There are two ways to make a population healthy. You can either eliminate sick people through treatment, or eliminate sick people through death. I think this administration is picking the latter.
lvspiff · 8h ago
They are picking the “un-rich” latter. The rich can still have all the vaccines they want they just gotta pay for it. Same goes for healthcare. If you don’t have a job and arent independently wealthy well screw you dont care about you anyways. So its not just a purge of the sick people its a purge of the poor as well.
I dont think they have an endgame other than at the end they’ve accumulated all the wealth and power possible…nothing about making population healthy
HarryHirsch · 10h ago
You can also provide clean air and mandate such and such a turnover of fresh air, and you can have paid sick days, so that employees don't drag themselves in with respiratory illness and infect the rest of the staff. But it's America, can't have such.
maximilianburke · 10h ago
(I kinda was hoping that would fall under the former, heh)
pabs3 · 6h ago
That is less about treatement and more about prevention, which the UK NHS is planning on shifting focus to.
These cuts have been in progress for months, and it’s a sad state of the world when scientific research and its products are called unscientific and not evidence based without any substantiation.
I’m reminded of this quote from Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, as we creep closer and closer to future he describes.
> We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
twodave · 9h ago
It’s more nuanced, I think.
Some of those in power do understand science and technology, and have responsible stances.
Some … understand …, and have intentionally-irresponsible stances.
Some do NOT understand, and choose positions either based upon bad information or other priorities entirely.
And those of us not in power are routinely lied to by all four groups, making us question the reputation of literally everything.
I think the end state of this is sort of the dragon eating its tail—not only do those in power no longer understand science and technology (or use their understanding to manipulate others), but the disease then spreads to most everyone else.
2OEH8eoCRo0 · 10h ago
Souter warned of the lack of civic education as well. We are just ignorant all around these days!
“An ignorant people can never remain a free people. Democracy cannot survive too much ignorance.”
“I don’t believe there is any problem of American politics in American public life which is more significant today than the pervasive civic ignorance of the Constitution of the United States and the structure of government.”
lvspiff · 8h ago
Theres such a huge focus on STEM yet i rarely see the scientific method or critical thinking and logic being taught. Its like forming your own ideas is no longer a thing and so long as you have the solution you wont need anything original
I see it growing worse in my job where newer staff rarely can come up with new ideas and the older staff are having to hand hold them. They have trouble even stating the problem at times just “i dont know how to fix any of it”. Eventually the solution is either crazy convoluted (a factory for a class for a static function that returns a string of static json) or just crazy in general (let me put this json into an env variable so its now its available global)
rngecounty · 6h ago
I'm glad this is being done. Government funded research like this is just another financial engineering opportunity for these research companies/universities. I am not making this up, just check the other post about scientific fraud at scale which is currently on the front page of HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44796526
bigyabai · 6h ago
Privatizing vaccine development doesn't remove the incentives for scientific fraud. If anything, we trust the government with these incalculably valuable public-works projects because we cannot afford to write off the alternative. Not for COVID, not for the seasonal flu, and not for the next plague/ebola/malaria of your lifetime either.
rngecounty · 6h ago
> Privatizing vaccine development doesn't remove the incentives for scientific fraud.
Right it won't. My point however is that don't create an avenue, private or public, which has dedicated funds for such activities. It just ends up becoming an industry which tries to gain off those funds than doing any real research.
haganomy · 3h ago
Do you know how the Internet was created?
bigyabai · 6h ago
That's how all industry works. The side that invests most in innovative techniques is rewarded with larger margins and incentivized to wring out every last dollar they can.
The "if we don't look at the research then it doesn't exist" mentality is why TSMC is 5 generations ahead of Intel's fabs.
verdverm · 11h ago
mRNA...
2021 - saved millions of lives
2023 - won a Nobel Prize
2025 - cancelled by an anti-vaxxer
latchkey · 10h ago
May have gotten some of this wrong and probably missing a bunch, but...
1960's - discovered
1970's - delivered into cells
1987 - protein development
1990's - more development
2013 - potential vaccine for rabies
verdverm · 10h ago
Yea, there is a much longer history.
What's really crazy is that this is the same (?, 2.0) administration that championed the Project Warpspeed that led to this sequence of events. You'd think they'd be talking up how great they did and all the potential mRNA has to MAHA, yet here we are...
latchkey · 10h ago
Good point! He gave the reigns to a nutter and fired the folks that actually did the project. Bonkers!
tw04 · 10h ago
To be clear, he’s saying the wildly successful mRNA covid vaccines, given to hundreds of millions of people, “don’t work”. Based on “science” without any actual citation* of a study to be seen.
It’s absurd this administration can now just say “we used science” and not be held accountable for the bald faced lies.
mzajc · 10h ago
Absurd, but unsurprising. I've seen their voters, in bad faith, compare science to religion, either because the distinction between pure faith and a scientific process is too alien to them or because they pretend that it is. This is yet another manifestation of this "misunderstanding".
linotype · 10h ago
Sagan called this in the 90s if not before.
schmidtleonard · 10h ago
Yeah, it goes way back, but it has definitely flared up recently.
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" - Asimov, 1980
theturtle · 8h ago
1980 was barely the start of "celebration of the stupid." Reagan and Bush turbocharged it. "Yore stoopid? Well, good fer yew, yer what Murka's all about!!!"
o11c · 10h ago
To be fair, there often isn't as much a distinction as we'd like. Even ignoring soft sciences ...
how often is there an HN post linking to a paper about some great new battery technology?
When the in-group fails to police itself sufficiently, it is inevitable that the out-group will do so coarsely.
eggnet · 10h ago
This comment is too indirect to be useful. Can you be more explicit?
o11c · 9h ago
To the people at large, a lot of "science" consists entirely of "hey look, a blessed paper says so; anyone who disagrees is a heretic", which is exactly what the atheists (and other-religion-ists) see for insert-religion-here.
schmidtleonard · 9h ago
Their schooling taught them better than that. They choose to forget.
schmidtleonard · 10h ago
Nope. Experiments are the opposite of faith, and a collection of social mechanisms to encourage experimentation, long-form debate, and useful + correct results is fundamentally different from a collection of social mechanisms to encourage faith and obedience.
pstuart · 9h ago
The weasel wording around "belief" doesn't help.
The two use cases of the words are not the same:
1. belief: a world view that exists without needing external validation (i.e., "faith")
2. belief: an understanding of some kind, based on some collection of evidence
Some of that confusion is just ignorance and lack of critical reasoning skills, but it's also done in bad faith to muddy the waters to discredit the other side.
o11c · 9h ago
A believer might say there's no difference at all: "just because there's not enough proof that you will accept doesn't mean there's no evidence."
Though I'd actually use a different definition still:
3. belief: an idea upon which you have the confidence to act
Well, I would have suggested an experiment, but if we're still at the "idiot" phase that might be a bit premature.
Instead, I'll offer some general questions that can be answered without experiments, only research.
For each faith X:
0. Note that each line depends on previous lines.
1. Who and what defines X-ism?
2. How exactly do you determine if someone is an X-ist?
3. What immediate claims does X-ism make about you, me, X-ists, non-X-ists, people at large, the world in general, etc.
4. What are the greater (long-term, conceptual, metaphysical, etc.) implications of 3?
5. If X is true, what prior assumptions and values will I have to discard? Am I willing to do so?
6. What kind of signal-to-noise ratio can I expect due to uncertainties when calculating the above in practice?
Teever · 10h ago
People posting astroturfed links on HN about new battery tech is not directly comparable to people refusing to vaccine their children against measles because of religious reasons.
shreezus · 10h ago
University research grants that have the word "mRNA" present are currently being flagged and frozen, even though mRNA technology has been used for things like cancer vaccine research for years. Politicizing a technology is incredibly absurd and will have long-term repercussions on science & medicine.
I know of a professor at one university that had grants frozen due to being flagged as "woke" gender discourse. His lab researches...(wait for it)... immunotherapy treatments for breast cancer in women.
senectus1 · 10h ago
This administration and the congress to go with it are going to end up being recorded as more damaging to human progress than covid or the GFC.
rockemsockem · 10h ago
And here I thought the right liked boobs, smh
atmavatar · 10h ago
They apparently only like boobs when they're heads of federal agencies.
lvspiff · 8h ago
A podcast or tweet from RichNipples isnt an ACTUAL scientific citation??? Next you’ll tell me DogDookie69 isn’t the women’s reproductive specialist he’s made himself out to be.
burnt-resistor · 4h ago
When the next pandemic comes and there's no plan or preparation, it will be dismissed as a "complete surprise" "no one could've predicted" and "hatched in a North Korean lab".
jleyank · 8h ago
Hell, they're not going to collect much in elevated pharmaceutical tariffs if they things the stuff is voodoo and won't import it. European and Asian companies don't have to worry about losing a market that's moving away from them.
bediger4000 · 6h ago
At the very least, RFKJ either perjured himself during his confirmation hearing, or he's going back on his testimony. He claimed he wasn't going to do any of this. I think this is impeachable conduct.
mcphage · 6h ago
Hey, welcome to 2025. Always nice having time travelers visit. Not sure why you picked this year to travel to from the past, but it was not a great decision.
FireBeyond · 5h ago
Yeah, even beyond the complete lack of accountability, nothing will happen. "I meant it at that time. But on further reflection, I've updated my opinion."
WarOnPrivacy · 11h ago
Reducing public health by damaging and degrading systems that advance and preserve health - this might not be the best way to reverse a population decline.
mindslight · 10h ago
Wait until you hear how they've criminalized maternal healthcare. There's really no other way to view this clown car of malcontent grifters besides societal suicide.
worik · 8h ago
> criminalized maternal healthcare.
The rotters! It is out and out misogyny. But it is abortion and birth control they target, is it not? They could argue that they are acting to increase population?
Do not mistake me for in any way supporting these evil people. But being pedantic I wish to criticise them accurately
Are they criminalising some other aspect of maternity care?
mindslight · 7h ago
You're certainly not going to increase the population when eager would-be mothers die of complications from trying to carry a nonviable fetus to term/miscarriage. This is the reality of "late term abortion" the cultists love to harp on. Their great bogeyman is actually a straw man.
You're also not going to increase the population by discouraging IVF while the economic treadmill keeps on pushing people to put off kids.
As far as what they might argue? They will certainly argue anything, but it's never in good faith. Any lofty values they invoke to defend one policy will immediately vanish when they're asked to apply them to a contradictory policy. And like the import taxes, or the spectacle deportations, or the cries about the debt, we certainly could have a group of well reasoned national policies that would encourage having kids. But one or two policies seemingly picked for their mechanics of hurting people is most certainly not that kind of constructive approach.
coreyh14444 · 1h ago
Who is downvoting these en masse?
moogly · 9h ago
RFK Jr. should be called the Angel of Death of the 21st century.
No comments yet
jmclnx · 11h ago
Well why should the US lead in medical advancements. Glad we have an administration that has no problem handing medical advancements to China.
I am sure China will thank us some day. How stupid can Trump and his people be, every day they do something even more stupid than the day before.
getlawgdon · 10h ago
Winder when we'll all be sick enough of the lunacy to permanently boot these right wing extremists.
...
infamouscow · 11h ago
> BARDA is terminating 22 mRNA vaccine development investments because the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.
650REDHAIR · 11h ago
The problem is that I don’t believe RFK jr and therefore I don’t believe HHS. How accurate is their data? Was it manipulated?
yakz · 11h ago
They didn’t trust the government and wanted you to stop trusting the government too.
They know that their own public statements are not trustworthy (they are peddling weird bullshit for profit in their private lives, after all).
They got themselves elected and so now you don’t trust the government.
Mission accomplished.
j3th9n · 11h ago
Good questions to always ask. But better late than never. Welcome to the matrix.
genter · 11h ago
It's a good thing Shockley gave up on the transistor, it never would've been able to switch as much current as a relay, or switch as quickly as a vacuum tube.
It's a good thing Benjamin Franklin gave up on electricity, we would've never been able to contain it safely.
It's a good thing Watts gave up the steam engine, it never would've put out as much power as a horse.
wk_end · 11h ago
With the caveats that 1) I suspect that this isn't actually data-driven as RFK Jr. is an anti-vax nut and 2) personally I think the government should fund vaccine development:
Were Shockley, Franklin, or Watts funded by the US government? To the tune of half a billion dollars?
That's not a rhetorical question - I don't know to what extent their work received grants. But I think you need to connect those particular dots to effectively make the kind of comparison you're making.
The implication of your post (sort of) is that work on mRNA vaccination development either needs to be funded by the government or it'll be given up on. If it's the kind of breakthrough that it likely is (and already has been, really) I doubt that's really the case. It's just unfortunate for Americans and the world that the work will likely be done elsewhere, perhaps more slowly, and perhaps (?) with less public (rather than for-profit) interest.
coloneltcb · 11h ago
it will be government funded, but just not our government, and not in our universities
text0404 · 11h ago
when you think of scientific research, do you imagine someone having an immediate eureka moment in a vacuum and writing a paper without having ever considered a problem before? do you understand that scientific progress takes years of dedication, hard work, trial and error, and then finally (occasionally) success?
do you understand long-term survival and the necessity of planning for future generations, or are you just looking for the equivalent of this quarter's shareholder returns when it comes to advancing the species?
thenerdhead · 11h ago
It’s tough to get a clear picture, but if you’ve been following the research closely, it’s obvious that there are better long-term candidates in the pipeline.
Project Next-Gen is highly data-driven, and the most promising candidates are rising to the top as some are already near Phase 3.
Redirecting funding toward these options isn’t as drastic as it may seem. In fact, it makes sense if we want the best outcomes.
I don’t really see where and how this is more promising than mRNA. My (very cursory) understanding was also that mRNA based vaccines can go far beyond just COVID and into all manner of promising options such as curing some of the viruses that cause the common cold entirely.
WillPostForFood · 10h ago
curing some of the viruses that cause the common cold entirely.
This was this kind of crazy hype from back in 2021/2022 that has helped fuel the backlash against MRNA vaccines. There has been nothing happening on the common cold virus with MRNA vaccines. In retrospect, it seems like CEOs pumping the stock price with wild promises.
thenerdhead · 10h ago
> There has been nothing happening on the common cold virus with MRNA vaccines. In retrospect, it seems like CEOs pumping the stock price with wild promises.
So not true. There are numerous candidates for pan-flu and pan-coronavirus vaccines. mRNA and other vehicles.
So long as they don't have a targeting mechanism and can turn any of your tissues into antigen factories they can't be deemed safe for use.
Just like carbon nanotubes were all the rage until it was discovered they are as toxic as asbestos.
beepbopboopp · 10h ago
Yea, no.
If there are indeed better candidates why not compare the results of those candidates in field? Backing a hope versus a working solution with all your chips means that even if these end up being better the decision was still deeply wrong and we got lucky. Just abysmal risk mismangement.
thenerdhead · 10h ago
Look, it’s not that BARDA is throwing science out the window in favor of some wishful thinking. It’s that they’re looking beyond what works now and toward what might work better, not just for today’s virus, but for the ones waiting in the wings.
Oral vaccines, nasal sprays, multi-antigen, multi-receptor approaches, these aren’t just buzzwords. They aim at mucosal immunity, they aim at T-cells, they aim at the places our current tools often miss. And when you learn that SARS-CoV-2 can persist in the body long after the sniffles are gone(i.e. Long COVID/MIS-C), you realize we need more than just antibodies.
phonon · 10h ago
What evidence do you have that anyone at BARDA made this decision?
cyberax · 10h ago
> Look, it’s not that BARDA is throwing science out the window in favor of some wishful thinking.
Yes, it is. And in favor of just wishful thinking, but outright quackery.
fzeroracer · 10h ago
So you trust RFK Jr at his word then when he lies right to your face? Because even if you honestly believe there are better long term candidates in the pipeline you would have to be immensely disingenuous to believe anything he says.
thenerdhead · 10h ago
There are legitimate scientific efforts underway to explore next-gen vaccine platforms like mucosal and T-cell-based strategies.
That shift is happening regardless of what RFK Jr. says or doesn’t say. Let’s separate the messenger from the actual science for a moment.
fzeroracer · 10h ago
Yes, and this thread is very specifically about what the HHS is doing and what RFK Jr is saying. Where he is again, specifically, winding down mRNA vaccine development, redirecting funding and cancelling grants even if they contain a whiff of the word 'mRNA'. The 'messenger' in this case holds a loaded gun and has no qualms about using it to kill science he doesn't like.
I dont think they have an endgame other than at the end they’ve accumulated all the wealth and power possible…nothing about making population healthy
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jun/29/nhs-health-p...
I’m reminded of this quote from Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, as we creep closer and closer to future he describes.
> We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
Some of those in power do understand science and technology, and have responsible stances.
Some … understand …, and have intentionally-irresponsible stances.
Some do NOT understand, and choose positions either based upon bad information or other priorities entirely.
And those of us not in power are routinely lied to by all four groups, making us question the reputation of literally everything.
I think the end state of this is sort of the dragon eating its tail—not only do those in power no longer understand science and technology (or use their understanding to manipulate others), but the disease then spreads to most everyone else.
“An ignorant people can never remain a free people. Democracy cannot survive too much ignorance.”
“I don’t believe there is any problem of American politics in American public life which is more significant today than the pervasive civic ignorance of the Constitution of the United States and the structure of government.”
I see it growing worse in my job where newer staff rarely can come up with new ideas and the older staff are having to hand hold them. They have trouble even stating the problem at times just “i dont know how to fix any of it”. Eventually the solution is either crazy convoluted (a factory for a class for a static function that returns a string of static json) or just crazy in general (let me put this json into an env variable so its now its available global)
Right it won't. My point however is that don't create an avenue, private or public, which has dedicated funds for such activities. It just ends up becoming an industry which tries to gain off those funds than doing any real research.
The "if we don't look at the research then it doesn't exist" mentality is why TSMC is 5 generations ahead of Intel's fabs.
2021 - saved millions of lives
2023 - won a Nobel Prize
2025 - cancelled by an anti-vaxxer
What's really crazy is that this is the same (?, 2.0) administration that championed the Project Warpspeed that led to this sequence of events. You'd think they'd be talking up how great they did and all the potential mRNA has to MAHA, yet here we are...
It’s absurd this administration can now just say “we used science” and not be held accountable for the bald faced lies.
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" - Asimov, 1980
how often is there an HN post linking to a paper about some great new battery technology?
When the in-group fails to police itself sufficiently, it is inevitable that the out-group will do so coarsely.
The two use cases of the words are not the same:
Some of that confusion is just ignorance and lack of critical reasoning skills, but it's also done in bad faith to muddy the waters to discredit the other side.Though I'd actually use a different definition still:
Instead, I'll offer some general questions that can be answered without experiments, only research.
For each faith X:
I know of a professor at one university that had grants frozen due to being flagged as "woke" gender discourse. His lab researches...(wait for it)... immunotherapy treatments for breast cancer in women.
The rotters! It is out and out misogyny. But it is abortion and birth control they target, is it not? They could argue that they are acting to increase population?
Do not mistake me for in any way supporting these evil people. But being pedantic I wish to criticise them accurately
Are they criminalising some other aspect of maternity care?
You're also not going to increase the population by discouraging IVF while the economic treadmill keeps on pushing people to put off kids.
As far as what they might argue? They will certainly argue anything, but it's never in good faith. Any lofty values they invoke to defend one policy will immediately vanish when they're asked to apply them to a contradictory policy. And like the import taxes, or the spectacle deportations, or the cries about the debt, we certainly could have a group of well reasoned national policies that would encourage having kids. But one or two policies seemingly picked for their mechanics of hurting people is most certainly not that kind of constructive approach.
No comments yet
I am sure China will thank us some day. How stupid can Trump and his people be, every day they do something even more stupid than the day before.
They know that their own public statements are not trustworthy (they are peddling weird bullshit for profit in their private lives, after all).
They got themselves elected and so now you don’t trust the government.
Mission accomplished.
It's a good thing Benjamin Franklin gave up on electricity, we would've never been able to contain it safely.
It's a good thing Watts gave up the steam engine, it never would've put out as much power as a horse.
Were Shockley, Franklin, or Watts funded by the US government? To the tune of half a billion dollars?
That's not a rhetorical question - I don't know to what extent their work received grants. But I think you need to connect those particular dots to effectively make the kind of comparison you're making.
The implication of your post (sort of) is that work on mRNA vaccination development either needs to be funded by the government or it'll be given up on. If it's the kind of breakthrough that it likely is (and already has been, really) I doubt that's really the case. It's just unfortunate for Americans and the world that the work will likely be done elsewhere, perhaps more slowly, and perhaps (?) with less public (rather than for-profit) interest.
do you understand long-term survival and the necessity of planning for future generations, or are you just looking for the equivalent of this quarter's shareholder returns when it comes to advancing the species?
Project Next-Gen is highly data-driven, and the most promising candidates are rising to the top as some are already near Phase 3.
Redirecting funding toward these options isn’t as drastic as it may seem. In fact, it makes sense if we want the best outcomes.
https://medicalcountermeasures.gov/nextgen
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/79/1/115/7607231
This was this kind of crazy hype from back in 2021/2022 that has helped fuel the backlash against MRNA vaccines. There has been nothing happening on the common cold virus with MRNA vaccines. In retrospect, it seems like CEOs pumping the stock price with wild promises.
So not true. There are numerous candidates for pan-flu and pan-coronavirus vaccines. mRNA and other vehicles.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/clinical-trial...
There is a big problem
Just like carbon nanotubes were all the rage until it was discovered they are as toxic as asbestos.
If there are indeed better candidates why not compare the results of those candidates in field? Backing a hope versus a working solution with all your chips means that even if these end up being better the decision was still deeply wrong and we got lucky. Just abysmal risk mismangement.
Oral vaccines, nasal sprays, multi-antigen, multi-receptor approaches, these aren’t just buzzwords. They aim at mucosal immunity, they aim at T-cells, they aim at the places our current tools often miss. And when you learn that SARS-CoV-2 can persist in the body long after the sniffles are gone(i.e. Long COVID/MIS-C), you realize we need more than just antibodies.
Yes, it is. And in favor of just wishful thinking, but outright quackery.
That shift is happening regardless of what RFK Jr. says or doesn’t say. Let’s separate the messenger from the actual science for a moment.