In the United States, measles is raising the head, and this time the enemy is not the virus in itself, but ignorance, superstition, instrumental policy aimed only at sluming consensus disguised as freedom. The cases ascertained are already 160, the budget of the victims rises, and it seems to have returned to an era in which vaccines did not exist, when medicine was a luxury and science a matter for a few elected. Yet, in 2000, measles in America had been officially eradicated. Today, however, he has returned to infect those who insist not to believe in the progress of medicine.
The fault? Easy to identify it. After the execution of the pandemic less and less American, they vaccinate. Not because the vaccine is missing, not because the health system does not make it accessible, but as a result of a more subtle epidemic: the distrust in science, the ideological blindness that has spread as a lethal virus, especially between certain religious communities, which in America pulsate, waterproof not to diseases, but to medical progress. The phenomenon found fertile ground in the Covid years, when the disinformation machine has set in motion with a power never seen before. Social media invaded by fake news, political leaders looking for consensus ready to blow on the fire of conspiracy, and a people increasingly convinced that individual freedom is a good reason to put public health at risk.
And to make matters worse, Donald Trump thought about strengthening this delusion, who at the top of public health has placed a man like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a declared no-vax, one who spent years telling the world that vaccines were the problem, not the solution. Here are the results. Morbillo, which should be a closed chapter of the history of medicine, has returned to claim victims.
But also the most blind, in the face of evidence, or perhaps to fear, sooner or later they wake up. Kennedy, seeing the disaster that he himself contributed to creating, has made a U -u. He does it with caution, leaving the usual hypocritical glimpse of the “self -determination” open, but the message is clear: without vaccines, the contagion does not stop. Too bad that this late conversion arrives in the midst of a chaos of contradictory declarations, alternative remedies, grotesque proposals such as the use of vitamin A as a substitute for the vaccine. Result? An information chaos that pushed the magazine Science-Based Medicine To write that never, in the history of the United States, had seen a manager of federal health so far from reality.
And Kennedy is not alone. Vice -president JD Vance also did his part in the crusade against vaccines during Covid. He preached the freedom of choice while he and his family were silently vaccinated. One of the most poisonous hypocrisies of American politics (and not only American): endanger the lives of others to collect some more votes, riding fear and disinformation.
And the virus, you know, does not stop on the borders. The risk is that the reversal no-vax American also overwhelms Europe, and Italy in particular, where the same non-slip theories are winding fortunately in a minor tone. Here with us, as in the United States, measles should not be a problem. But the fanaticism of ignorance travels fast, much faster than science. And he risks making us pay a very high price.
In the photo, Robert F. Kennedy.
