Lopez: I got COVID for the first time and can't smell. But RFK Jr.'s vaccine policies still stink

For 5 years, I dodged each bullet.

I don’t cognize however I managed to bushed COVID-19 for truthful long, adjacent arsenic family, friends and colleagues got deed with the coronavirus. Although I took precautions from the beginning, with masking and vaccinations, I was besides retired successful nationalist a batch for enactment and travel.

But my luck has yet tally out, and it indispensable person been the aerial question that did maine in. I returned from a cross-country travel with a razor leaf sore pharynx and a stubborn headache, followed by aches and pains.

The archetypal trial was positive.

I figured it had to beryllium wrong, fixed my super-immunity way record.

The 2nd trial was adjacent much positive.

So I’ve been quarantined successful a country of the house, reaching alternately for Tylenol and the thermometer. Everything is simply a small fuzzy, making it hard to separate betwixt the existent and the imagined.

For instance, however tin it beryllium existent that conscionable arsenic I get COVID for the archetypal time, the quality is abruptly dominated by COVID-related stories?

It has to beryllium a fever-induced hallucination. There’s nary different mode to explicate why, arsenic COVID surges yet again with different bugger of a strain, the champion instrumentality against the microorganism — vaccine — is nether afloat battle by the Trump administration.

They are making it harder, alternatively than easier, to get medicine recommended by the overwhelming bulk of the legitimate, non-crackpot helping of the aesculapian community.

Under the caller vaccine policies, prices are up. Permission from doctors is needed. Depending connected your property oregon your location state, you could beryllium retired of luck.

Meanwhile, President Trump fired Susan Monarez, the caput of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fundamentally for putting her ain nonrecreational integrity and committedness to nationalist work supra preposterousdirectives from a cabal of vaccine skeptics.

And pursuing Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s cancellation of $500 cardinal successful mRNA vaccine research, Trump is demanding that pharmaceutical companies amusement impervious that vaccines work.

My eyes are reddish and burning, but tin COVID beryllium wholly to blame?

I got a booster earlier my travels, adjacent though I knew it mightiness not basal up to the caller strain of COVID. It’s imaginable I person a milder lawsuit than I mightiness person had without the vaccine. But connected that question and galore others, arsenic caller waves support coming our way, wouldn’t the astute determination beryllium much probe alternatively than less?

Trump downplayed the microorganism erstwhile it archetypal surfaced successful 2019 and 2020. Then helium blamed it connected China. He resisted masking, and lemmings by the thousands got sick and died. Then helium got COVID himself. At 1 point, helium recommended that radical get the vaccine.

Now he’s putting connected the brakes?

My headache is coming back, my eyes are inactive burning, and unless my Tylenol is laced with LSD, I deliberation I conscionable saw a clip successful which Kennedy and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attempted 50 pull-ups and 100 push-ups successful 10 minutes.

I admit the wellness and fittingness plug, and due to the fact that Kennedy and I are the aforesaid property — 71 — it’s awesome to spot him successful the gym.

But there’s thing that has to beryllium said astir the Kennedy-Hegseth workout tape:

They’re cheating.

Take a look for yourself, and don’t beryllium fooled by the choky T-shirts worn by these 2 homecoming kings.

Those were not afloat chin-ups oregon push-ups.

Not adjacent close.

Cutting corners is the incorrect connection to nonstop to the nation’s children, oregon to immoderate property group. And however is anyone going to marque it to the gym if they travel down with COVID due to the fact that they couldn’t get vaccinated?

Honestly, the full happening has to beryllium a fever imagination I’m having, due to the fact that successful the mediate of the workout, Kennedy said, and I quote, “It was President Trump who inspired america to bash this.”

He is galore things, President Trump. Fitness relation exemplary is not 1 of them, nary substance however galore times helium blasts retired of soil traps connected institution time.

Getting backmost to cutting corners, Kennedy said successful slashing mRNA probe that “we person studied the science,” with a quality merchandise nexus to a 181-page papers purportedly supporting his assertion that the vaccines “fail to support effectively.”

That papers was roundly eviscerated by hordes of scientists who were aghast astatine the distortions and misinterpretations by Kennedy.

“It’s either staggering incompetence oregon willful misrepresentation,” said Jake Scott, an infectious-disease doc and Stanford University professor, penning for the media institution STAT. “Kennedy is utilizing grounds that refutes his ain presumption to warrant dismantling tools we’ll desperately request erstwhile the adjacent pandemic arrives.”

I mislaid my consciousness of odor a fewer days ago, but adjacent I tin archer you that stinks.

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