Don't Worry, He's "Mild."
How denial led us to fascism.
Donald Trump visited the White House this week. Biden rolled out the red carpet. Look at that photo. It illustrates everything gone wrong since 2021, when a party entered office with a clear mandate to fix our broken systems and restore faith in public health. Instead, they devoted themselves to the urgency of normal, unsustainable economic growth, cotton candy nonpartisanship, foreign policy, war, and above all, the erasure of public health.
We now have confirmation that RFK Jr. will lead the Department of Health and Human Services. He’s the Grim Reaper of progress.
This is bad.
Of course, the news continues to run minimizing headlines, saying health experts are “worried.” No, they’re not “worried.” Worried is how you feel when your computer starts making a weird noise. Anyone who’s been paying attention left the “worry” stage years ago. Also, Trump’s pick of RFK Jr. isn’t a “mistake” or a “bad decision.” Team Palpatine knows exactly what they’re doing. It’s also not a reversal of the last four years. It’s an acceleration. Anyway, just when I thought I was done talking about the real reasons behind the death of public health and democracy, another one of its killers shows up with a hot take.
She proves the point.
After career minimizer Leana Wen wrote an embarrassingly awful column on the health risks of fluoride, actual public health experts rose up to explain exactly why she and RFK Jr. are both so wrong. No, European countries don’t fluoridate their water, but they do fluoridate many other things. No, the recommended amount of fluoride in our drinking water doesn’t come close to toxic levels.
So I looked it up to confirm, and it’s true. Europeans use fluoride, just not in their drinking water. For example, Germany started adding fluoride to their salt in 1991. In total, more than 70 million Europeans consume fluoride via salt. Countries like Scotland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and even Russia put fluoride in their milk. Sweden, Denmark, and Finland regularly distribute fluoride tablets and rinses to children through nationalized dental programs. In Italy, fluoride often occurs in the water naturally. They don’t need to add it. So when Leana Wen talks about fluoride, she’s leaving out a very big piece of context.
And yet, who rises up next to completely miss the point?
Why of course, it’s Emily Ostrich.
(Sorry, I mean Oster…)