anti-science public – From a flaring flu outbreak at Lackland Air Force Base after vaccine policy reversals to rising measles cases and a return of New World screwworm, the past year’s public-health decisions are colliding with basic science—leaving troops, families, and ranchers t
At Lackland Air Force Base. nearly 300 people have been sickened in a flu outbreak after Pentagon leadership reversed course on flu vaccine policy—again. The base, in Bexar County, Texas, is where new recruits pour in from across the nation, 700 of them each week. So when flu spreads there, it doesn’t feel like a surprise. It feels like a timing problem.
This month. four people have been hospitalized. and the case is still being investigated to determine whether at least one death occurred. The vaccine policy that preceded it did not arrive quietly. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had made flu shots optional in late April. Then, last week, the Pentagon announced it was reversing that decision and making flu vaccines mandatory yet again.
An anonymous source at the Pentagon told AP News that the reversed decision had nothing to do with the outbreak and was just a coincidence. But the math of infectious disease does not negotiate with coincidences. Lackland’s flow of trainees—new arrivals bringing illnesses with them—makes prevention decisions consequential. One report from CNN said around 60% of unvaccinated trainees at Lackland initially declined the flu shot.
That creates a brutal mismatch between policy language and public-health reality. Hegseth’s position. as described in the account. treated vaccines as “woke. ” while the outbreak arrived with the kind of consequence that vaccination is designed to prevent. In uniform, the argument goes, protecting yourself is inseparable from protecting others.
This is only one of several recent episodes, laid side by side, that point toward the same hard lesson: when public-health guidance gets treated like a political target rather than a scientific necessity, outbreaks follow.
Measles, for example, is spreading in numbers that reflect how far the country has drifted from elimination. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 2,134 confirmed cases this year. In 2025, there were just shy of 2,300 cases—putting 2026 on track to outpace that record. Roughly 93% of the measles patients are unvaccinated or have unknown vaccine status.
Once eliminated from the United States. measles has returned to the point that the account argues the country has lost its elimination status. Dr. Jess Steier. in a recent op-ed for CIDRAP. said. “Pretending otherwise does two kinds of harm.” She added that it tells the public the situation is borderline and offers a false sense of hope that this year’s shots can still save elimination status. while also letting those responsible for the decline frame the outcome as a bureaucratic surprise rather than a foreseeable result of dismantling the systems that achieved elimination in the first place.
Even as cases rise. the account describes a push to restrict vaccine access by rewriting the charter of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. a federal committee that provides vaccine guidance. If ACIP votes to remove vaccines from a free vaccination program—framed as a real possibility in the account—more than half of U.S. kids could lose access to that immunization.
Then there’s the story of a parasite returning to U.S. soil.
New World screwworm, a parasitic fly whose larvae bore into open flesh wounds, has come back. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported 27 cases in the last 30 days. For decades, the U.S. has maintained a program to prevent it from creeping northward: flies are bred in a lab. sterilized using radiation. and released around Panama.
In the account. cuts to those efforts and Trump’s antagonism toward Mexico. Panama and other Latin American countries are described as threats that helped set the stage for a return. When cases first popped up in Mexico in 2024. Biden’s USDA shuttered southern ports of entry to live cattle imports to prevent spread. In Feb. 2025. Trump reopened those ports to appease the cattle industry. and the account says USDA staffing cuts and sluggish funding reviews have contributed to screwworm’s return.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, in the account, is described as blaming immigration and former President Joe Biden for the problem.
Screwworm is mostly a threat to cattle ranchers, but the consequences stretch beyond any one industry. Containment, the account warns, may become a multi-billion-dollar effort.
Taken together—flu policy reversals followed by an outbreak at a high-throughput training base; measles cases climbing to 2. 134 confirmed infections this year; and screwworm cases rising to 27 in 30 days—these decisions share a common feature. Infectious organisms respond to biology, not to politics.
The same account that ties these episodes to Trump’s second-term approach also links them to earlier actions. In Trump’s first term. it says he flouted virus surveillance programs. which it describes as inviting COVID-19 in. then allowing it to flourish into a pandemic that has killed at least 1.1 million Americans and counting.
Even within this broader portrait, the immediate focus is on how quickly neglect shows up in human outcomes.
Some of the account’s targets are not vaccine policy at all. but still map to the same theme: basic scientific understanding ignored. followed by consequences that grow costly. The piece points to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool scandal. in which renovations ordered by Trump are described as resulting in a widespread algae bloom. The account says the pool bottom painting work trapped heat and created conditions for algae to thrive.
Instead of treating it as a failure of basic applied science. the account says Trump’s response was to arrest at least six people and float accusations against rogue vandals—framing it as a “painfully stupid” conspiracy theory. while also citing how easily it spread among Republican politicians and GOP voters.
At the federal level, the account also describes an attempt to tighten political control over research itself. It says Trump has proposed rule changes to how federal research is funded under the Office of Management and Budget. currently overseen by Project 2025 architect Russell Vought. The rule changes. as described. would weaken the peer review process. forbid international scientific collaboration. and ban research on gender and diversity. equity and inclusion.
Against that backdrop, the account offers a measure of resistance—new efforts aimed at rebuilding trust and public-health infrastructure. It notes the Vaccine Integrity Project at the University of Minnesota. described as trying to fill in gaps where ACIP is failing. It also highlights The Evidence Collective, described as seeking to break echo chambers and strengthen trust in public health.
Even as it catalogues the damage, the account includes a note of progress for climate science. It says climate.gov—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s climate science portal—was destroyed last year. but this week ex-NOAA scientists launched climate.us to bring back key ways to track climate change. including loss of sea ice and the rise of ocean temperatures.
The through-line in all of this is not subtle. The policies described here keep landing in the same place: in bodies, in outbreaks, in containment plans, and in the cost of responding after the harm has already taken hold.
United States politics public health vaccines flu outbreak Lackland Air Force Base measles cases Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices ACIP charter New World screwworm USDA Brooke Rollins Pete Hegseth Russell Vought Office of Management and Budget climate.gov
So they “optional” the shots and now people are sick?? Shocking.