in the Oval Office at the White House on February 13, 2025, in Washington, D.C.Andrew Harnik / Getty Images
Truthout is an indispensable resource for activists, movement leaders and workers everywhere. Please make this work possible with a quick donation.
Remember “alternative facts”? It’s been eight years since Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, uttered those words during a “Meet the Press” interview. The patently Orwellian phrase set off a firestorm of coverage: According to Conway, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer wasn’t lying when he said Trump had drawn “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration,” despite clear evidence to the contrary. Spicer’s facts weren’t false, Conway said, just “alternative.”
Two months before that interview, in November 2016, Oxford Dictionaries declared “post-truth” the word of the year. Trump’s first presidential campaign and the global ascendancy of the far right had sparked a pervading interest in fake news, disinformation and the political utility of truth-telling in a world shaped by algorithmic forces. Pundits grappled with the realization that social media’s prime role in disseminating news now meant that quick reactions — the stronger the better — would take precedence over thoughtful engagement.
If Trump had a first term marked by “alternative facts,” his second has demonstrated an outright hostility to anything resembling truth at all: Yes, there are the classic Trump lies (like his ludicrous claim that diversity, equity and inclusion [DEI] programs are making planes fall out of the sky), but there’s also his administration’s brazen purge of health and climate data — an assault on foundational scientific knowledge that archivists have scrambled to preserve.
Trump has also ordered $4 billion in cuts to National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants used to fund critical research at universities, cancer centers and hospitals. A federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s order on Tuesday, but medical researchers have warned that, if implemented, the cuts could hamstring efforts to cure cancer and chronic health conditions, rendering scientific breakthroughs unobtainable.
And then Trump has made ridiculous statements like this: “We identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas,” he told reporters last month during a signing ceremony for the Laken Riley Act.
Related Story
Sanders Slams RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Lies as Senate GOP Advances Nomination
“I cannot in good conscience vote for someone who denies and will dilute our public health protections,” Sanders said. By Sharon Zhang , Truthout February 4, 2025
The baseless claim, first promoted by Elon Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), seems in fact to be referencing an $83.5 million payment to support HIV prevention and treatment efforts in the East African country of Mozambique, whose Gaza province is unrelated to the Gaza Strip in the Middle East. The nongovernmental organization that received the funds, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, said none of the money was used to acquire condoms. This is a far cry from the eye-catching headlines about rash government spending on “explosive condoms” for Hamas. But even the use of government funds to purchase contraceptives is not particularly notable; the U.S. Agency for International Development has worked on global HIV prevention efforts for decades.
On Tuesday, Musk finally walked back the White House’s claim, telling reporters, “Some of the things that I say will be incorrect.” It’s a chilling acknowledgement — no more lip service will be paid to the pursuit of truth, just expect and accept a steady stream of falsities from those in power. While Musk tacked on a note that DOGE’s incorrect statements “should be corrected,” he knows it doesn’t matter. The $50 million condom claim already went viral across social media and conservative news networks; now that it’s lodged in the brains of countless Trump supporters, it’s unlikely that a belated press briefing will change anyone’s mind.
Plus, Musk then added, “I’m not sure we should be sending $50 million worth of condoms to anywhere.” Again, we didn’t. And yet this flippant ignorance is also part of the new anti-truth paradigm, a weaponized, intentional “I’m just asking questions” attitude, crafted to obfuscate simple facts. Musk could, of course, choose to learn the details of global HIV prevention, why the U.S. does it, how public health efforts in Mozambique have a ripple effect on all of us. But why would he?
The same ideological current runs through Trump’s gutting of medical research. The slashed NIH funds for researchers’ overhead costs boastfully disregards even considering why those costs might be necessary. And the impact on public health could be devastating.
Take HIV prevention, for instance. U.S. health officials first became aware of AIDS in 1981, but it took four more years for then-President Ronald Reagan to speak about it publicly. By 1990, HIV was a leading cause of death for young people in the U.S.; more than 40 million people have died from HIV globally.
But today, for many in the U.S., the HIV/AIDS epidemic now feels like it’s in the rearview mirror. That’s thanks in large part to concerted efforts from activist groups like the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), which fought to expand the approval and availability of life-saving drugs. New HIV infections have declined since 1984 by an estimated 76 percent. ACT UP’s efforts set the government’s public health agenda, pushing for vital change from agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and NIH. It is because of these efforts that we have federal funding for HIV prevention and treatment in the first place — the same funding now being cut or placed on pause.
But the epidemic is not over, certainly not globally, and also not in the U.S. “Especially here in New York City where the HIV epidemic really started, there’s been a lot of investment to get that last little bit to end the epidemic in recent years,” Jason Zucker, an adult and pediatric infectious disease physician at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, told me. “If we want to end the epidemic, it’s going to be really hard. You have to increase your efforts to increase testing and identify every person living with HIV, so you can try to spend additional time and effort linking them to care and getting them on treatment, because undetectable equals untransmittable.”
The second Trump presidency has made that battle all the more difficult. I spoke with Zucker before Trump announced the cuts to NIH funding, but after he had ordered a freeze on the disbursement of all federal funds. While that freeze was also temporarily halted by a federal judge, courts ruled Trump has been defying the judge’s order. And as part of Trump’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and “gender ideology,” his administration has continued to scour grants for any mention of words that could be loosely construed as relating to DEI — which in practice has spanned a range of topics, even flagging words like “diversity” and “women” for review. Zucker noted that Trump’s multipronged attacks “will really impact our ability to bring the epidemic to a close like had been planned.”
Public health, we know, is not a priority of the Trump administration. Five years ago, the Trump administration failed to respond to the emergence of COVID-19 in a timely or effective manner. The global pandemic sparked a new wave of vaccine denialism and a crumbling of trust in our government’s health agencies — trust that won’t be restored with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a noted vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist, at the helm of the Health and Human Services Department. The CDC botched its public health guidance, first under Trump, and then continued to sow confusion under President Joe Biden’s administration, shifting the onus of responsibility for public health from the state to individuals.
Trump’s attacks on medical research, federal funding, and access to health and climate data are the logical outgrowth of the post-truth seeds first planted in 2016 and watered during the COVID-19 pandemic. And while the media focus has been on the consequences for scientific research, Zucker emphasized to me that the biggest impacts will be on treatment.
“The whole point of research is to give us better methods of caring for people,” Zucker said. “I say that as someone who’s primarily a researcher: My work doesn’t matter if I translate that into providing better care.”
This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
Schuyler Mitchell is a writer, editor and fact-checker from North Carolina, currently based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in The Intercept, The Baffler, Labor Notes, Los Angeles Magazine, and elsewhere. Find her on X: @schuy_ler
Truthout is an indispensable resource for activists, movement leaders and workers everywhere. Please make this work possible with a quick donation.
Remember “alternative facts”? It’s been eight years since Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, uttered those words during a “Meet the Press” interview. The patently Orwellian phrase set off a firestorm of coverage: According to Conway, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer wasn’t lying when he said Trump had drawn “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration,” despite clear evidence to the contrary. Spicer’s facts weren’t false, Conway said, just “alternative.”
Two months before that interview, in November 2016, Oxford Dictionaries declared “post-truth” the word of the year. Trump’s first presidential campaign and the global ascendancy of the far right had sparked a pervading interest in fake news, disinformation and the political utility of truth-telling in a world shaped by algorithmic forces. Pundits grappled with the realization that social media’s prime role in disseminating news now meant that quick reactions — the stronger the better — would take precedence over thoughtful engagement.
If Trump had a first term marked by “alternative facts,” his second has demonstrated an outright hostility to anything resembling truth at all: Yes, there are the classic Trump lies (like his ludicrous claim that diversity, equity and inclusion [DEI] programs are making planes fall out of the sky), but there’s also his administration’s brazen purge of health and climate data — an assault on foundational scientific knowledge that archivists have scrambled to preserve.
Trump has also ordered $4 billion in cuts to National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants used to fund critical research at universities, cancer centers and hospitals. A federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s order on Tuesday, but medical researchers have warned that, if implemented, the cuts could hamstring efforts to cure cancer and chronic health conditions, rendering scientific breakthroughs unobtainable.
And then Trump has made ridiculous statements like this: “We identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas,” he told reporters last month during a signing ceremony for the Laken Riley Act.
Related Story
Sanders Slams RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Lies as Senate GOP Advances Nomination
“I cannot in good conscience vote for someone who denies and will dilute our public health protections,” Sanders said. By Sharon Zhang , Truthout February 4, 2025
The baseless claim, first promoted by Elon Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), seems in fact to be referencing an $83.5 million payment to support HIV prevention and treatment efforts in the East African country of Mozambique, whose Gaza province is unrelated to the Gaza Strip in the Middle East. The nongovernmental organization that received the funds, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, said none of the money was used to acquire condoms. This is a far cry from the eye-catching headlines about rash government spending on “explosive condoms” for Hamas. But even the use of government funds to purchase contraceptives is not particularly notable; the U.S. Agency for International Development has worked on global HIV prevention efforts for decades.
On Tuesday, Musk finally walked back the White House’s claim, telling reporters, “Some of the things that I say will be incorrect.” It’s a chilling acknowledgement — no more lip service will be paid to the pursuit of truth, just expect and accept a steady stream of falsities from those in power. While Musk tacked on a note that DOGE’s incorrect statements “should be corrected,” he knows it doesn’t matter. The $50 million condom claim already went viral across social media and conservative news networks; now that it’s lodged in the brains of countless Trump supporters, it’s unlikely that a belated press briefing will change anyone’s mind.
Plus, Musk then added, “I’m not sure we should be sending $50 million worth of condoms to anywhere.” Again, we didn’t. And yet this flippant ignorance is also part of the new anti-truth paradigm, a weaponized, intentional “I’m just asking questions” attitude, crafted to obfuscate simple facts. Musk could, of course, choose to learn the details of global HIV prevention, why the U.S. does it, how public health efforts in Mozambique have a ripple effect on all of us. But why would he?
The same ideological current runs through Trump’s gutting of medical research. The slashed NIH funds for researchers’ overhead costs boastfully disregards even considering why those costs might be necessary. And the impact on public health could be devastating.
Take HIV prevention, for instance. U.S. health officials first became aware of AIDS in 1981, but it took four more years for then-President Ronald Reagan to speak about it publicly. By 1990, HIV was a leading cause of death for young people in the U.S.; more than 40 million people have died from HIV globally.
But today, for many in the U.S., the HIV/AIDS epidemic now feels like it’s in the rearview mirror. That’s thanks in large part to concerted efforts from activist groups like the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), which fought to expand the approval and availability of life-saving drugs. New HIV infections have declined since 1984 by an estimated 76 percent. ACT UP’s efforts set the government’s public health agenda, pushing for vital change from agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and NIH. It is because of these efforts that we have federal funding for HIV prevention and treatment in the first place — the same funding now being cut or placed on pause.
But the epidemic is not over, certainly not globally, and also not in the U.S. “Especially here in New York City where the HIV epidemic really started, there’s been a lot of investment to get that last little bit to end the epidemic in recent years,” Jason Zucker, an adult and pediatric infectious disease physician at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, told me. “If we want to end the epidemic, it’s going to be really hard. You have to increase your efforts to increase testing and identify every person living with HIV, so you can try to spend additional time and effort linking them to care and getting them on treatment, because undetectable equals untransmittable.”
The second Trump presidency has made that battle all the more difficult. I spoke with Zucker before Trump announced the cuts to NIH funding, but after he had ordered a freeze on the disbursement of all federal funds. While that freeze was also temporarily halted by a federal judge, courts ruled Trump has been defying the judge’s order. And as part of Trump’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and “gender ideology,” his administration has continued to scour grants for any mention of words that could be loosely construed as relating to DEI — which in practice has spanned a range of topics, even flagging words like “diversity” and “women” for review. Zucker noted that Trump’s multipronged attacks “will really impact our ability to bring the epidemic to a close like had been planned.”
Public health, we know, is not a priority of the Trump administration. Five years ago, the Trump administration failed to respond to the emergence of COVID-19 in a timely or effective manner. The global pandemic sparked a new wave of vaccine denialism and a crumbling of trust in our government’s health agencies — trust that won’t be restored with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a noted vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist, at the helm of the Health and Human Services Department. The CDC botched its public health guidance, first under Trump, and then continued to sow confusion under President Joe Biden’s administration, shifting the onus of responsibility for public health from the state to individuals.
Trump’s attacks on medical research, federal funding, and access to health and climate data are the logical outgrowth of the post-truth seeds first planted in 2016 and watered during the COVID-19 pandemic. And while the media focus has been on the consequences for scientific research, Zucker emphasized to me that the biggest impacts will be on treatment.
“The whole point of research is to give us better methods of caring for people,” Zucker said. “I say that as someone who’s primarily a researcher: My work doesn’t matter if I translate that into providing better care.”
This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
Schuyler Mitchell is a writer, editor and fact-checker from North Carolina, currently based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in The Intercept, The Baffler, Labor Notes, Los Angeles Magazine, and elsewhere. Find her on X: @schuy_ler
Scientists warn of increased mpox transmission
International researchers warn that the ongoing mpox outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has the potential to spread across borders more rapidly. The mpox virus has mutated, and the new variant, clade 1b, has become more infectious.
Technical University of Denmark
Genetic analyses of clade 1b, first detected in September 2023 in Kamituga, DRC, show that this variant has since undergone mutations making it more easily transmissible between humans. Scientists have identified three new subvariants, one of which has spread beyond Kamituga to other cities in the DRC, neighbouring countries, and even internationally to e.g. Sweden and Thailand. The new data may also suggest that clade 1b entails a high risk of miscarriage.
This new research has been published as an accelerated scientific publication in the esteemed journal Nature Medicine.
Originally, mpox was considered a zoonotic disease that primarily spread from animals to humans. However, in 2022, the world witnessed an outbreak primarily affecting men who have sex with men. The new clade 1b differs as both men and women are now contracting the virus. Additionally, an increasing number of infections are being reported among healthcare workers and children.
“It's somewhat like SARS-CoV-2 – the virus undergoes mutations as it spreads. For clade 1b, we see that one particular subvariant appears to have become better at transmitting between humans, and it has now been detected in several countries outside East Africa. In addition, the number of infected pregnant women who miscarry is high among those we have tested,” says Professor Frank Møller Aarestrup from DTU National Food Institute, who leads the GREAT-LIFE project
The GREAT-LIFE project is behind both the discovery of clade 1b and the development of a new PCR test, which enables the detection of clade 1b—undetectable by the original mpox tests.
Call for cross-border collaboration to contain mpox spread
This research indicates that the new variant is spreading rapidly, primarily through heterosexual contact in densely populated areas.
“At present, we are seeing uncontrolled transmission of clade 1b in eastern DRC and Burundi, but to a lesser extent in other parts of East Africa. While there is some international spread, we do not yet expect a large outbreak outside the epicentre in East Africa. However, this situation demands immediate attention. It is crucial to avoid close contact, particularly sexual contact, in high-risk areas,” says Frank Aarestrup.
The spread to neighbouring countries underscores the need for expanded cross-border cooperation to track disease transmission, treat patients, and disseminate health education, particularly among sex workers.
“Action is needed locally, including increased vaccination efforts and public awareness campaigns on transmission routes. Additionally, global measures could include travel advisories against visiting high-risk areas and particularly against engaging in sexual contact in affected regions,” says Frank Aarestrup.
The GREAT-LIFE project coincided with mpox outbreak in DRC
DTU National Food Institute coordinates the GREAT-LIFE project, which aims to build capacity for detecting disease outbreaks in East Africa. The project focuses on local implementation of PCR testing for viral diseases using portable equipment. This capacity-building initiative was rapidly tested when, by coincidence, the project launched alongside the emergence of the new clade 1b variant in the DRC.
The mpox outbreak meant that local researchers and healthcare personnel immediately needed the expertise and tools provided by the project. Led by Professor Frank Aarestrup, DTU National Food Institute’s contribution is to equip local researchers with the ability to conduct rapid research and deliver relevant results. As part of its capacity-building efforts, the GREAT-LIFE project has:
- As the first, identified the new variant of the mpox virus: Ongoing mpox outbreak in Kamituga, South Kivu province, associated with monkeypox virus of a novel Clade I sub-lineage, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2024 - PubMed
- Developed a PCR test to detect clade 1b: Real-time PCR assay to detect the novel Clade Ib monkeypox virus, September 2023 to May 2024 - PubMed
- Tracked and investigated its spread to Burundi: Monkeypox Clade Ib virus introduction into Burundi: first findings, July to mid-August 2024 - PubMed
- Examined the spread in and beyond Kamituga, DRC, as detailed in this article.
Key findings
As of 5 January 2025, more than 9,500 individuals have tested positive for mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with an estimated fatality rate of 3.4%. The rapid increase in cases in the South Kivu province of the DRC is particularly concerning.
In this regard, this research shows that:
- The mpox virus has become more transmissible, leading to faster spread.
- Transmission occurs primarily through heterosexual contact.
- The virus spreads through sex workers in densely populated areas.
- There is significant underreporting of cases.
- Mpox infection likely increases the risk of miscarriage in pregnant women.
The researchers have analysed samples from 670 patients infected with mpox. Their findings indicate that 52.4% of those infected were women, while 47.6% were men. The majority of infections were transmitted through sexual contact, but three cases were recorded among healthcare personnel. Seven patients died, and eight out of 14 pregnant women suffered miscarriages.
The research focused on South Kivu province in the DRC, where clade 1b transmission began in September 2023.
About the scientific article
The article has been published in Nature Medicine under a clause allowing rapid dissemination of the findings.
Original title: Epidemiological and genomic evolution of the ongoing outbreak of clade Ib mpox virus in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
It has been authored by 16 researchers from six different countries: DRC, Rwanda, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Spain, and the Netherlands.
The research has been funded by the EU and EDCTP under the Global Health EDCTP3 grant agreement No. 101103059 (Greatlife project); the EU Horizon 2020 grant VEO 874735; DURABLE (HERA-funded network); Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN); Conservation Action Research Network (CARN); and with support from the Greatlife Mpox Consortium.
Journal
Nature Medicine
Article Title
Epidemiological and genomic evolution of the ongoing outbreak of clade Ib mpox virus in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
Article Publication Date
19-Feb-2025
No comments:
Post a Comment