The danger of having an anti-vaxxer as US health official: Should we suffer through a new pandemic?

Since February, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the Secretary of Health of the government of Donald Trump, the top public health official in the United States. It's terrible news for the entire planet. It's hard to predict which of the ideas Trump has implemented since returning to power will have the most profound negative impact on a global scale, but putting a conspiracy theorist anti-vaccine in charge of the health care of 340 million people has a good chance of winning the jackpot. The problem is that this prize will be paid in human lives.

Five years ago, we implemented the only possible measure to stop the spread of a new pandemic: lockdowns aimed at reducing infections caused by an unknown virus. They were effective, but maintaining them long enough to control COVID-19 was unsustainable. Vaccines were the solution, and in one tour de force As never before seen, scientists managed to design a handful in record time, using technology that was just being developed, much faster and more effective, such as messenger RNA. It has been estimated that in the first year alone, they had already saved 20 million lives.

The messenger RNA vaccines, for which Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman received the Nobel Prize in 2023, Not only did they stop COVID, but they will also change the design of many vaccines we normally use. But a few days ago, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) suggested that scientists applying for government funding for their projects not mention the term "messenger RNA" in their applications, because the plan is to stop funding this line of research, in which the Americans were leaders. When politics (and ignorance) interfere with science, we all suffer.

This shows that, contrary to the phrase that became popular at the time, we have not emerged better from the pandemic. By allowing incompetents to come to power, the United States is now in a fragile situation that could have unexpected consequences for them and the entire world. For starters, a few weeks ago they saw a record increase in measles cases, a disease that in 2000 was considered eradicated in the country. Ninety-eight percent of those infected in this outbreak were unvaccinated, and the first two deaths have already occurred. Because measles seems like a relatively harmless disease, it also causes serious cases: the highly effective and safe vaccine is estimated to save one million lives a year globally. But Kennedy seems to be oblivious to this: in recent weeks, he's made statements proposing treatments that have no scientific basis, such as cod liver oil, while insisting that such outbreaks are common—which is completely false—and that some children have suffered serious side effects from a vaccine that isn't all that great either.

Planetary health

One thing we did learn during the pandemic is that when someone sneezes in China, it doesn't take long for someone else in Italy to get sick. This also applies to measles: the outbreak has jumped to Canada, where 150 cases were already detected last week, and from there it can spread everywhere, taking advantage of the gap in herd immunity that deniers have been slowly digging. That's why whooping cough, gallbladder disease, and other childhood illnesses are also on the rise, which could end up affecting adults as well.

But this may not be the worst threat we face right now. We've been following the evolution of measles for years. H5N1, the virus that causes bird flu. Since the beginning of the century, a thousand human-to-human jumps from this virus have been detected, with an average mortality rate of nearly 50% (for comparison, COVID mortality had previously reached 5%). After a few relatively calm years, nearly a hundred new infections have been reported in recent months. There have been none from human to human, and that's positive, because without that, we'll never have a pandemic. But we still need to be vigilant.

That's why epidemiologists and virologists are keeping an eye on the United States. If a country with more than 500 million chickens doesn't make any effort to control avian flu, the problem could become very large very quickly if, by bad luck, the right mutation appears. A few days ago, Kennedy hinted at precisely that: copying Boris Johnson's famous pandemic idea—quickly discouraged by someone who understood statistics more than he did—his plan would be to let the virus run free and let the strongest animals survive. You don't have to be an expert on the subject to understand that this isn't a very good idea.

Humanity has a complicated relationship with viruses. We've gone from not even thinking about it to panicking for fear of a new global crisis. The reality is somewhere in between: the risk of a pandemic will always exist; therefore, we must be vigilant and ready to react quickly if necessary. This also means getting vaccinated when it's time. And understand once and for all that our relationship with microbes is a planetary health issue: if there's even a weak link in the chain, we'll all end up suffering the consequences.