The Social World

Category: Health

  • Tyl and error

    Tyl and error

    “DON’T TAKE TYLENOL,” the President advised pregnant women, forcefully, in the Oval Office yesterday afternoon, because his Administration now says that acetaminophen causes childhood autism. Trump said it at least a dozen times. Also, he said, don’t give Tylenol to your children after they get a shot. Speaking of shots, President Trump said, kids shouldn’t get their Hepatitis B vaccine until they’re 12, because Hepatitis B is a sexually transmitted disease. In addition, he recommends breaking up the MMR vaccine into three separate shots, because that’s a lot of liquid. “It’s a fragile little child and it looks like they’re pumping it into a horse,” he said.

    It was a typically eccentric Trump event. The main three speakers were Trump, RFK Jr., and Dr. Oz. Trump said that pregnant women should only take Tylenol in an emergency. “If you can’t tough it out, if you can’t do it, that’s what you’re gonna have to do,” Trump said. But any attempts to spin this as quackery unfounded in science are going to fall flat.

    In fact, the acetaminophen warnings come from a study that the Harvard School of Public Health, hardly a Trump-driven institution, published a month ago. FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary also announced a push to give a drug called leucovorin to children with autism. Leucovorin is essentially a vitamin supplement used to address folate deficiency in cancer patients, and studies have found it’s effective in treating autism symptoms, which now affect approximately one in 31 of American children, and one in a dozen boys. That was the essential substance of the press conference, during which Trump showed a lot of sympathy for children with autism and their families. He also said that he has a lot of “fat friends” who take Ozempic. “Let me tell you,” he said. “They don’t look so good.”

    But beyond the President’s War On Tylenol, which will clearly grab all the headlines, this press conference signified something much more important. Appearing with Trump were RFK Jr. from HHS, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya from the National Institutes of Health, Makary from the FDA, and Dr. Oz, who these days only appears on TV to talk about his work in running the Medicaid program. They spoke in a unified voice about this issue.

    RFK said, “we have broken down barriers between agencies, and fast-tracked solutions.” This will be the first in a series of autism announcements that “will be a model to deliver the framework for similar results for other chronic conditions that plague Americans.” Makary said “this is The start of a historic shift in medical culture. A charge to identify root causes. We’re not going to stop until we address the root causes of this suffering. It may be entirely preventable.”

    This marks an extraordinary cultural shift. Typically, the FDA, HHS, NIH, and Centers for Disease Control have operated within silos of research and information. Their lack of coordination and communication have led to a massive public-health crisis that formed the basis for the MAHA movement. This is significant way beyond the President issuing the same warning about Tylenol for pregnant women a dozen times in an hour. He’s just the very loud messenger. But the health and medicine branch of his Administration is united with common purpose, and it’s going to yield extremely interesting and highly controversial results.

    Quite telling is the fact that the major voice speaking out against the Administration’s Tylenol warnings is Kenvue, the drug’s manufacturer. Oh, and also The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which issued a statement saying that Tylenol is safe for pregnant women. At the event, a reporter brought this up. After Trump was doing calling it a “nasty question,” he said, dismissively, “That’s the establishment. They’re funded by lots of different groups. Maybe they’re right.”
    “But I don’t think they are.”


  • Robert Munsch’s license to die

    Robert Munsch’s license to die

    Once upon a time, there was a hugely successful children’s author named Robert Munsch. His books (more than 70!) sold in many, many copies; he became famous, and people gave him top awards like the Juno and the Order of Canada. They even named schools after him.

    More gloriously yet, he became the most stolen author in the Toronto Public Library.

    He was in high demand as a storyteller, and children from everywhere used to write him letters. And he would write back, often with personalized stories (which they loved) featuring them and their classmates.

    Like all of us, he had his sorrows. He and his wife lost two children, which led him to write one of his best-known works, Love You Forever. Eventually they became adoptive parents of three. And when he told people about the hard things he had survived, he mentioned his efforts to cope with mental health issues, suicidal thoughts and addiction – all things that had become manageable with the right medication and the right support. Through it all, he told stories, wrote stories, lived stories.

    Then, one day, he began to feel his mind wasn’t working as sharply as it once had. He kept falling off his bicycle, and had trouble parking his car. He went to the doctor and the doctor told him he had dementia. He had a harder and harder time telling stories.

    Now at this point in the story we should mention that Munsch, though he was born in the US, now lived in Canada. And Canada, sadly, is a country where discouraged, lonely, or frightened people can legally be killed, if they get permission from the government. It’s called MAiD – medical assistance in dying.

    We don’t know exactly what Robert was thinking at this stage, but it seems a safe bet that he was sad at the loss of his storytelling abilities, which had brought him such joy, such artistic connection to the world, such professional success. It seems likely too that he was afraid as he wondered what a future with dementia would hold.

    And there’s a chance that he felt very lonely. Without his unique artistic abilities, with gradually decreasing control over his mind and body, who would he be? Who could he be? Would he be able to love anyone, and would anyone be able to love him?

    The author of Love You Forever should have known the answer to that question. And yet, in the eleventh hour of a life most people would see as successful and happy, he did something terrible (though perhaps, as he lived in Canada where this practice was becoming more and more common, he didn’t realize quite how terrible it was).

    He applied for MAiD, to get authorization to be killed by a doctor – and he got it. But he didn’t use it right away. He let everyone know that he’d tucked it away in a drawer, a wicked little insurance policy, to be gotten out if ever he felt too sad or too afraid. In the meantime, life has gone on. According to his daughter, he is doing well and doesn’t expect to die any time soon. Perhaps he’ll even live out his days peacefully to the end.

    But he has done something terrible, whether he realizes it or not. In making all this public, he is letting his fame be used to normalise, even promote assisted suicide.

    Because of his example, people who yesterday were enduring pain in hopes of happier times, may choose today to give up.

    Because of him, vulnerable elderly people will be subjected to even more pressure to see themselves as burdens, rather than beloved and precious human beings.

    Because of him, disabled and incapacitated people will be treated with a little more contempt, a little less patience – perhaps even dismissed as the “turnip” or “lump” Munsch jokes he may one day become.

    It is ironic that a man whose life was storytelling is now – deliberately or not – suggesting people should burn the book because they’re afraid to read the last chapter.

    Many years ago, Munsch studied for the priesthood. He abandoned his Catholic faith around the same time that he left his studies – sadly, in the religion he left behind, he could have learned what he has clearly not yet understood:

    That the weak and incapacitated are worth just as much to God as the healthy; that those who patiently endure suffering, in the nursing home as on the cross, hold the golden key to changing everything: hearts, minds, the world.

  • Rand Paul needles fired CDC director Susan Monarez

    Rand Paul needles fired CDC director Susan Monarez

    Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and recently-fired CDC director Susan Monarez exchanged “testy” words about vaccines in a Senate hearing today. That should come as little surprise. Paul has long been a vaccine skeptic, if not an outright opponent.

    The day started with Monarez telling Congress that RFK Jr. tried to get the White House to fire her because she refused to “rubber-stamp” approve a schedule of HHS vaccinations. “He just wanted blanket approval,” Monarez said. “If I could not commit to blanket approval to each of the recommendations I would need to resign.”

    She added, “I refused to do it because I have built a career on scientific integrity, and my worst fear was that I would then be in a position of approving something that would reduce access to lifesaving vaccines to children and others who need them.”

    On the table is an HHS recommendation that people vaccinate newborns against Hepatitis B, which it has continually recommended since 1991. RFK Jr.’s advisory panel is scheduled to rescind that later this week. Paul supports the move, whereas Monarez said she would only support it if “science” backs it up. “All of us had agreed that the science evolves and we need to see the data and the evidence to ensure that we are protecting our children,” she said.

    That’s when the testiness began.

    “Does the Covid vaccine reduce hospitalization for children under 18?” Paul asked.

    “It can,” Monarez said.

    “It doesn’t… You resisted firing people who have this idea that the Covid vaccine should be at six months. That’s what this is about. You didn’t resist firing the beautiful scientists, the career people… unobjective and unbiased. You wouldn’t fire the people who are saying that we have to vaccinate our kids at six months of age. That’s who you refuse to fire.”

    The sarcasm dripped thickly from Paul’s tongue as he said this. He’s never gotten satisfactory answers from the government about social-distancing recommendations, or lockdowns, or school closures, or federal vaccine mandates. Those are in the past now, but people who opposed them haven’t forgotten. If today’s exchange seems like an anti-vax head-scratcher, that’s the context.

    Though this was supposed to be a hearing about RFK Jr.’s plans for HHS, and, in particular, his plans for childhood vaccine schedules, in reality it was part of a slow-moving ongoing referendum on America’s disastrous Covid policies during the Biden administration and the first Trump administration. We’ve never had a real truth and reconciliation commission on the topic, except maybe in Rand Paul’s mind, so today’s congressional hearings were really part of an ongoing concern.

    The hearings did nothing but further retrench the teams. On one side you have “trust the science” people, who believe in the infallibility of the medical establishment, even though that establishment, or at least the immunology end of it, completely failed us during Covid, which is part of the reason we have an RFK, Jr.-led CDC in the first place. On the other hand, you have people who believe that shots contain slow-acting poisons that will kill us sooner or later. Ordinary people are just waiting to hear whether or not the government thinks they should vaccinate their children. Today’s exchange, between the former head of the CDC and a Senator who used to be a ophthalmologist, left no one satisfied.

  • Don’t let Serena bully you into taking the fat shot

    Don’t let Serena bully you into taking the fat shot

    Serena Williams is one of the world’s greatest living athletes, but in her retirement, she seems to have forgotten the basics of diet and exercise.

    You’ve likely seen Williams’ ad campaign for Ro, a telehealth provider that specializes in GLP-1 weight loss medications like Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound. In the now ubiquitous commercials, Williams tells how she personally used the drug to burn stubborn postpartum fat, a respectable 31 pounds over 8 months.

    “It’s not a short cut, it’s science,” reads the company’s tagline.

    Williams looks great – of course, of course. But just because scientists have discovered a cure for fatness doesn’t mean she still hasn’t taken the easy way out. The traditional method is equally scientific: eat less, burn more calories than you consume and you’ll healthily lose the weight.

    After all, it’s not like these medications don’t have side effects. Potential complications are too long to list, but include everything from thyroid tumors and pancreatitis to run of the mill gastro distress. With the rush to market, long-term side effects still aren’t fully known, but you may wind up with shrunken heart muscles in addition to a flatter belly.

    Sure, Williams had kids; life changes, hormones get whacky, and I’m sympathetic to the struggle – but that still doesn’t change the basics of human anatomy. If the queen of tennis can no longer nail diet and exercise 101, then us mortals have little hope.

    Yet there’s a more cynical explanation as well.

    The central implication of the campaign is that we’re living under a new normal, and it aims to use the Williams name, synonymous with athletic excellence, to neutralize any vestigial stigma while expanding its market.

    “Serena’s on Ro. Are you next?” the front page of the website somewhat exploitatively asks.

    Cui bono? A host of pharmaceutical companies, of course, but also Williams’ own husband, Reddit billionaire Alexis Ohanian, an early investor and board member of Ro. The couple obviously don’t need the money – but that still doesn’t necessarily preclude a little quid pro quo.

    Still, I guess it’s better than the body positivity movement; being gratuitously obese has negative health effects as well, on top of the aesthetic indignity we’re all forced to publicly witness. But is there even really a stigma surrounding GLP-1’s, or is this yet another example of America’s self-legitimizing obsession with victimhood?

    The campaign does more than simply normalize Ro, it offers a hit of moral superiority to the patient for supposedly being stigmatized in using it: “be brave, be like Serena,” it implies, and “buy our product.” And if anyone criticizes you? Well, they’re a bully – and we all know who we’re meant to fawningly praise in the battle between victim and oppressor.

    But that seems more like wishful thinking. These weight loss drugs are like seeing a fat person jog in the park. Sure, you might snicker privately to yourself at the spectacle. But deep down, as well as in mixed company, you’ll earnestly commend them for taking the necessary steps for self-improvement.

    For better or worse, Ro and companies like it are simply the new jogging. We have, in fact, scientifically surpassed diet and exercise. And there’s no stigma in that.

    When the automobile replaced the horse and buggy, we didn’t shun those who sped ahead in their shiny new Ford. This is small-p progress, detached from any political connotation, and is a net boon for McAmerica.

    Over 40 percent of Americans are obese according to government data, with an additional 30 percent being generally overweight. These are just averages, and the figures get worse – much worse – in certain demographics. You can shout about the value of diet and exercise until you’re blue in the face, but these stats have been increasing since the 1970s. No one’s going to listen.

    In a choice between chronic, widespread and ultimately lethal obesity and potential pharmaceutical side effects, I choose the one I don’t have to look bulbously sweaty in the gym. So I’m pro-zempic, if you will; everyone who needs the extra motivation should enthusiastically take it. Hell, I’d rather see the feds subsidize weight loss drugs than junk food.

    Yet a lack of stigma doesn’t mean there’s no room for personal conscience. I don’t believe for a second that someone with the will power and physicality of Serena Williams needs a chemical crutch to lose weight, alongside millions of other relatively healthy people who would rather take a shot than put in a little bit of effort.

    Anyone can get in shape at any time – but you only have yourself to blame for waiting.

  • Inside the cult of Equinox

    Inside the cult of Equinox

    Scratch the surface of Silver Age Rome and what do you find? Most likely, a tight subterranean vault built as a meeting room for the followers of Mithras. This Persian mystery cult was everywhere in the early Anni Domini, coming to prominence between the decline of Hellenism and the rise of Christianity, filling that gap between the gods of Olympus and the God of Moses. The cult’s dark temples, the Mithraea, squeezed devotees into opposing benches designed to make them uncomfortable, all while in communion with their fellow initiates. Today, sociologists might call a Mithraeum a “third place.” Here was the kind of space where Roman men who had become disillusioned with Jupiter Stator could go between work and home to be purified together in a shower of bull’s blood.

    The modern gym is one of our own ubiquitous third places, but only the urban fitness chain known as Equinox has positioned itself as an upscale mystery cult. “COMMIT TO SOMETHING,” beckons the gnostic advertising campaign of this self-described “high-performance lifestyle leader.” When presented with the accompanying outsize images obstructing the gym’s windows, we might well wonder: commit to what?

    In truth, the ‘something’ to which one mainly commits at Equinox is a mid-four-figure annual fee

    Launched in 1991, the gym now has more than 100 outposts spread across New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Houston and Washington, DC, as well as London, Toronto and Vancouver. The Equinox campaign started by the ad agency Wieden+Kennedy in 2016, diverged notably from the standard gym appeal of “improving lives through fitness” or “member-friendly memberships that won’t break the bank,” as the bargain-basement New York Sports Club might say. First shot by Steven Klein – whom the New Yorker described as creating “fashion photography with a pistol and a pulse” for his images that “teetered between the seductive and the sadistic” – the Equinox campaign was far from mens sana in corpore sano. It wasn’t even about going to the gym at all.

    Instead, we saw a model etching a tattoo over what remained of her preemptive double mastectomy. “Scars aren’t ugly,” she said in the video component. “Scars are really just beautiful badges reminding you what you chose to go against; not just the size of your opponent but the size of your commitment.” Other materials presented a young man with a paralyzing stutter. “Your commitment tells your story better than you ever could,” he eked out. In another, three deaf cheerleaders signed in unison. In another, a model cut her hands practicing the harp as blood ran down her instrument. In another, a naked man received a haircut and manicure-pedicure as a small mirror covered his pudendum. In another, a woman breastfed two babies at her table at a restaurant. In yet another, a shirtless man was soon covered in bees.

    At the time, Equinox promoted its campaign as an “intimate, provocative and deeply moving exploration of personal identity” that “confronts current cultural issues and asserts that commitment has the power to define who we are in the deepest sense.”

    This year, Equinox updated the approach with a shoot by the British fashion photographer Charlotte Wales that extended these themes: a model licks a leather boot; a woman lies on a bed of nails as a robotic arm sticks her with a hypodermic needle; another model (this time transsexual) walks side by side with an AI version of their likeness covered in metallic parts. “Commitment is obsessed,” reads Equinox’s latest ad copy. “It’s now. It’s relentless. Always one step ahead. Abandon half-measures. Surrender to your urges. Sacrifice for obsession. Commitment isn’t a choice. It’s an awakening. Let desire drive you. Commit to something.”

    Abandon all hope, ye who enter here? To hammer home the infernal message, Equinox throws extra shade on those who make that naive New Year’s resolution to get in shape. “If you waited for the ball to drop, you dropped the ball,” advises the gym. “On January 1, we blocked new membership sign-ups. Because commitment doesn’t start when the calendar resets. It’s for those who are all in. Not when the ball drops, the clock strikes, or the calendar flips – but always.”

    So what if you can’t commit to the gym, the message goes. You should really be committed to an intensive-care unit. Or a mental asylum. Or you should receive a felony charge. But in truth, the “something” to which one mainly commits at Equinox is a mid-four-figure annual fee.

    The real mystery of Equinox is what you get for the expense. In June, New York attorney general Letitia James won a $600,000 judgment against the company by arguing that its contractual agreements were too hard to break. The award of a mere $250 to each of the plaintiffs – which equaled less than a month of dues, to say nothing of the initiation fee – left members less than impressed. “Tish gets ripped!” ran the New York Post headline. “New Yorkers not impressed with AG Letitia James’s crackdown on gyms.”

    Members don’t converse. Most employ monastic silence as they move from station to station

    Equinox positions its membership as fast-track admission to the cosmopolitan faith. At the root of such modern urbanism, of course, is masochism. High taxes, crowded subways and filthy streets appeal to the broken-window theory in reverse: that our souls will only get better if our city lives get worse. Professional sadists such as New York’s Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani therefore thrive in the same way as that Equinox spin instructor who comes around to crank up your bike’s resistance. It’s all about abnegating the flesh and globalizing the intifada to a techno beat. In one early Equinox advertisement, a screaming, shirtless woman holds up her fist in front of a classical building surrounded by a night-time security detail. Just what she is protesting does not matter so much as the appearance of her consequence-free LARPing. (She is portrayed by the fitness model Bianca Van Damme, daughter of the “muscles from Brussels” Jean-Claude Van Damme.)

    Equinox members may not be true basement-dwelling “Brooklynites for Gaza,” but they are content to go along with the latest thing as long as the towels are stocked and the steam room stays open. We all signed up to be in this Paul Verhoeven-movie of a place, and that’s life in the big city.

    “A manic attempt to make the posthuman sexy,” is how one agnostic member explained it to me. “I have the distressing sense that I am beholding another stripe – or, heaven forbid, chevron – on the ghastly and vexillologically metastasizing ‘progress flag.’ The clientele strikes me as being finance and finance-adjacent bros plus gay men for whom human growth hormone, rather than Ozempic, is still the lifestyle supplement of choice. As for the women, I’d have no idea. I don’t notice.”

    Not noticing is a big part of the Equinox culture. Members don’t converse. Most employ monastic silence as they move from station to station, carrying their water bottles and iPhones upon which a small dog must be featured on the lock screen. No grunts. Little sweat. The chilled eucalyptus towels see to that. After reports a decade ago of problems in the steam room, the facility posted signs of a “zero-tolerance policy regarding inappropriate, sexual or lewd behavior. Our staff is on notice.” The closest most come to catching a sexually transmitted disease at today’s Equinox is when a form of athlete’s foot requires an oral course of fungicide (I now wear shower shoes).

    And yet, past the many cult symbols that line its entry, Equinox tends to be well-maintained and almost always uncrowded. Bottles of four different soaps and lotions line each shower stall: a shampoo and conditioner of rose, pepper and sage; a facial cleanser of aloe, geranium and rose; a body cleanser of chamomile, bergamot and rose. Additional bottles of face and body cream are available in the locker rooms. So too are Q-Tips, deodorant, mouthwash, razors, even a container of black hair ties to maintain one’s man bun. The only recent controversy here occurred a year ago, when Equinox switched out its Kiehl’s line of products for Grown Alchemist, a brand that can also be purchased at (gasp) Target.

    My Equinox membership grants me access to all the spin classes and boxing sessions my heart desires. There is a mobile media library showing the proper use of every exercise machine – something I found particularly useful as I recovered from a suite of orthopedic setbacks. With my level of membership, I can visit the Flatiron location across from my office, the Upper West Side location next to my apartment, the Columbus Circle location with the saltwater pool and just about every other location save for the nirvana that is the new Equinox Hudson Yards, which would cost me another $50 a month. Perhaps one day I too will join this “most spacious, thoughtful, and connected Equinox ever… the purest expression of high-performance living yet. The 60,000-square-foot luxury destination spans two floors and includes a 15,000-square-foot pool and sundeck.”

    Even Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been spotted in his Make America Healthy Again jeans and hiking boots, lifting at Equinox. At some point we all reach that moment in life when we realize our aging frames must be committed to a daily routine of physical therapy.

    By spending more than $300 a month with a company that advertises personal destruction, many urban professionals may feel they have purchased some progressive blessing on their self-care. For others such as myself, Equinox is simply a very nice gym.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 15, 2025 World edition.

  • How the Spartans got fighting fit

    How the Spartans got fighting fit

    Donald Trump has brought back the Presidential Fitness Test for American children, once used in state schools to gauge young people’s health and athleticism with one-mile runs, sit-ups and stretching exercises. He could usefully add elements of the early training invented by the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus to create disciplined, physically and mentally resilient soldiers and citizens.

    Every baby was examined for fitness. They were trained not to fuss about food, or be frightened of the dark when left alone, or to get angry or cry. At seven, they joined bands in which they grew up together while their elders registered their progress in obedience and courage. They were also taught to stay silent rather than drivel on, and if they did talk, to use language clearly and trenchantly (our term “laconic” derives from Lakôn, “Spartan”). Famous examples: “We do not ask how many the enemy are: just where they are.” And to a Persian boasting “Our arrows will block out the sky”: “Good, we shall fight in the shade.”

    Girls, while not being formed into the companies, also underwent state-sponsored training that emphasized physical strength and endurance, preparing them for their roles as mothers of warriors. They too learned to express themselves incisively. A girl saw a Milesian having his shoes put on and laced by a slave and said: “Father, the foreigner hasn’t any hands!” Being asked by an Athenian woman “Why is it that you Spartan women are the only women that lord it over your men?,” she said: “Because we are the only women that are mothers of men.” Another, when her sons had fled from battle back to her, said “Where have you come from now, you craven slaves? Do you intend to creep back in here, where you came from?”, and she pulled up her garment and showed them. Another, as her son was going to war, gave him his shield and said: “Your father kept this safe for you; do the same, or do not exist.” Another, asked by a man if she would be good if he bought her, said: “Yes, and if you do not buy me.”

    Fine lessons in exploiting the potential of language, rather than waving it flabbily about.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 15, 2025 World edition.

  • Is RFK Jr. Trump’s Achilles’ heel?

    Is RFK Jr. Trump’s Achilles’ heel?

    Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s quest to prove himself President Donald Trump’s most destructive Cabinet member continues apace. 

    On Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services abruptly announced that “Susan Monarez is no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” She had been nominated to the key post in March, and actually served in it for less than a month. Shortly after that, Monarez’s lawyers issued a fiery statement asserting that she had neither been fired, nor resigned, and was being targeted by Kennedy for refusing to “rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives,” and help him weaponize “public health for political gain.”

    Shortly after that, the White House announced that Monarez had officially been relieved of her duties. Several other top CDC officials – including its chief medical officer – subsequently resigned in protest.

    The proximate cause of the Kennedy-Monarez showdown was reportedly the latter’s refusal to support the former’s push to rescind approvals for coronavirus vaccines. According to The Washington Post, Kennedy and his team grilled the short-lived director on Monday over her alignment – or lack thereof – with his effort “to change vaccine policy.”

    That is, of course, quite the euphemism. Kennedy has spent decades advancing a novel’s worth of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. The founder and former leader of “Children’s Health Defense,” the organization behind the instant classic Vaxxed III: Authorized to Kill, Kennedy once boasted that, “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, ‘Better not get them vaccinated.’”

    Samoan authorities blame him for a 2019 measles outbreak that claimed the lives of more than 80 people. As the families of the victims picked up the pieces, Kennedy suggested that a “defective vaccine” may have been to blame.

    To win a fraught confirmation fight earlier this year, Kennedy adopted a simple, time-honored strategy: he lied.

    “All of my kids are vaccinated, I’ve written many books on vaccines, my first book in 2014, the first line of it is ‘I am not anti-vaccine’ and the last line is ‘I am not anti-vaccine,’” he insisted at the outset of his hearing before the Senate Finance Committee. The missing context is that he had said he would “do anything” and “pay anything” to go back in time and change his own kids’ vaccination status. Asked about his incendiary past claims about the CDC, he denied having ever compared the agency’s actions to “Nazi death camps” and the Catholic Church’s “pedophile scandal.” It’s public record that he did exactly that.

    The Kennedy now running the federal government’s largest Cabinet department has – surprise, surprise – better resembled the kook who walked into his confirmation hearing rather than the moderate victim of a smear campaign he portrayed himself as during it. Despite the empty promise to Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a medical doctor and stalwart vaccine advocate, during the confirmation process, Kennedy has worked tirelessly to undermine public trust in vaccines during his short tenure at the top of HHS. In June, he fired every member of the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, decrying the federal panel as a “rubber stamp” for vaccines, and announced that the administration would deny Gavi, an international vaccine agency, funding. Then, earlier this month, Kennedy announced that the second Trump administration would either cancel or alter all of its existing mRNA vaccine projects. The first Trump administration, of course, championed Operation Warp Speed, the expedited research and approval process that led to the development of several safe and effective coronavirus vaccines in a matter of only a few months. Trump himself hailed that effort as “one of the greatest achievements ever” only a few days ago.

    By now, Kennedy’s playbook is no mystery. Surely, if not so slowly, Kennedy is purging HHS of those who would forthrightly push back on his anti-vaccine agenda. He complains of rubber stamps for vaccines, but demands a rubber stamp for his every effort to undermine them.

    The president and his allies ought to be alarmed. While Trump has cornered the Democrats on any number of issues – crime, gender ideology, immigration, etc. – by presenting himself as the moderate alternative to a party with ideas so extreme that they’re unrecognizable to most Americans, Kennedy’s actions put his boss in danger of being on the opposite end of this equation.

    Trump lost the 2020 presidential election in large part because of the perception that he was not taking the Covid-19 pandemic seriously enough. Imagine the fallout if any significant number of American children die in an outbreak that could be reasonably attributed to Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism. Or the pandemonium that would ensue if Kennedy greeted another pandemic with inaction and a refusal to pursue a vaccine. Besides costing some untold number of lives, it would utterly destroy Trump’s presidency – and his legacy.

    Kennedy’s appointment was a reward for his endorsement of the president last year. Trump rewards loyalty above all else, and views Kennedy as a dependable ally. But if he must suffer the embarrassment that is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his team, he must not allow him free rein to continue to wreak havoc. To do so is to court a disaster so great as to dwarf every other controversy, mistake, and scandal Trump has survived to date.

  • Young people should drink more, no great story starts with salad

    Young people should drink more, no great story starts with salad

    According to a recent Gallup poll, young Americans are drinking less than ever before. Two-thirds of adults aged 18 to 34 now believe even moderate drinking harms their health, up from 30 percent in 2001. Only half say they drink at all, down from 59 percent in 2023, the lowest figure since Gallup began tracking alcohol consumption in 1939. What is happening to young people in America?

    Possible explanations pile up: a new obsession with health, better information about alcohol’s effects, swapping gin and tonics for weed or vaping, the cruel economics of $18 cocktails, or the quiet lure of staying home, where TikTok and Netflix bring the world to your couch instead of you having to find it in a crowded bar. The truth is probably some mix of these, but the real driver may be less about health than about a trend, or a fashion statement.

    Today’s youth track their sleep, steps and serotonin levels. They meditate, hydrate and post about it. They refuse alcohol because it is unhealthy for their body, treat therapy as maintenance rather than crisis management and avoid what they call “bad vibes”. Whether this makes them healthier, or just better at looking healthy, is another question.

    Online trends now tell young people how to live: work out every day, regulate your emotions, stay conscious of your privileges and avoid drinking. It’s more exhausting than a hangover if you ask me. In other words, strip away the very imperfections that make us human: the rage, the shame, the reckless nights and the regrets.

    In Washington, D.C., I asked some Gen Zers why they don’t drink. “Drinking cocktails is getting really expensive at $18/drink. Plus, the terrible hangovers where my brain can’t function the next day make it hard to work or study, which affects my future income”, one said. Another called it also too expensive, a slippery slope she’d seen ruin livelihoods, adding she’s always working.

    This is a generation born in comfort. Their parents listened to them. Their spaces are safe, they avoid conflict, having grown up without much of it, and in the absence of larger struggles, they turn self-improvement into a Napoleonic campaign.

    As George Orwell wrote in 1946, sometimes “an occasional good time is worth the damage it inflicts on one’s liver.” Health isn’t the only virtue, he said. “Friendship, hospitality, and the heightened spirits and change of outlook that one gets by eating and drinking in good company are also valuable”. Even outright drunkenness, if rare, may do less harm and “makes a sort of break in one’s mental routine, comparable to a week-end in a foreign country”, he added. He couldn’t recall “a single poem in praise of water.” Neither can I.

    After all, there are few things in life as good as a good Barolo bottle. People drink for a reason, or rather lots of reasons, and in contrast with vaping, above all for a social one. Alcohol loosens them up, brings the curtains down. Sometimes that means you finally say what you’ve been holding back. Sometimes it means you end up knocking on your ex’s door like an idiot. It can make you cry, often over things that don’t deserve it, and it can make you laugh at things that probably shouldn’t be funny. In some cultures, it’s also a tradition. But above all, it gets people talking to each other, which is more than you can say for kale smoothie.

    In recent years, as I’ve passed thirty, friends of my age joined Gen Z and gave up drinking, going out less and even started experimenting with quitting coffee. When I asked one why she stopped drinking, she told me: “Drinking ages you”. Well so does life. It struck me that many are chasing structure and personal victories in the absence of any larger struggle. This new wave of self-denial feels like modern Spartanism without the war. I come back to Orwell: “if you refrain from drinking alcohol, or eating meat, or whatever it is, you may expect to live an extra five years”, but those years will be empty of laughter, good memories and stories worth telling.

    In 19th-century Russia, speaking French was a sign of status. The obsession with healthiness that is dominating our screens, is the same in our time. It’s a way to differentiate yourself from those uneducated and low-class who waste away their bodies and youth to alcohol. This sort of social Balkanization manifests itself not only culturally and socially but also in American politics. It is expressed in sugar-free diets, alcohol free drinks and social justice activism.

    Young Ukrainians on the frontlines don’t have time to count their steps. Neither did the Kurt Vonnegut generation, sent off to fight in the Second World War. Maybe that exact lack of larger struggle and mission, growing in relative well-being, is what leads young people in America to focus on their health.

    For American youth, it turns out it’s easier to micromanage your sleep or your diet than to confront the harder problems: isolation, the absence of community, the quiet boredom that creeps in. Young people are not just drinking less, they are seeing each other less. The CDC says 43 percent of adults aged 18-34 report feeling lonely. A workplace survey found 79 percent of Gen Z and 71 percent of Millennials describe themselves as lonesome. Dining alone is up 53 percent since 2003.

    But is loneliness always a negative thing or part of the human condition? Even if you find that the root cause, say it’s the lack of faith or decline of traditional family, what then? There’s no ready solution.

    The 1960s generation rebelled, only to settle back into familiar pattern, and the same may be true for Gen Z. Health as a trend, like all trends, will pass. Human nature will still want connection, risk and the occasional night of bad decisions

  • Why I am never doing the ‘Pete & Bobby Challenge’

    Why I am never doing the ‘Pete & Bobby Challenge’

    A terrifying thing appeared on my Twitter feed this morning. Secretary of Health and Human Services and bear-fighter Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he’s “teamed up” with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for the “Pete & Bobby Challenge.” This, unfortunately, is a fitness challenge. Even more unfortunately, it involves doing 100 push-ups and 50 pull-ups. Most unfortunately of all, they want us to do it all in five minutes or less.

    You might take heart that in the gym-based, sweat-soaked motivational video that accompanies the Tweet, RFK Jr. takes a whole five minutes and 25 seconds to complete this challenge. However, keep in mind that he’s in his seventies, and does the entire challenge in jeans. SecDef Pete, who, if he’s an alcoholic, is the healthiest alcoholic who’s ever lived, completes the under-five-minutes no problem, doing pull-ups like he’s God playing games with dice.

    The odds that I’m going to do this challenge are equal to the odds that I’ll take up needlepoint, start liking mayonnaise, or watch an episode of Virgin River: Zero. I’m all for health and fitness, but this version of Bowflex America isn’t for me. My US passport doesn’t mean I need to crawl through mud like a Marine. I’m the one the Marines are supposed to be defending.

    I preferred a previous generation’s fitness plan: Michelle Obama’s program of growing your vegetables and engaging in some peppy light multicultural Sesame Street dancing. I mean, I didn’t do that, either; I had a reputation as America’s coolest dad to protect. But it was more accessible than RFK’s roided-out brotastic exercise nightmare.

    It’s a matter of exercise perspective. I don’t treat my life like a high-intensity interval. I treat my body like I treat my barbecue: low and slow, with the occasional wet rub. The latter part means I enjoy a good schvitz. Get your mind out of the sewer.

    My fitness program is this: 30 to 45 minutes of low-to-moderate intensity yoga at least five teams a week, and at least a half hour of at least semi-brisk walking a day. And I don’t eat every meal like someone just dumped a barrel of fried chicken tenders into a trough. It might not seem like a lot, and I don’t exactly look imposing, but when I have to duck under a rope in airport security, walk up four flights of stairs, or hump for miles around Chicago with a 30-pound suitcase on my back (which happened last weekend, for reasons that I’ll tell you at dreary length if I see you sometime), I can do it without collapsing.

    I’m all for a renewed Presidential Fitness challenge, and can get behind the MAHA healthy eating program. But I reject this idea of treating life as though it were Basic Training that we must complete every day. The goal should be to get through your routine with minimal stress and strain. They call it Functional Fitness, and unless you are an Olympian, a professional surfer, (or, apparently, a Cabinet member), it’s all you need.

    I treat every day of my life like I’m recovering from a medium-intensity injury or a mild illness. Sure enough, it helps prevent medium intensity injuries and mild illness. I can hold a five-minute plank without even trying, but it’s not because I’m jacked. It’s because I do light, boring, mild exercise every day. My abs aren’t a six-pack, but a solid pony keg in the middle will do the job as well.

    Whose fitness example would you follow: RFK Jr. and SecDef Pete, who look like they’re training to defend Thermopylae against the armies of Xerxes, or President Trump? That man is 79 years old, and his fitness routine involves a weekend round of golf and furious midnight thumb-typing. You can do it, America. It’s an achievable goal.