Trump health picks largely untested in fighting disease outbreaks

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Posted on 11/24/2024 3:01:42 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum

When the next pandemic strikes, Americans will again depend on a cadre of senior health officials to steer the nation’s response and reassure the public. But the team rapidly assembled by President-elect Donald Trump is largely untested, possesses scant infectious-disease expertise and has often questioned vaccines and other interventions overseen by the agencies they have been tapped to lead.

Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon and writer who is Trump’s pick to lead the Food and Drug Administration, has been among the agency’s most prominent critics, arguing its response to the coronavirus pandemic was heavy-handed and bureaucratic. Dave Weldon, chosen to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is a former GOP congressman who pushed debunked claims about vaccines and their safety. Janette Nesheiwat, a family and emergency medicine physician selected to be surgeon general, is best known as a Fox News commentator.

Their boss would be Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Trump tapped to lead the Department of Health Human Services and who has repeated debunked claims about vaccines.

The emerging team of Trump health leaders have promised to tackle diabetes, heart disease and other chronic illnesses that they say have been generally overlooked. But their predecessors — including some from the first Trump administration — warn that infectious-disease outbreaks are inevitable and undermining vaccine confidence could impede a federal response during an emergency.

“The new administration had better have a strong infectious disease response plan- and had better ensure public health and vaccine confidence stays high,” Jerome Adams, who served as surgeon general during the first Trump administration, wrote Saturday on X. “Or they’ll be distracted with outbreaks for 4 years this time instead of 1.”

The picks, all subject to Senate confirmation, reflect Trump’s...

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...

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