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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to halt its “Wild to Mild” campaign promoting the flu vaccine. Kennedy wants future vaccine communications to focus on “informed consent,” by which he means giving people information about the adverse events associated with vaccines. That’s a distorted view, one that demonstrates broader confusion about informed consent and the goals of public health. (Mark C. Navin, Lainie Friedman Ross and Jason A. Wasserman, 2/26)

A measles outbreak in West Texas and New Mexico has sickened more than 130 people and public health experts fear it’s only the beginning. It’s an entirely avoidable health emergency fueled by weaknesses in our vaccine forcefield. (Lisa Jarvis, 2/26)

Thanks to successful vaccination campaigns, most Americans today have never experienced a measles outbreak. So when they see news that rural West Texas has recorded 90 cases within the past month, the largest spike in the state in nearly 30 years, they might not understand why it’s so alarming. (Leana S. Wen, 2/25)

We can’t blame the bird flu entirely on Trump — it’s been around for a while, and he’s only been in office for six weeks — but it is his problem. “So far, he has only made matters worse,” Patricia writes. “The mass firings included an unconfirmed number of people working on the bird flu response — a stunning display of bureaucratic incompetence. Officials now are scrambling to find and rehire them.” (Jessica Karl, 2/25)

Private equity’s aim is clear — to pursue short-term profits at the expense of their target, whether that’s children’s interests, or in the case of hospitals, patient’s lives. In 2023, nearly one in five hospital bankruptcies in the U.S. were private equity owned hospitals. None involved Connecticut –until now. (Aashka Shah MD, 2/26)

13,064. That’s the number of times children covered by HUSKY visited Connecticut emergency departments for behavioral health crises in 2023. Suicidality, severe anxiety, major depression, self-harm. For anyone counting, that is a massive increase in ED encounters since the Hartford Courant ran a front page story on emergency room over-crowding in 2007. (Sarah Eagan, 2/26)