The Trust Is Gone

And who knows if it will ever come back?

J.V.Last on the latest RFK Jr atrocity and more:

Yesterday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—the nonpartisan agency whose work has long been the global gold-standard for health science—made a change to the section of its website on the nonexistent link between autism and vaccines. The CDC went from stating that “vaccines do not cause autism” to saying that:

• The claim “vaccines do not cause autism” is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.
• Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.

We’re going to get into the details of this change in a minute, because they’re important. Kids will get sick because of what the CDC just did. Some of them will die.

But the even bigger story is that the U.S. government is no longer a reliable source of information. The consequences of this corruption will ripple through American society for years.

And despite my fit of optimism yesterday, this is not a thing that can be put back together.

Last goes on to explain why trust is so important to a democracy. If people cannot make informed decisions without having to verify every piece of information (if that’s even possible) the whole system becomes very inefficient and unproductive, not to mention stupid and dangerous.

Politicians exaggerate, distort, and lie all the time. This is—however regrettable—an accepted part of our democratic politics.

But until 2025, it was assumed that important, apolitical government agencies did not lie. If the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that inflation was up by 2 percent, then that’s what its best methodology could determine. If the NIH said that measles had an r0 between 12 and 18, then that’s what the best science showed.

The government could be wrong. Methodology evolves; models can be improved; new data emerges.But the American government would never intentionally spread disinformation as part of a political project.

That’s all gone. And it’s not just Trump. In fact, he’s irrelevant to this larger problem:

What I’m talking about is that in the legal world, judges have seen so many lies from federal prosecutors that they are grappling with the end of regular order.I’m talking about the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics being fired after her agency released data the president did not like. And now, the CDC changing its guidance on vaccines and autism to fit with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccination project.

These lies at the CDC are going to get kids killed. I can’t believe any scientist or medical doctor would put up with it. And the rest of this is making everyone unable to make reasoned decisions, including American businesses. I wish I understood why they are so pathetically myopic that they’re just letting this happen with virtually no push back simply in order to secure their own short-lived profits. I guess they must think they’re going to die soon (and they don’t love their children) because what this is doing to the future of this country and potentially even their own fortunes is profound.