It’s a giant knowledge week for me and right now’s publish is extra of a information data providing fairly than a deeper evaluation of a subject, which is my traditional sample. Nevertheless, I focus on in some element current appointments to the US Well being Administration, a few of which have been distinguished throughout the early COVID years and acquired appreciable promotion from so-called Left progressives. One of many main characters within the assault on authorities restrictions is now Trump’s appointment to the main nationwide well being analysis funding company and he has vowed to defund any establishment that doesn’t comply with the ‘freedom’ dictates of the authoritarian regime that Trump is working. I’m wondering how these progressives are viewing the very fact they gave credence to a key Trump operative.
Actual Progressives Podcast – Might 10, 2025
A number of weeks in the past, I spoke with Steve from Actual Progressives in regards to the rising isolation of the US beneath the brand new Trump Administration.
Right here is the edited interview I did for his or her ‘Macro N Cheese’ section.
You would possibly discover it attention-grabbing.
The Fact in regards to the ‘Funds’ Podcast
I additionally did a current interview with an Australian podcast – Idea Economic system – which goals to carry financial ideas to younger folks to higher educate their understanding.
It was a reasonably wide-ranging dialogue in regards to the fundamentals of Trendy Financial Concept (MMT) and my response to famous assaults on our work.
A COVID-19 replace – can these ‘anti-woke’ progressives sleep at evening?
Common readers will know my place on the COVID-19 pandemic and the early makes an attempt by varied vested pursuits to disclaim that there was an issue.
On this weblog publish – Why are the progressive left mixing with the darkish proper on Covid? (January 12, 2022) – I wrote about the way in which through which so-called (self-styled) Left progressive voices have been advancing concepts that have been launched throughout the pandemic by the laborious Proper.
The anti-vax, anti-lockdown and anti-mandate foyer have been extraordinarily vocal within the first few years of the pandemic and even now their fixed negativity has left a legacy.
In Australia, there are actually vital declining charges of influenza vaccinations, which is threatening weak teams at each ends of the age spectrum.
For instance, Australia’s Chief Medical Officer stated that (Supply):
… figures exhibiting vaccination charges in kids aged beneath 5 dropped from 30.3% in 2023 to 25.8% in 2024.
There was additionally a gentle decline in flu vaccination for these aged 65 and older, from 69.7% in 2022 and 63.6% in 2023, to a low of 61.1% in 2024.
That is immediately the results of the campaigns waged throughout these early COVID years to discredit vaccinations.
Throughout these early COVID years, there have been those that purport to symbolize the ‘Left’ place, lecturing us about how lockdowns and vaccine necessities are a betrayal of the progressive trigger and solely fascists would help them.
They offered fixed social media help for others, who by any evaluation, are on the neoliberal proper, who additionally oppose lockdowns and mandates (together with being required to put on masks).
A number of of those characters, who have been usually receiving social media help from distinguished ‘socialist’ commentators, have been concerned within the creation of a brand new ‘tutorial’ enterprise at a little-known school in Michigan – Hillsdale Faculty – referred to as the “Academy for Science and Freedom”.
The ‘Academy’ claimed in its press launch that its mission is to have interaction in a “free change of scientific concepts … within the pursuit of reality” and was impressed by the “worst public well being fiasco in historical past”.
What’s Hillsdale Faculty?
This Politico article (Might 12, 2018) – The Faculty That Needs to Take Over Washington – tells us that Hillsdale Faculty is a breeding floor for younger, right-wing, Christian conservatives.
Simply the kind that progressive socialists would dream of forming a coalition with!
The Faculty ‘cosied’ as much as the Trump Administration and its president was a robust Trump supporter and advertises for funds on Fox Information.
It offers a conduit for conservative politicians – speechwriters and different administrative roles.
Its former president, was a vocal critic of “large authorities” whereas pushing a conservative Christian morality. He got here unstuck, as many of those varieties do, when his daughter-in-law dedicated suicide after public allegations that she and the previous president have been concerned in illicit sexual relations over a 19 12 months interval. There have been additionally query marks about whether or not she had truly dedicated suicide.
His successor had come from a ‘assume tank’ that promoted the development of a ‘conservative citadel’ which advocated anti-government messages.
Hillsdale has been a significant beneficiary of monetary help from the notorious Koch Brothers, who on this article (December 15, 2015) – Koch brothers supersize higher-ed spending – have been reported as intent on increasing their already appreciable monetary help for chosen US larger training establishments, as an train in constructing:
… an enormous organizational community preventing to enact deregulatory authorities insurance policies and elect conservative political candidates … [and] … selling free markets and laissez-faire capitalism in the USA.
The brothers additionally connect “sure strings to their contributions”:
… resembling management over curriculum, and extra just lately, acquiring private details about college students.
.
As COVID was killing tens of millions, Hillsdale and the Koch Community partnered in opposing public well being measures designed to attenuate the unfold of the virus and rising loss of life charges.
Researchers related to the US-based – Middle for Media and Democracy (CMD) – which investigates “the corruption that undermines our democracy, setting and financial prosperity”, revealed on the time analysis exhibiting {that a} Koch Basis was bankrolling the brand new enterprise at Hillsdale Faculty, which was being primed to oppose protecting well being insurance policies.
The article (December 22, 2021) – How The Koch Community Hijacked The Struggle On COVID – reviews that the “public well being fiasco” that the brand new centre at Hillsdale is attacking embrace:
… authorities pandemic measures like masks and vaccine mandates, contact tracing, and lockdowns.
It has recruited a number of fringe teachers together with “Scott Atlas, Jay Bhattacharya, and Martin Kulldorff” – who’re “related to right-wing darkish cash attacking public well being measures.”
The Nice Barrington Declaration (GBD) was authored by some characters related to this new Academy.
It was signed at a convention organised by the American Institute of Financial Analysis (AIER), which receives funding from “anti-regulation” teams and is deeply tied up with the Mont Pelerin Society and “the Koch-backed Cato Institute” as outlined in – How The Koch Community Hijacked The Struggle On COVID (December 22, 2021).
The GBD really helpful that governments ought to:
… enable those that are at minimal danger of loss of life to reside their lives usually to construct up immunity to the virus by way of pure an infection, whereas higher defending those that are at highest danger. We name this Centered Safety.
In different phrases, governments ought to have let the virus rip by way of the inhabitants and solely positioned protections on probably the most weak – aged care residents, and the like.
The authors claimed, for instance:
… nursing houses ought to use employees with acquired immunity and carry out frequent testing of different employees and all guests.
It was all predicated on their perception that we’d attain herd immunity by way of pure an infection.
Non-vulnerable residents, accordingly ought to “instantly be allowed to renew life as regular … Colleges and universities needs to be open for in-person instructing … sports activities, needs to be resumed … Younger low-risk adults ought to work usually, fairly than from dwelling .. Eating places and companies ought to open. Arts, music, sport and different cultural actions ought to resume.”
The implication was that when contaminated, the illness would trigger little illness after which immunity would supply on-going safety.
As soon as a talented, aged care employee, for instance, had change into sick and recovered they may step again within the office coping with probably the most weak as a result of that they had change into resistant to the illness.
Besides, after all, reinfection inside a comparatively quick interval has change into a attribute of Covid, which has compromised the entire notion of herd immunity.
In the meantime tens of millions have died from Covid, who wouldn’t have died any time quickly, and that sample of mortality continues although it’s now more durable to get common knowledge.
And rising numbers of persons are exhibiting power Lengthy Covid which has derailed their lives.
Hundreds of thousands of staff are actually ‘disabled’ in consequence and their working lives are over.
Whereas the GBD appeared to have ‘tutorial weight’ as a result of it was signed on the official sounding American Institute for Financial Analysis (AIER), which is situated at Nice Barrington, Massachusetts.
Nevertheless, because the – Middle for Media and Democracy (CMD) – famous, the fact was that it:
… arose out of the world of right-wing darkish cash and company pursuits, and plenty of of its signatories aren’t verified. AIER … is a Koch-tied libertarian assume tank …
Now all that’s historical past.
However I’m wondering what these so-called progressive voices that supported all these items again within the early days of COVID thought once they noticed Trump appoint one of many key GBD gamers – Jay Bhattacharya – as the brand new director of the Nationwide Institute of Well being within the US.
There he was with Bobby Kennedy and Martin Makary – after being appointed.
He has advised the press that he’ll defund universities that don’t conform to his model of ‘tutorial freedom’.
On this Unbiased article (December 6, 2024) – Trump’s staff weighs withholding large analysis grants from universities which can be too ‘woke’: Report – interprets this assault on universities as:
… punishing those who apparently don’t adequately embrace views championed by conservatives.
He’s in a type of bizarre payback mode:
Bhattacharya needs to tackle what he views as tutorial conformity in science, which pushed him apart over his criticism of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, together with his opposition to high school closures and masks mandates to cease the unfold of the virus.
Bear in mind again in 2020 when the pandemic first emerged, Bhattacharya claimed solely “40,000 People can be killed by the pandemic”.
The quantity now exceeds “1.2 million” and is rising.
In fact, including so-called “nonresearch components in medical-research grant selections” has been deeply opposed by the science group and is more likely to retard progress in discovering data that can advance human well being.
Makary is against “broad vaccine mandates”.
So how do these ‘progressives’ really feel now they see their COVID resistance chief who they relentlessly supported by way of social media, in books and Op Eds, now a part of the US Administration’s well being staff that’s defunding well being analysis, offering misinformation about vaccines (see Kennedy’s claims in regards to the measles vaccine) and extra.
The case of measles is an instance.
The Unbiased article cited above famous that;
Mr Kennedy, who turned the nation’s high well being official in February as a part of the brand new Trump administration, has for many years helped sow doubts concerning the security and efficacy of vaccines, contributing to a decline in vaccination charges.
Listed below are two attention-grabbing graphs exhibiting the incidence of the measles an infection within the US from 1950 to 2025.
The info is just not steady as much as 1988 (observations for 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1985) then steady.
The primary graph exhibits the dramatic drop in instances to nearly zero from the Seventies.
What occurred?
This text from the Infectious Illnesses Society of America Basis – Measles vaccination: Know the information – notes that:
Measles is a extremely contagious viral an infection that ceaselessly causes a extreme flu-like sickness accompanied by a rash. Problems happen in 3 in 10 who get measles, and younger kids are particularly weak …
Earlier than the vaccine was accessible in 1963, practically each youngster bought measles by age 15. The illness sickened 3 million to 4 million folks and led to about 500 deaths and 48,000 hospitalizations yearly within the U.S. …
Because of a extremely efficient vaccination program, measles was declared eradicated from the U.S. in 2000, a historic public well being achievement. Nevertheless, outbreaks associated to vaccine hesitancy have been occurring worldwide in recent times. Within the U.S., greater than 700 instances of measles have been reported thus far in 2025, greater than double the instances reported in all of 2024.
The second graph present the state of affairs since 2010, with spikes throughout Trump’s first administration and a brand new “ongoing measles outbreak” for the reason that begin of this 12 months (Supply).
The info exhibits that:
From 1 January to twenty March 2025, 17 States have reported a complete of 378 instances of measles, together with two deaths – the primary deaths associated to measles in the USA in a decade. Nearly all of instances are in kids who’re unvaccinated or have unknown vaccination standing, and the general hospitalization charge is 17%.
That incidence has now climbed to shut to 900.
A information report (April 4, 2025) – Measles vaccination charge could also be even decrease than estimated, leaving children weak amid outbreak – reported “that just about a 3rd of younger kids who have been eligible to be vaccinated towards the illness didn’t get their first shot on schedule.”
So how do these progressives really feel having vehemently supported the views of those characters throughout the early years of COVID?
That’s sufficient for right now!
(c) Copyright 2025 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.