Friday, February 13, 2026

Playing Russian Roulette With The Measles

I'm grateful that my parents had common sense and got their children vaccinated! Not getting vaccinated was unthinkable back then!

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Doctors bear the burden as ‘medical freedom’ fuels worst US measles outbreak in 30 years

By Chad Terhune and Julie Steenhuysen at Reuters
February 13, 20266:10 AM EST

SPARTANBURG, South Carolina, Feb 13 (Reuters) - About a dozen times each day, medical staff at Parkside Pediatrics in Spartanburg, South Carolina, head to the clinic’s parking lot, reaching inside cars and minivans to check children and their parents for fever, rash and other signs of measles.

Dr. Justin Moll started this outdoor triage in December to cope with what has quickly become the largest U.S. measles outbreak in more than three decades, federal health data show. He wants to keep the highly contagious virus out of the clinic’s waiting rooms, already packed with infants and other small children. Many of them are unvaccinated against measles because they’re still too young.

Moll and his colleagues have treated about 50 measles patients since the outbreak started in early October, something never seen before at their South Carolina clinics. They fear that outbreaks like these are becoming the new normal as Americans’ opposition to vaccines deepens, fueled by backlash to the COVID-19 response and misinformation on social media. Medical experts say U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine policies have further undermined public trust in life-saving immunizations by promoting unproven theories about the dangers of vaccines.

"This is not going to be the last vaccine-preventable disease to hit us," Moll told Reuters at his clinic in Spartanburg, the epicenter of the outbreak.

For this story, Reuters interviewed more than two dozen doctors, nurses, parents, school officials, pharmacists, pastors, lawmakers and former health officials in South Carolina.

The South Carolina outbreak has surpassed 930 cases, about 20 of which required hospitalization, according to state health officials. No deaths have been reported by the state.

School immunization rates statewide have dropped by nearly 3 percentage points since prior to the pandemic in 2020, as local leaders and parents pushed back against COVID-related lockdowns and vaccine mandates and demanded more "medical freedom" to choose what, if any, other routine shots their children receive.

Only 89% of all students from kindergarten up through high school are up to date on their shots in Spartanburg County, below the 95% rate that public health experts say can prevent measles’ spread. In some local schools, vaccination rates have dropped below 20%, according to state data.

During previous outbreaks, the federal government has led the charge to encourage widespread vaccination and coordinate efforts among states to curb the spread of disease. Kennedy has not made any major statements regarding the measles outbreak in South Carolina. HHS didn't respond to a request for comment.

The measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) two-shot protocol remains recommended at the federal level starting at 12 months of age, with a second at 4 to 6 years of age.

Measles is among the most highly contagious viruses known. Spread through coughing, sneezing and talking, it can linger in the air for up to two hours and move quickly through communities with low vaccination coverage.

'SOME FOLKS HAVE OVERREACTED' IN AVOIDING ALL VACCINES

Some South Carolina Republicans now have second thoughts about discrediting routine immunization but find they hold little sway.

"I now believe that some folks have overreacted in the other direction and oppose any and all vaccines, even ones that have been tried-and-true for decades," Josh Kimbrell, a Republican state senator running for governor, wrote last month to a Spartanburg County school board.

He asked school officials to examine their policies on vaccine exemptions for students, but was pilloried on social media when he posted the letter online. Kimbrell didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Dr. Leigh Bragg, a pediatrician near Spartanburg, said local hospitals, churches and schools are reluctant to speak up about the most proven way to curb the outbreak. “People are trying to stay in the middle and not pick a side on vaccinations,” she said.

Even South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, a Republican, has championed personal choice as the preventable disease spreads through the state.

"Our approach is to be sure people have the information and that the vaccine is available for them, give them all the information so they can make up their mind on what they want to do," he told reporters at a state tourism conference this week.

The outbreak struck as South Carolina’s public health department grappled with reductions in federal funding and overall staffing in recent years, two former department employees told Reuters.

Last month, the Trump administration said it had sent South Carolina $1.4 million to support its measles response. State officials said the federal government also has provided assistance with testing, clinical advice and free vaccines.

"The number of cases we’re seeing now is unprecedented," Dr. Linda Bell, South Carolina’s state epidemiologist, said this week. "We have a great deal more work to do to stop this outbreak."

Despite Bell's pleas for people to get fully vaccinated, some remain reluctant to heed those calls. At state-run vaccine clinics at Spartanburg churches, only a handful of people have shown up in recent weeks.

Talina Podrez, a 21-year-old barista in Spartanburg, said measles had swept through her local church in January, leaving services about half empty. While she stayed away because she only has one of the two recommended MMR shots, Podrez said she isn’t interested in getting another shot.

"My mom was against most of the vaccines so we just got whatever was needed for the bare minimum," she said.

'MANY PARENTS HAVE LOST RESPECT AND FEAR FOR THIS DISEASE'

Nathan Heffington, a nurse practitioner and medical director for Parkside Pediatrics in Spartanburg County, believes that many more infections aren’t being counted. He has seen multiple unvaccinated families show up with telltale signs of measles, but then refuse to get tested.

The clinic still reports them to the state as suspected cases and advises them to quarantine.

“The actual numbers are much, much higher than the reported numbers, which is just all the more nerve-wracking,” Heffington said. “Many parents have lost respect and fear for this disease.”

While political leaders shy away from a strong endorsement of vaccines, it is left to medical providers like Moll and Heffington to persuade reluctant parents of their value.

"They’re not anti-anything. They're just trying to do the best thing for their family and figure out who to trust," said Moll.

Kathleen Black’s two oldest children, ages 8 and 4, got all their routine immunizations. But she wanted to hold off when her youngest, Katie, was born about a year ago.

From social media and friends, Black heard childhood vaccines may cause autism or developmental delays, claims not supported by medical research. Like many in South Carolina, she voted for Trump and supports Kennedy’s demands for more vaccine safety studies.

“I like to go down those rabbit holes and it opens up millions of questions, like ‘What’s in the vaccines? Why are we giving all these vaccines?’” she told Reuters during a visit to the Parkside clinic.

Heffington explained to her the risks posed by vaccine-preventable diseases. He then discussed the immediate threat her baby faced from measles, and the protection provided by an early MMR shot. He answered all of her questions about possible side effects. Finally, Black pressed him: “Would you do it?”

“Absolutely,” the father of five replied. Black agreed to the first dose that day, and her daughter received a second dose last month.

“I wouldn’t trust every doctor,” Black said, “but I definitely trust Nathan.”

Reporting by Chad Terhune in Spartanburg, and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago;
Editing by Michele Gershberg and Diane Craft

Melanie Phillips 2-13-26 on The Deepening Madness Against the Jews"

Here's another powerful column by Melanie Phillips. I'm glad she writes to vindicate the way we feel.

For me, the insane hatred of the Jews is as rabid and unhinged as what we see in America with the anti-ICE incitement and indoctrination every single day. All of these people are deranged in their hatred and they will do whatever it takes to destroy their scapegoat, whether it be Trump, ICE, or Jews.

You can't reason with Jew-haters. It's like an inherited disease in these evil people. What have we ever done to the Australians, for instance? The answer is nothing. Social media makes it easier for antisemites to broadcast their hatred and boast about it for "likes" because it's somehow become acceptable to do so.

They are jealous of us Jews and our accomplishments and the fact that we've never leeched off the government but have always worked hard to earn our success.

All we can do is fight back against their violence and lies like we've always done.

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The deepening madness against the Jews
The proper response to this war against a people is not to deflect it but to fight it better

Melanie Phillips, Feb 13, 2026

"The tsunami of global antisemitism in the wake of the massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023 and during the Gaza war that followed has caused as much bafflement as horror at the sheer perversity of this malevolence.

"It’s now become clear, however, that what we’re looking at is an even more sinister pattern of behaviour. Appallingly, the slaughter of Jews excites a large number of people so much that it galvanises them to howl for the blood of more.

"This was manifest on Octber 7 itself, when mobs started pouring onto the streets of Western cities screaming about Israeli genocide and “intifada now,” even while the Israelis were still battling the Hamas terrorists perpetrating the slaughter.

"This week, Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited Australia to express solidarity with its beleaguered Jewish community, six weeks after the Bondi Beach terrorist atrocity when 14 Jews and one off-duty police officer were murdered by Islamist gunmen.

"Obscenely, the memory of those victims was desecrated by a hate-fest on the streets of Sydney and Melbourne. Herzog was greeted by mobs screaming “From Gadigal to Gaza, globalise the intifada!”(Gadigal being the Aboriginal name for Australia), and promoting the same lies about genocide and war crimes that had incited the pogrom-style atmosphere culminating in the Bondi Beach atrocity.

"The same shocking phenomenon has been on display in Britain. The latest report by the Jewish defence body, the Community Security Trust, which recorded in 2025 the second-highest number of attacks in a calendar year, says that the Yom Kippur terrorist attack on a Manchester synagogue that left two Jews dead triggered an immediate spike in antisemitism.

"On the day of that attack, the CST recorded 40 antisemitic incidents, with a further 40 the following day — the two highest daily totals during the year. And, in December, it recorded a similar if smaller spike in the wake of the Bondi Beach atrocity.

"In other words, terrorist atrocities against Jews have produced not sympathy or horror, but rather spikes in Jew-hatred, even in other countries. This isn’t just confined to a few cranks and nut-jobs on the fringes of society. It involves many thousands of people.

"There’s nothing remotely normal or explicable about this. It’s a form of madness that’s taken widespread hold.

"Even if Israel is hated, that doesn’t explain why so many regard it as the single greatest threat to the world, deserving a level of opprobrium meted out to no other country on earth including the world’s great tyrannies such as Russia, China or Iran.

"What can explain such an obsession with Israel and Zionism? What is driving people in the supposedly civilised West to call in their droves for the killing of Jews?

"This deranged and murderous hatred is, of course, standard fare in the Muslim world, and Muslims have been leading the charge against Israel and the Jews ever since October 7. But plenty of non-Muslims have been pitching in alongside them.

"One reason is Palestinianism: that exterminatory creed whose aim is the destruction of Israel, and whose antecedents lie in both the murderous Islamic theological hatred of Jews and in the Nazi party of the 1930s to which the Arabs of pre-Israel Palestine were allied.

"Deploying Nazi demonisation of the Jews and Soviet-style inversion of language and reality, the Palestinian cause has acted as a Trojan horse for antisemitism among the liberals and leftists who control Western culture and for whom “Palestine” has become their moral lodestar.

"Grotesquely, this has reframed bigotry as conscience. This week, a new and sinister low was plumbed in the politically liberal British seaside resort of Brighton. Keffiyeh-clad activists went door-knocking from house to house asking residents to boycott Israeli goods — and noting down those who didn’t agree to do so — to turn the town into a “Zionist-free” zone.

"Many reasons can be adduced for this wild and venomous hostility. There’s the grip of “anti-colonialist” dogma that’s now standard in the universities, along with the “intersectional” network of so-called “oppressed” victim groups. There’s the fact that the idea of Israelis as victims can’t be allowed to get in the way of that “colonialist oppressor” narrative.

"These and more are valid reasons. Ultimately, however, this obsession defies rational explanation because it is a form of Jew-hatred — and that’s a pathology, a paranoid neurosis, a collective derangement that defies reason itself.

"In a thoughtful but provocative lecture last week at New York’s 92nd Street Y, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens said that, since antisemitism is immune to rational engagement, diaspora Jews should stop trying to defeat it. Instead, they should concentrate on building and maintaining thriving Jewish communities devoted to instilling Jewish knowledge and culture among their young.

"Building up Jewish identity and peoplehood is indeed absolutely critical. However, that’s no reason to abandon the fight against the madness engulfing the West.

"First, Jews have a duty to bear witness against such a monstrosity and to stand up for truth and justice. Second, it’s wrong to cast the issue as antisemitism. While anti-Jewish feeling is certainly at its core, it expresses itself through anti-Zionism. And this has gained such traction because it uses claims that purport to be observable facts.

"Even though these are wildly distorted and false, they derive from actual events, such as the war in Gaza, which gives these claims a level of plausibility. That has persuaded many who are not antisemites to believe them as true, and therefore to hate Israelis and Zionism.

"Those lies can and should be fought. Indeed, anti-Zionism is an evil in itself and should be attacked as such.

"It is bizarre and wrong to single out one country for double standards — to demonise it alone by wall-to-wall lies and distortions, to deny to one people alone the right to their own ancestral homeland. Anti-Zionism should be fought as a form of bigotry in itself.

"But while there are good reasons for not publicly identifying this onslaught as antisemitism, the fact remains that bigotry against a country doesn’t have the same level of evil as bigotry against a people — and this bigotry only happens over Jews.

"We need to face squarely what we’re up against. Jew-hatred isn’t just another kind of prejudice or racism. It’s a unique desire to rid the world of a people because their very existence is felt to be unbearable.

"Such haters don’t think Jews are victims because they don’t behave as victims. They are instead conspicuously successful. This inspires resentment and jealousy among Westerners, who therefore think claims of antisemitism and Jewish victimisation must be a Jewish scam to sanitise Jewish wrongdoing.

"And the really terrible reason that the murderous attacks on Jews incite and inspire such Westerners to double down with calls for more attacks on Jews is that, like the Islamists, they believe they’re now within sight of their goal to get rid of the “Jewish problem” once and for all.

"They treat as gospel what’s said by the entire global humanitarian establishment that has framed the demonisation of Israel and dehumanisation of Zionists as “anti-racism,” and has cast Israel and its supporters as pariahs. They hear no push-back whatever from the lily-livered liberals and revolutionary fellow-travellers that form the governments of Britain and France, Canada and Australia.

"Hypocritically wringing their hands about Bondi, Manchester and October 7 —and professing falsely that there’s no place for antisemitism in their own countries while doing nothing to stop it — these governments parrot propaganda that incites hatred of Israel, and have given way to Islamist intimidation and cultural creep at home.

"So Jew-haters think their time has come. If they now pile in to kick the Jews in the gut when they’re down and vulnerable, they may get rid of them altogether from their heads, their conscience and their world.

"In other words, the Jews are facing a cultural war against them. The proper response to such a war is not to give up or deflect it. It is to fight back better."

Wednesday, February 11, 2026

There's Something Wrong When Supporting I.C.E. Has Become a Punishable Offense

This is from John Hinderaker at Powerline, and it should anger everyone. It's been happening often, and it's nothing more than McCarthyism by the anti-I.C.E./pro-criminal left.

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How Low We Have Sunk

"The world is indeed turned upside down, or at least the United States is. Consider this story from Northern California:

"A Northern California school placed a teaching intern on leave for celebrating US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a Facebook comment as a mob of angry locals threatened to damage her property.
"Sarai Jimenez, a special education teaching intern at MacQuiddy Elementary in Watsonville, endorsed the presence of ICE officers in her town in a comment on the social network last month.
“Yay!!! We need ICE in Watsonville!! It’s been getting out of hand,” Jimenez wrote.

"So a teaching intern expressed support, not for criminals, but for law enforcement. And it got her dismissed from her position. Supporting the rule of law isn’t just optional in this district, it is prohibited:

"Parents in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District, where 84% of students are Latino, expressed outrage at Jimenez’s support for ICE.
“You can’t just tell the world how you feel and not expect repercussions from people because of how they feel about ICE,” local father Jorge Guerrero told Lookout.

"Even if “how you feel” is supportive of our nation’s laws.

"MacQuiddy Elementary Principal Sara Pearman said Jimenez’s comment “does not reflect the values” of the school or district.
"She told families that the school is looking for a long-term substitute for Jimenez.

"So the “values” of the school district explicitly include lawbreaking, and supporting lawbreakers.

"How did we get to this pass? And what is the path forward? Honestly, I think it is hard to see how those of us who support the rule of law can continue to share a country with those who do not–a group that now numbers close to half of our population. What possible basis for a common citizenship is there, between us and them? I don’t think there is one."

Tuesday, February 10, 2026

A Tepid Approach On Antisemitism

I agree with this opinion piece in The Algemeiner. While well-meaning, the commercial didn't go far enough, as if the creator was afraid to hurt the antisemites' feelings. The problem is that antisemites have no feelings. They don't leave Post-It notes, they shout in your face, assault you, and want you dead. We have to get tougher, not softer.

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Misguided Super Bowl Ad: Antisemitism Isn’t a Sticky Note — It’s an Institutional Failure

by Samuel J. Abrams

"It is an odd sign of the times that one of the clearest statements about antisemitism this year came not from a university president or a political leader, but from a $15 million Super Bowl commercial.

"Robert Kraft’s advertisement was earnest, expensive, and plainly intended as a civic intervention. Kraft is not a marginal celebrity. He is one of the most prominent Jewish civic patrons in America. The fact that even he must purchase a national pulpit at Super Bowl rates is itself a measure of institutional retreat.

"The ad depicts a Jewish teenager in a school hallway, targeted with a slur. Another student intervenes, covers the insult with a blue square, and offers solidarity. The message is simple: don’t ignore hate.

"The impulse is understandable. Antisemitism is rising. Jewish students feel exposed. Institutions equivocate.

"And yet the ad landed with a discomfort that is difficult to dismiss. As critics in The Forward, Tablet, and the Jewish Journal all noted, the problem is not the intention. The problem is what the ad reveals.

"The ad reflects the only kind of antisemitism that elite America still feels fully comfortable condemning: the obvious kind.

"A crude insult. A bullying moment. A hate that is personal, adolescent, and safely detached from politics, ideology, and power.

"But that is not the antisemitism American Jews are confronting right now.

"The defining feature of antisemitism in the post–October 7 era is not that it is whispered in hallways. It is that it is rationalized in public.

"It is not merely cruelty. It is permission.

"It is the normalization of harassment as “activism.” The recycling of ancient hatreds in contemporary moral language. The steady refusal of elite institutions — many educational institutions, but colleges and universities most of all — to draw enforceable lines.

"The Super Bowl ad is antisemitism for a society that cannot bring itself to talk about faculty, ideologies, and institutions.

"The question is no longer whether antisemitism exists. The question is whether the institutions entrusted with moral authority will name it when it is inconvenient, and confront it when it is costly.

"On that question, the record is bleak.

"At Columbia University last week, police arrested protesters outside campus gates — an incident that included not only students but faculty participation. That detail matters. When professors are arrested alongside students, the story is no longer youthful excess. It is adult legitimization.

"The most corrosive feature of the current moment is not simply student radicalism, but the way faculty and institutional actors increasingly supply the moral vocabulary that makes intimidation feel righteous.

"Universities issue statements while disruptions become routine. Administrators cite “process” while Jewish students are told, implicitly, to endure it. Students are harassed on Monday; the campus receives an email about “values” on Tuesday; nothing happens on Wednesday.

"The problem is not that Americans haven’t heard of antisemitism. The problem is that institutions have stopped punishing it.

"This is not a crisis of awareness. It is a crisis of authority.

"Which raises the deeper irony of Kraft’s approach: a $15 million advertisement is, in some sense, a substitute for the backbone our institutions no longer display.

"It is philanthropy stepping in where leadership has retreated.

"Bret Stephens made a version of this argument just days before the Super Bowl, in his State of World Jewry address at the 92nd Street Y, calling the fight against antisemitism “a well-meaning, but mostly wasted effort” and urging the Jewish community to redirect resources from awareness campaigns toward strengthening Jewish life itself. Stephens is right that awareness is not the bottleneck. But the answer is not merely identity-building. It is institutional enforcement. The crisis is not that Jews lack pride. It is that universities lack spine.

"That may be the most revealing thing about the ad. It is an attempt to do, through symbolism, what our civic institutions are increasingly unwilling to do through enforcement.

"The blue square is unobjectionable. But it also reflects a broader cultural habit: the preference for gesture over boundary, performance over consequence.

"A hallway. A slur. A moment of interpersonal cruelty.

"That is antisemitism as many Americans prefer to imagine it: isolated, obvious, juvenile — disconnected from the ideological infrastructures that now sustain it.

"But the antisemitism American Jews increasingly confront is embedded in systems.

"On many campuses, Students for Justice in Palestine chapters function less like protest clubs than like parallel moral ecosystems: separate communications channels, teach-ins, counter-programming designed not to engage speakers but to delegitimize them.

"This is not spontaneous dissent. It is infrastructure.

"And infrastructure is precisely what awareness campaigns do not touch.

"That is why the problem persists. Confronting contemporary antisemitism requires naming not only hatred, but the respectable ideologies that now carry it.

"Here we reach another familiar discomfort: the pressure to universalize.

"Even Kraft’s campaign folds antisemitism into a broader effort against “all hate.” Again, the instinct is decent. But the move is familiar. Jews are permitted sympathy so long as their experience is immediately generalized.

"The particularity of antisemitism is softened, and made safe for consensus consumption. But antisemitism is not merely one prejudice among others. It has a specific history, a specific structure, and a specific contemporary resurgence. Jews know, historically, that when elites insist on vagueness, trouble is already advancing.

"There is also something telling in the ad’s narrative posture. The Jewish teen is passive. He does not speak. He does not resist. He is acted upon, rescued by an ally.

"Solidarity matters. But Jews cannot rely on symbolic allyship in place of institutional accountability. A society that requires minority groups to depend on the kindness of bystanders rather than the firmness of institutions is not a healthy society.

"And that may be the deeper point. Kraft’s ad is not offensive. It is diagnostic.

"It reveals a culture that has difficulty naming antisemitism as it actually exists in 2026.

"It reveals institutions that prefer statements to discipline, empathy to enforcement, and symbols to boundaries.

"It reveals how far moral speech has been outsourced to philanthropy and branding because civic leaders and universities have proven unwilling to speak plainly when the costs are real.

"A $15 million ad is, in this sense, an indictment — even if unintentionally — of everything that should not require an ad in the first place.

"What American Jews need now is not another awareness campaign. We need institutions that enforce rules. Leaders who name what is happening. Universities that treat intimidation as intimidation and hate, not as “political expression.” Administrators who stop hiding behind process.

"The blue square is fine as a gesture. But gestures are not enough.

"Antisemitism will decline only when universities treat it the way they treat every other serious violation: with rules, consequences, and clarity — not symbols. A society that can only condemn antisemitism through commercials is a society that has lost the courage to confront it."

Note: According to the ADL’s 2024 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, there were 9,354 antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2024, including an 84% increase on college campuses and 860 incidents in K-12 schools.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Your Local Epidemiologiost: The Dose, 2-10-26

TrumpRx, Super Bowl commercials, flu B is here, and more
The Dose (February 10)

Katelyn Jetelina and Hannah Totte, MPH, 2-10-26

I hope you had a great weekend! I’m still buzzing from the rare combination of the Olympics and the Super Bowl halftime show. Both are powerful reminders of community, connection, and love. Moments like that make me feel deeply proud of this country, even when we’re going through a really hard stretch.

In the health world, we’re seeing a late-season flu bump, and measles in South Carolina is doing what measles does best: spreading. Also, don’t let the flashy Trump Rx discounts or Super Bowl wellness ads fool you too much.

Here’s what’s happening, and what it means for you.

Disease “weather report”

There are still plenty of sick people out there. After several weeks of decline, we’re seeing a modest uptick in people with coughs, sore throats, and fevers. This bump appears to be driven by late-winter suspects: the common cold, RSV, and flu B.

Source: CDC; Annotated by Your Local Epidemiologist

Flu B often rises after flu A has already peaked, so a late-season increase like this is expected and not unusual.

Number of positive flu tests in the United States. Source: CDC; Annotated by Your Local Epidemiologist

How big will flu B get? It’s unclear. Some countries, like Japan, are experiencing a sizable second wave of flu, while others are not. Historically, flu B causes smaller waves than flu A, partly because of existing population immunity. We’ll be watching the data closely.

So far, the much-hyped “super flu” hasn’t materialized at the national level. Overall severity, measured by cumulative hospitalizations, has been middle-of-the-road. That said, some states have had very tough seasons (as we covered at YLE New York), while others have fared better (as we covered at YLE California).

Measles. There have now been 803 confirmed cases nationally in 2026. In just five weeks, we’ve hit 35% of the total number of cases in 2025.

South Carolina keeps on growing. It has now reached an astonishing 920 cases. It looks to be slowing, but time will tell how big this gets.

TrumpRx: Big branding, limited impact

Americans pay outrageously high prices for brand-name drugs, so I’m all for efforts that tackle the root causes. But despite the patriotic branding behind TrumpRx, it lacks real teeth, and most people are unlikely to see any meaningful relief from the new drug website.

Here are the details:

TrumpRx only applies to people who pay cash for prescriptions. So, the vast majority of Americans with health insurance will not benefit.
If you do pay cash for drugs from the site, it will likely not count towards your deductible. However, this may be changing following a recent FTC settlement involving Cigna/Express Scripts. Also, eight states have passed laws requiring insurers to count certain cash prescription purchases toward deductibles and out-of-pocket limits.
Don’t forget generics. One of the more misleading aspects of TrumpRx is that it focuses on brand-name drugs without clearly telling consumers that much cheaper generic drugs already exist. In fact, 18 of 43 of the drugs on TrumpRx already have cheaper options. So, before you use the platform, double-check that there isn’t already a cheaper option here. For example:
1. Tikosyn (antiarrhythmic): TrumpRx $672 vs. generic version for $36
2. Pristiq (antidepressant): TrumpRx $200 vs. generic version for $20
3. Protonix (acid reflux): TrumpRx $361 vs. generic version on Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs platform is $6.
This isn’t a change in the law. TrumpRx is essentially an online drug marketplace; it doesn’t alter legal requirements or hold industry players more accountable. Real cost relief requires stronger levers. That’s what sets it apart from approaches like California’s, which uses legislation to change the system itself by holding middlemen accountable and reshaping incentives across insurers and pharmacies.
Sweeping changes are still needed. The most consequential shift we’ve seen so far came with the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which finally allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices, but it is narrow, and more reform is urgently needed.
- Starting this year, 10 Medicare drugs are now, on average, 22% cheaper than before.
- Just announced: in 2027, 15 more drugs will be added, with prices about 44% lower on average.

Super Bowl commercials are worth a closer look

Whether you were there for the friends, football, halftime show, or snacks. As always, the ads were entertaining, but my public health head just couldn’t resist looking closer at two wellness ads.

Hidden details in Hims & Hers. A telehealth company, Hims & Hers, promoted a blood-based multi-cancer screening test called Galleri, which looks for cancer-related DNA signals in the bloodstream. The challenge here isn’t whether the test can ever detect cancer (it can), but how often it misses cancers and how often it raises false alarms.

So what does the data actually show? The company tested the blood of nearly 36,000 adults over 50 who were asymptomatic and followed them for a year. (This was not a randomized controlled trial). Results were:

Of everyone who had cancer, the test caught about 4 out of 10.
Among the cancers it did catch, more than half were early-stage, and about three-quarters were cancers that currently have no routine screening tests, such as pancreatic cancer.
Of everyone who tested positive, about 2 out of 3 truly had cancer, while a little more than 1 in 3 people experienced a false alarm.
Among those who had a negative test, 99% were confirmed to be negative.

These are not strong numbers, and it remains unclear whether the test improves long-term survival. Screening always has tradeoffs, and consumers deserve to understand them, especially before paying around $900 for a test that is not FDA-approved, not covered by insurance, and can trigger significant anxiety if a result turns out to be a false alarm.

Shame doesn’t work. The second ad featured Mike Tyson promoting realfood.gov, a government site where he describes how eating processed foods led him to self-hate. MAHA sponsored the commercial, and that’s what makes it so frustrating. With decades of behavioral science showing that shame backfires and agency-based messaging works better, this could have been a powerful, empowering moment. Instead, they missed an opportunity to make a far more impactful and effective case for healthier eating.

Shame-based framing (“I ate this, so I’m bad”) largely doesn’t work because it shuts people down. Guilt-based framing paired with agency (“This choice wasn’t great and I can change it”) is more likely to make a difference. People rely on ultra-processed foods because of cost, time constraints, and limited access to healthy foods, not simply a lack of willpower. And some ultra-processed foods, like seasoned canned beans or whole wheat bread, can be part of a healthy diet. If the goal is healthier eating, the message should offer honesty, nuance, and realistic choices, rather than moral judgment.

For more on this, check out the YLE deep dive from last year below.

Nutrition

What are ultra-processed foods, really?

Megan Maisano, MS, RDN

May 28, 2025

Read full story

Some good news!

Congress passed funding for the CDC at roughly the same level as the 2024–2025 budget, restoring programs that had been paused. In this moment, “nothing got worse” qualifies as good news.
Hospital-acquired infections are declining, meaning fewer patients are being harmed. This trend suggests that strengthened infection-control practices from the pandemic era are paying off.
A personalized mRNA cancer vaccine sustained a 49% reduction in melanoma recurrence or death at five years. The new follow-up data suggest that mRNA-based cancer therapies may deliver durable, long-term benefits. This is only from a Phase II trial. In other words, there is still a while before it may go to market, but we will take this as a win!

Bottom line

Stay healthy and warm out there! And don’t let the performative policy changes and ads fool you.

Love, YLE

Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) is founded and operated by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD—an epidemiologist, wife, and mom of two little girls. Hannah Totte, MPH, is an epidemiologist and YLE Community Manager. YLE reaches more than 425,000 people in over 132 countries with one goal: “Translate” the ever-evolving public health science so that people will be well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions.

Monday, February 09, 2026

Outbreak Outlook - National - February 8, 2026

Here's the latest Outbreak Outlook newsletter from Dr. Caitlin Rivers. The charts and graphs won't copy over to my blog, so check them out here at the link.

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Outbreak Outlook - National - February 8, 2026
All three major respiratory diseases are hanging around stubbornly

Respiratory Diseases

Influenza-like illness

Influenza remains quite elevated across most of the country, with most states reporting moderate, high, or very high activity. The Northeast is in the best shape with consistent declines. Other regions of the country are taking a little longer to turn the corner.

The youngest children, as usual, have outpatient ILI rates that are substantially higher than all other age groups, accounting for 12.2% of all trips to the doctor, but this represents a slight improvement over last week. Outpatient ILI was flat for those aged 5-24 (8.2%) and 25-49 (3.7%), but decreased slightly for older age groups (to 2.4% for those aged 50-64, and to 1.8% for those 65+).

Severe illness is continuing to improve. Emergency department visits decreased slightly to 3.3%. Hospitalizations have decreased to 2.2 hospitalizations per 100,000 people nationally, which is a marked decline from the end of December, when the rate spiked to 13.1 per 100,000.

Get detailed, state-specific public health updates by upgrading to regional editions, available to paid subscribers. Stay informed where it matters most to you.

Regional editions

COVID-19

Covid-19 is in a grey zone, neither increasing nor decreasing with any vigor. Wastewater activity increased to moderate activity nationally, but ED visits have dipped slightly to 0.6%. Hospitalizations have been consistently declining for the past several weeks, and decreased again this week to 0.8 hospitalizations per 100,000 people.

Activity is highest in the Midwest, where wastewater concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 are very high again, having risen for two weeks in a row. In the Northeast, activity is moderate and increasing. In contrast, activity is low and decreased slightly this past week in both the South and West.

RSV & Other Bugs

RSV: RSV activity continues to be elevated across the country. Test positivity is up to 7%, higher than it has been all season. ED visits are highest in the South (~0.7%). The West and Midwest are tied for the lowest (~0.5%). Hospitalizations remain elevated, but have decreased slightly, down to 1.6 hospitalizations per 100,000 people.

Other bugs: Lots of respiratory bugs circulating right now.

Human coronaviruses are on a rapid ascent right now, and have nearly reached last season’s peak (which was in late February).
Human metapneumovirus is climbing as well, and adenovirus is elevated.
Rhinoviruses/enteroviruses are low but have been slowly increasing for the past few weeks.

Norovirus

Norovirus loves February. Activity is high and climbing across the country. While rates are not stratospheric like last season, we are at typical (high) levels for this time of year. Test positivity was 13.5% at the national level, with the Northeast in worst shape at 15.8%.

Food recalls

The following foods are being recalled because they are contaminated. Please check your cupboards and throw out any of these items:

New:

Dried Croaker Fish (more info)

Previously Reported:

Gerber(R) Arrowroot biscuits (more info)
IKM cookware products (primarily sold in California grocery stores) due to potential lead contamination (more info)
Organic chia seeds sold by Navitas Organics (more info)
Live it Up Super Greens powders and packets in Original and Wild Berry flavors (more info)
Canned yellowfin tuna in olive oil under the Genova brand name (more info)

In other news

FOI Clinical launches this Wednesday. It’s a weekly outbreak intelligence briefing for clinicians, covering reportable diseases, emerging outbreaks, and policy changes that affect patient care plus real-time health alerts for fast-moving events. Medscape and NPR have both covered FOI Clinical. The first edition will include detailed analyses of measles, pertussis, meningococcal meningitis, and more. Pre-launch pricing ($10/month) is still available. If you’re a clinician, or you would find this useful, now is the time: foiclinical.com.
Measles outbreak in Jalisco, Mexico — home to one of the host cities of the 2026 World Cup. So far this year, Mexico has had nearly 2,000 confirmed cases, and more than 5,200 suspected cases of measles. The epidemic started after a child infected in Texas returned home to Mexico. About 60% of confirmed cases (and about 40% of suspected cases) have been in Jalisco state. Just as in Canada and the United States, measles spread is linked to decreasing vaccination rates. Schools in parts of Guadalajara (where one of the World Cup stadiums sits) are requiring masks for the next month, and there were recently school closures elsewhere in Jalisco state to try to contain measles spread. There is a risk that, as international travelers come to the city for the World Cup, the outbreak could further expand.
Norovirus outbreak at the Winter Olympics. The Finnish women’s hockey team has reported a norovirus outbreak. With 13 players infected or in quarantine, the Finnish team postponed a game on Thursday, February 5th, against Canada; it has been rescheduled to February 12th. Norovirus spreads extremely well in tight quarters — such as among traveling athletes. The decision to postpone the game and quarantine those players will reduce the risk of norovirus spreading further among the athletes present for the Games.