“People are already losing trust in vaccines: Only 40 percent of Americans believe it is extremely important for parents to get their children vaccinated, down from 64 percent in 2001. It is perhaps the most worrying trend in public health right now.
We have the tools to stop many infectious diseases — if we take advantage of them. Trump’s words are making it less likely that people will.”
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“Meanwhile, measles cases in the US matched their 2023 total over just the first few months of 2024. A local outbreak in Oregon has seen nearly two dozen cases since June; at least two people have been hospitalized.
A disease that was once effectively eradicated in the US — and which school mandates helped to stamp out — is mounting a comeback.
Donald Trump could choose to wield his tremendous influence to try to restore people’s faith in vital public health measures. He did it, if half-heartedly, during the pandemic and it had the desired effect. Instead, he’s stoking doubts about the value of vaccines, and courting the dangers vaccine hesitancy brings.”
“Many other developed countries with established pharmaceutical industries such as Japan, Canada, and the UK have implemented or are working to roll out their own incentives to spur antibiotic development. The Pasteur Act dwarfs these. This could potentially drive pharmaceutical companies to flock to the US market to make drugs deemed important there and not in other places.
“The size of the Pasteur Act is going to be so large that it ultimately draws developers to only focusing on the United States, only developing the drug so that it can be used appropriately in the United States, and only registering the drug in the United States, because that’s ultimately going to be sufficient revenue and incentive for what otherwise is not a very profitable market,” explained Rohit Malpani, a senior policy advisor at the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership, or GARDP.
Cirz added that with a steady influx of Pasteur Act funds, pharmaceutical companies may be less interested in investing additional funds to figure out ways to manufacture their antibiotics more cheaply. Usually companies would continue investing so they can increase their profit margins by lowering manufacturing costs, but if profit margins are set by the US government, then there’s less incentive to make an approved drug cheaper, when it can divert attention to making even more drugs. Without that innovation for affordable production, the act may unintentionally prohibit developing countries such as India from being able to independently manufacture the drug.
Finally, while Americans with federal health insurance plans are guaranteed access to antimicrobials that receive support from the act, the proposed legislation does not provide any stipulations or guidance for ensuring global access to these drugs. Pharmaceutical companies are left to make decisions regarding pricing, manufacturing, and distribution of whatever antibiotics might be funded by the program, argued Ava Alkon, global health advocacy and policy adviser at Doctors Without Borders.
“What the act doesn’t do is attach any meaningful conditions to facilitate affordable access to people outside of those federal programs, and certainly not outside of the US,” said Alkon.
“From our years of work on access issues around the world, this generally results in products being sold to the highest bidder and being inaccessible in many contexts where they’re needed,” she said.”
“The measles outbreak in Florida shows the further polarization of vaccines, one area that once had overwhelming consensus across political parties and throughout the U.S. The measles vaccine is especially effective in protecting against the virus and, according to the CDC, has led to a 99 percent decrease in the virus compared to the pre-vaccine era.”
“Cases of syphilis continue to climb in the U.S. New data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday found that, while syphilis cases made up a fraction of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the U.S., new diagnoses are dramatically increasing. More than 200,000 cases of syphilis were diagnosed in 2022, marking a 17% increase from the previous year. That represents an 80% increase since 2018, part of a “decades-long upward trend,” according to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services.
Congenital syphilis — which is when the disease is passed from a mother to her baby during pregnancy — has also gone up. The CDC reported in November that about 3,700 babies tested positive for syphilis in the U.S. in 2022 — more than 10 times the number diagnosed a decade earlier — and 300 of them were stillborn or died soon after birth.
Why are syphilis cases on the rise? “There has been a consistent decrease in funding for sexual health services and programs throughout last couple of decades,” Kristen Krause, deputy director for the Center for Health, Identity, Behavior and Prevention Studies at the Rutgers School of Public Health, tells Yahoo Life. As a result, fewer people are aware of the disease and are tested for it, including women.
Syphilis isn’t the most common STI in the U.S.; that distinction goes to chlamydia. But it’s hard to ignore how quickly cases are increasing across the country. Syphilis isn’t as well known as other STIs, but experts say it should be on your radar.”
“Experts say the public’s disinterest in the latest Covid shots is likely a combination of poor messaging from authorities, a diminishing fear about a virus that three years ago was wholly unknown, and the political polarization of the pandemic itself. But whatever the reasons, that vaccine ambivalence still poses a health threat.
Elderly people and very young infants continue to have a higher chance than the rest of the population that they will be hospitalized with Covid-19. Vaccination rates have fallen off for the former group, who are also most likely to die from an infection, and they were never strong to begin with for the latter”
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“The known unknowns for the future, which could spur another round of investment and interest in updated Covid-19 vaccines, are biological. The virus has been evolving and will continue to evolve and could, in theory, reach a point where the current vaccines are ineffectual.
The other question mark is inside of us. The reason many people still enjoy protection from serious illness is because our body’s T-cells are familiar with the virus and can activate when they detect it. They may not be able to stop an infection entirely (that is the role of antibodies, which are quicker to fade) but they can stamp out the virus before a person becomes too sick.
What we don’t know today is how long our T cells’ memory will last, and how durable that immunity really is. The only way to find out is for more time to pass.”