The Trump administration has recently spent more time talking about COVID-19 than it has about cyclosporiasis, the intestinal illness that’s become a growing threat to public health nationwide
But about two weeks after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, said that the food and waterborne cyclospora parasite that causes explosive diarrhea was “under control,” Michigan on Monday announced the first two deaths from the illness
When Kennedy made his declaration, more than 1,600 people in five states had gotten sick. Now there are more than 18,000 confirmed or suspected cases in more than 40 states. Shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms, a major produce distributor, has been cited as a probable
But as usual, the Trump administration is looking backward instead of addressing the serious issues currently endangering this nation
During a contentious CNN appearance on Sunday, Kennedy bickered with “State of the Union” coanchor Dana Bash over this nation’s COVID response, as he pushed the Republicans’ obsessive attempts to blame Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for everything that happened during the pandemic
But not once during that interview did Kennedy mention cyclospora or its current outbreak, the largest in US history. (To be fair, Bash inexplicably never brought it up.) Instead it was a 20-minute barrage of Kennedy’s mendacious screeching about how constitutional rights were “completely dismantled” during the pandemic and that COVID vaccines harmed more children than they helped
Like most Republicans, Kennedy has conveniently forgotten that Trump was president for most of the first year of the pandemic
See this for what it is — another part of Trump’s obsession with erasing the mammoth failures of his first term. His war on history includes his own history, from his 2020 presidential election loss to his incitement of the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection to the ways he underplayed COVID severity despite knowing early on just how devastating the respiratory illness would be
Cyclosporiasis, which is not usually fatal, is not comparable to COVID. But again, Trump seems unconcerned with a national health crisis. Since the outbreak began in May, the president bhas arely mentioned the parasitic illness, and the announcement of the first two recorded deaths, in Michigan, which has seen more cases than any other state, did nothing to change that
But Trump found lots of time to drag US Attorney Jeanine Pirro because last week she dropped the government’s case against a former Olympian who was falsely charged with vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. In reality, that iconic pool was vandalized by the rushed and shoddy workmanship that Trump demanded and taxpayers paid for
Now, we’re paying for this administration’s decision to curtail the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s partnership between states and the federal government to monitor foodborne illnesses, including cyclospora last year. Opportunistic illnesses and parasites may never have more opportunities to sicken millions than during the second Trump administration. Cyclospora may be just the beginning
But there’s also this. With news of the first cyclospora deaths came a queasy echo from the not-so-distant COVID-19 pandemic
On the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services webpage for “infectious disease outbreaks,” officials said that both people who died “had significant underlying health conditions that may have been impacted by cyclosporiasis and dehydration.”
Constant mentions of “underlying health conditions” were a staple of the COVID pandemic years, the inference being that healthy people had little to worry about. What went unspoken was that the elderly, disabled, and people with chronic illnesses were expendable
That tracks with Kennedy’s alarming beliefs about autism, vaccines, and various health conditions. Like Trump with COVID, Kennedy has downplayed the cyclospora outbreak because he seems to believe that healthy people do not get sick
Such skewed rhetoric smacks of eugenics, a corrupted mindset that fosters the idea that not only do the strong survive, but that they alone, above all others, deserve to survive. But in a country where a majority of Americans have an underlying healthy condition, including young people, this pushes us closer to a public health catastrophe
Despite its rapid spread, cyclosporiasis is not a pandemic. But several times during her interview with Kennedy, Bash repeatedly asked the secretary about how the Trump administration is preparing for “the next pandemic.”
Tellingly, Kennedy never answered her question
Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at renee.graham@globe.com
