The past prologues with a cough by John Reid

There is something deeply ironic and tragically American about how we’re careening toward the next pandemic, not because of something new and mysterious, but because of something old and supposedly defeated. Like a sequel nobody asked for, the diseases of the past are making a comeback tour, and guess who’s handing out the VIP backstage passes? That’s right: a cocktail of administrative negligence, anti-science populism, and conspiracy-fueled rhetoric, bottled and shaken by the Trump era, served by MAHA fanatics (Make America Hypochondriac Again), and toasted by none other than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a man whose relationship with science is more toxic than the diseases he's inadvertently cheering on.

What’s unfolding before us is not just epidemiological negligence. It’s a deliberate political and cultural sabotage of public health, death by ideology.

For decades, America wore its polio-free badge like a war medal. Measles? Ancient history. These were diseases we had studied, understood, conquered. But somewhere along the way, triumph gave way to arrogance. Vaccination rates, once a non-negotiable pillar of modern life, became a matter of personal “freedom,” and suddenly public health was subject to the same intellectual rigor as a Facebook meme.

When did immunity become an opinion?

This resurrection of preventable diseases is not a coincidence. It is a direct result of movements that turned skepticism into scripture. Under the Trump administration, with science sidelined in favor of vibes and voter bases, health experts were muzzled, data was manipulated, and public trust in institutions was eroded like a sandcastle facing a hurricane of tweets. Add Kennedy Jr. to the mix, who’s spent years turning scientific illiteracy into a brand, and you've got a witch's brew of misinformation potent enough to bring the Black Death back from the dead if it knew how to use Twitter.

Let’s be clear: the coming pandemic won’t be just a virus. It will be a collision of biology, ideology, and nationalism. It will spread because certain factions of the American political landscape no longer see disease as a humanitarian threat, but as a narrative tool. Mask mandates? Government oppression. Vaccines? Gatesian microchips. Public health officials? Deep state operatives. This is the rhetoric that’s turning the Centers for Disease Control into the next FBI in the eyes of the MAGAverse.

And while America sneezes, the world catches pneumonia.

Make no mistake, this isn’t just an American problem, it’s a global catastrophe with an American accent. As the world looks on, baffled at how a nation with the resources of the moon landing is fumbling the basics of hand-washing and herd immunity, the credibility of global health cooperation is being quietly assassinated. Countries that once modeled their programs on American systems are now questioning whether the CDC is a source of guidance or a cautionary tale.

Science doesn’t care how patriotic your hat is. Germs are unimpressed by slogans. And yet, we now inhabit a moment where denying disease is more politically rewarding than curing it. We’ve seen governors ban mask mandates while their states gasped for oxygen. We’ve seen senators tweet horse dewormer endorsements from hospital beds. We’ve seen the kind of theater that would make even Orwell take a Xanax.

This time, if the next pandemic breaks out, America will bear the unique dishonor of being both victim and perpetrator. The nation that once led the charge against smallpox might become the birthplace of its spiritual successor, not through malice, but through willful ignorance wrapped in a flag and handed out at rallies.

What makes this even more disturbing is how preventable it all is. We have the science. We have the infrastructure. What we lack is the political and cultural will. Instead of preparing for the next wave, we’re busy litigating whether polio was ever really that bad. Spoiler alert: it was.

It’s time to retire the myth that ignorance is just another viewpoint. It’s not. It's a liability. A deadly one.

And while RFK Jr. might enjoy a podcast bump from his crusade against reason, and Trump’s base may applaud his return to 1950s science fiction as policy, it’s the hospitals, the nurses, the children in iron lungs, who will pay the price.

History, like viruses, tends to repeat itself. The question is: will we be immune to it? Or are we too infected with the disease of denial to survive?