Donald Trump owns the economic misery his terrible administration is causing - high egg prices symbolic of his failures

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Nicholas Kristof.

Maine Writer opinion:  I believe the media created the eggs=economy analogy.  Moreover, the myth was emphasized when on 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley interviewed a restaurant owner who said she was a Democrat, but would not vote for Kamala Harris for President because of how much she was paying to keep eggs on her business' menu. This fake argument, in my mind as nonsensical as creating an economy like "tulip bulb mania in the 16th century", nevertheless, somehow became as viral as the bird flu. 

But I believe the media created the political egg rational as a reason why Democrats did not prevail during the 2024, election. Now, Nichols Kristof in this opinion essay is backpeddling out of what the media created. In fact, Democrats did not create a counter argument against the "eggs" myth, but now playing political defense about what could have been done. Perhaps, a focus on Trump's serial bankruptcies would have been a good counter argument to the cost of eggs, but Monday morning quarterbacking, just my opinion. 

Kritoff: If there are Martian scholars examining the United States right now, they might be puzzling over the great Trump paradox.

It’s that President Trump is doing immense long-term damage to the United States by undermining democratic norms, vandalizing the federal government and siding with alleged war criminals in the Kremlin, yet if support for him falls, I doubt it will have anything to do with all this. Rather, it may be … egg prices.

American voters have been, to my mind, surprisingly comfortable with a felon who pardons other, violent felons and engages in reckless attacks on our rule of law and the global system that we created in 1945 and that has hugely enriched and empowered us. Trump doubled down on his, er, “cultural revolution” in his speech to Congress a few days ago, and about three-quarters of those who watched the speech approved of it to some degree (largely because those who watched were disproportionately Republican).

Attacks by Democrats on Trump as undemocratic never got much traction among working-class voters; they cared less about issues at 30,000 feet and more about economic and cultural concerns at three feet. So in a strange way, what may impede Trump and preserve American democracy is not popular revulsion at the historic damage that he is doing to America but rather alarm at the myriad banal impacts on our daily lives because of Trumpian mismanagement.

Trump’s tariffs, even if partly delayed, presumably will raise consumer prices and hurt the financial markets and thus our retirement savings; they will create a mess of supply chains for manufacturing goods. 

One gauge of what to expect: The latest estimate from the Atlanta Federal Reserve is an astonishing 2.4 percent decline in American G.D.P. in the first quarter of 2025.

Americans may put up with a president calling journalists enemies of the people, may even accept a president pardoning felons who club police officers while trying to overturn an election. But historically, they’ve not been very forgiving of presidents who preside over recessions.

What’s more, Republicans are now apparently preparing to slash Medicaid to pay for continued tax cuts for the rich. Sure, Trump denies up and down that he will cut Medicaid. Republicans insist that they’re just cutting waste and fat, that they’re simply promoting work requirements and the like, that they’re not cutting Medicaid as such but just the block grants to the states that pay for it.

But the unarguable fact is that the federal government would be providing less money to pay for health care for the roughly 72 million Americans on Medicaid. The essential reality is that the plan appears to cut health care for the poorest Americans so that the richest Americans can get a big tax cut — and this is not just morally outrageous but also politically fraught.

Elon Musk’s critique of Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme,”😡👿 accompanied by Trump’s making false claims of widespread fraud in the program, accompanied by talk of selling Social Security offices, seems even more likely to worry voters.

More broadly, while many of us would welcome a savvy review of federal staffing and an effort to prune regulations and the bureaucracy, Trump’s attacks on the federal government are being undertaken with a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel. Trump and Musk may think that federal employees pushed out of their jobs are faceless bureaucrats who won’t be noticed, but when they are health workers at a V.A. hospital, patients will notice. When they manage agriculture programs, farmers will notice.

Cuts in the Federal Aviation Administration and in the National Weather Service and NOAA will make flying less safe, James Fallows argues persuasively; at a time when extreme weather events are becoming more common, it’s bizarre to reduce our ability to predict hurricanes, tornadoes and heat waves.

In Western states, we’re already fearful of the ways the Trump cuts will hamstring firefighting during the next fire season. It won’t always be evident whether a plane crash or raging fire can be fairly blamed on Trump. But given that Trump and Musk have been exceedingly careless, mixing up millions and billions, and initially cutting programs for Ebola control and nuclear arms management before rushing to try to rectify those problems, they may not get the benefit of the doubt.

In short, Trump-Musk incompetence and recklessness may — just may — discredit the vandals in Washington and rein them in.

Is it actually reasonable to blame Trump for rising egg prices❓ Perhaps not. That has more to do with long-running avian flu than with tariffs or anything else he has done. 

But, what is true is how Trump has undercut the surveillance system for avian flu and Robert Kennedy Jr.’s skepticism about vaccines will make us more vulnerable to bird flu if we face a pandemic. But Trumpian mismanagement isn’t a major factor in today’s rising egg 🥚 prices. (But, the current unprecedented high cost of eggs is symbolic of his many failures including a series of bankruptcies.)

So would I rather voters rise up in outrage at Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine, his threats to NATO and his campaign to undermine democracy❓ Of course! But I welcome indignation of any kind. Maybe we can be rescued from our nation’s disastrous course by chickens.

Anti-vaxxers are now stalking physicians: Are restraining orders needed?

Echo essay published in MedPage Today, news by Vineet Arora, M.D., Tricia Pendergrast, MD and Regina Royan, MD:

While the nation has declared the COVID-19 public health emergency over, the politicization of healthcare and medicine continues to result in harassment of doctors and scientists.

Just this past weekend, vaccine scientist Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, became the target of significant online harassment after criticizing a Joe Rogan podcast episode featuring Presidential candidate and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and debunking many of Kennedy's claims as misinformation. After being challenged to debate Kennedy, Hotez was approached unannounced outside his homeby a couple of anti-vax activis ts demanding answers. Whether it is about vaccination, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ health, or advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion, doctors and scientists continue to face attacks online and off.

Among a sample of over 350 physicians and scientists online, over two-thirds reported being harassed on social media. The most commonly reported reason for harassment was advocacy, with those who advocated for public health issues more commonly facing harassment. While no one is "safe" from harassment, personal attacks on social media were not equally distributed. Those who identified as women, nonbinary, Black or Hispanic, LGBTQ+ or disabled were significantly more likely to report harassment due to their identity.

While "online harassment" may sound like annoying trolling, our study paints a much more nefarious picture of online harassment of physicians and scientists. In open-ended comments, many participants described detailed and targeted incidents of harassment for the expressed purpose of harming a professional's career (i.e. negative online reviews, reports to an employer) all the way to threatening violent bodily injury, including rape, against the professional or their family members. 

In a few cases, the harassers eventually moved offline and went so far as to physically appear at the professional's place of work, and in one case, even physically assaulted the victim. Our findings are strikingly similar to the escalation in the Hotez incident over the weekend.

Despite the harrowing nature of these incidents, physicians and scientists disclosed that when they did report these online threats to either law enforcement or their employer, it was to no avail. 

As a result, several stated they have started posting online less regularly or have stayed stay away from controversial topics due to fear of harassment. As one subject reported, "I've had to take a step back from a lot of health discourse. This constant battle is taking a lot out of me. Unfortunately, I tend to now stay out of it."

In light of these findings, it's important to consider the consequences of such online attacks on physicians and scientists.

First and foremost, online threats are not and should not be seen as harmless. As evidenced by the bomb threats to Boston Children's Hospital and children's hospitals around the country due to provision of life-saving gender affirming care, online threats can incite actual threats of physical violence that jeopardize the safety of both medical professionals and the communities they serve. 

Robert Kennedy Jr. is a politician, and writer who has promoted anti-vaccine propaganda and public health-related conspiracy theories.

Moreover, online attacks of medical and science professionals take an emotional toll on a workforce that is already facing a high degree of burnout and depression. 

Given that recent data suggest that 1 in 5 physicians already plan to leave the workforce, online attacks for those who continue to work will only exacerbate the problem. A telling example comes from a study of public health officials from last year. Of the more than 200 public health officials who had recently left their post, over one third had experienced some form of harassment.

Furthermore, these online attacks appear to be effective in silencing the voices of physicians and scientists. This is especially concerning given that those with minoritized identities are at greater risk of being silenced, at the time when we should be elevating and supporting their voices. Given the large health equity gaps and continued health challenges faced by women and minority populations, it is particularly important that physicians and scientists from these groups are supported. 

Retaining these individuals in our workforce is even more critical given the continued underrepresentation of women and minorities in STEM and the already high rates of attrition these groups face. Lastly, silencing the voices of medical and scientific professionals can also facilitate the unchecked proliferation of misinformation online. At a time when trust in scientific institutions is already low, it is essential to retain these trusted messengers within minority communities.

For these reasons, addressing the online harassment of physicians and scientists is paramount. Supporting physicians and scientists who are victims of online harassment is key.

Professional societies and employers can also facilitate support through rapid response mental health support for those experiencing online harassment, akin to the online harassment that has been produced by Pen America for journalists. 

Recently, the University of Chicago published a guide to managing online harassment, which includes steps you can take to report the incident as well as steps the university can take to mitigate the consequences. Leaders of professional societies can also lobby for stricter regulations of social media companies given the toll online harassment puts on their constituents. Social media companies should also be held responsible for the deliberate misuse of their platforms to harm individuals. While disheartening to see that Twitter disbanded its unit that previously tackled online harassment and misinformation, we are encouraged that YouTube is proactively labeling credible health information. Lastly, policymakers can intervene. For example, Colorado has recently criminalized doxxing of personal information of public health workers or their families. Similar legislation can easily cover a broader population of workers, including doctors and scientists.

As long as doctors and scientists continue to face death threats, doxxing (publishing private or identifying information), sexual harassment, and other forms of harassment online, we risk silencing their voices at a time they are needed most. It is time to condemn online attacks against physicians and scientists to ensure the health and longevity of our workforce, and to promote sharing of scientific knowledge freely and constructively. This will ensure we can ultimately reap the benefit of scientific progress in an equitable and just way.

Vineet Arora, MD, MAPP, is dean for medical education at The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. Tricia Pendergrast, MD, is a PGY1 anesthesiology resident at the University of Michigan Hospitals. Regina Royan, MD, MPH is an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Michigan.