Trump's first term as president was a public health disaster.
Tens of thousands died unnecessarily during his first flu season.
Trump's recklessness, incompetence, and stupidity during Covid led to the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
By the time Trump left office in disgrace, he had overseen more preventable deaths from disease than any president in the past 100 years.
Now he's back for more.
Trump and RFK, Jr. are bringing back "old-timey" diseases
Measles: Declared eliminated in 2000, measles is back with a vengeance, reports NPR:
Nearly two months after a deadly, massive measles outbreak in Texas was declared over, the highly contagious disease continues to spread across the country.
Confirmed cases (1,596) are at their highest levels in 30 years. The true total is likely three times higher.
The worst current outbreaks are happening in South Carolina, Arizona, Utah, and Minnesota.
A 95% vaccination rate among kindergartners is considered essential to protect communities from measles outbreaks. The current rate is 92.5% and falling.
Whooping cough (pertussis): "Driven by a collapse in immunization," cases of whooping cough (pertussis), a vaccine-preventable disease that can be deadly for infants and young children, are up 81% in Florida this year, reports Semafor.
According to UC Health, "the worst outbreaks in the U.S. so far in 2025" also include: Washington, Oregon, California, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina and Arizona.
Tuberculosis: Even though TB remains the world's deadliest infectious disease — killing someone every 20 seconds — America stopped vaccinating for it years ago.
In 2025, after a post-pandemic surge saw U.S. cases rise to more than 10,000 in 2024, the number one challenge for the U.S. is preventing the global spread of TB in order to reduce the chances of it entering from overseas.
Trump, naturally, is taking the opposite approach. He's encouraging the global spread of TB with funding cuts that will create a spike of 9 million new cases — and 1.5 million preventable deaths — among children in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.
Sexually transmitted infections (STIs): U.S. cases of newborn syphilis have increased 700% since 2015, reports the CDC. There are tens of thousands of new cases of HIV, which remains the most costly STI for US taxpayers, every year. And "super gonorrhea" is evolving and becoming more drug-resistant.
In April, reports The Washington Post, the Trump fired all of the CDC staff "who worked on preventing sexually transmitted diseases... including 49 staff who were embedded in state health departments helping with STI outbreak investigations, and all 28 scientists in the lab that provides surveillance for chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, and other sexually transmitted infections in the U.S."
Other "old-timey" diseases whose spread will likely accelerate following Trump and RFK, Jr-era cuts include: Scarlet fever, Polio, and Leprosy, where cases in Florida have already jumped 94% in 2025.
Republicans are helping Trump and RFK, Jr. spread "dreaded diseases" across America
Whooping cough and leprosy are already surging in Florida. But Governor Ron DeSantis and Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo are convinced they can still do more.
In September, Florida became the first state to remove all school vaccine mandates. As a result, reports AP:
Deep concern is spreading among doctors, parents and public health workers for the safety of children and others who might be vulnerable in a disease outbreak. They fear that dreaded diseases, held in check for decades by vaccines, could flare up again if too many people in Florida aren’t immunized.
And the Trump administration is also pushing other red states to embrace "anti-science legislation" at a scale that could have disastrous implications for Americans at a national level, reports AP:
More than 420 anti-science bills attacking longstanding public health protections – vaccines, milk safety and fluoride – have been introduced in statehouses across the U.S. this year, part of an organized, politically savvy campaign to enshrine a conspiracy theory-driven agenda into law.... The effort would strip away protections that have been built over a century and are integral to American lives and society.
So add foodborne illnesses and tooth decay to the things you can expect you and your kids to be afflicted with, all thanks to the new "Make America Healthy Again" movement.
The danger we're in is not to be sneezed at
The headlines about Trump and RFK, Jr. blaming Tylenol and circumcisions for autism may make bigger headlines, but their actual policies are even scarier.
As Devin Burghart, president and executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, who has tracked the anti-vaccine movement for decades told AP: "The march of conspiracy thinking from the margins to the mainstream now guiding public policy should be a wake-up call for all Americans. People are literally going to die from it as a result."
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Further reading:
The Trump Infectious Disease Crisis (June 2025)
The Trump Food Safety Crisis (May 2025)
Cause of Death: Anti-Vaxxers (September 2021)
Trump's Unforgivable Crime (March 2020)
On Flu Deaths (January 2020)
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