The MAHA Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report: April 8, 2026
New stuff! RFKJr has a podcast, ACIP has a charter, Malone has many problems and a lion head, MAGA has budget cuts. Ongoing stuff! Casey Means has a shot, America has measles, Angie has ostrich drama.
Jessica is back from vacation! But Angie is still not feeling so hot. As a result, we are a day late coming through with this week’s newsletter, but there is a lot going on to discuss. We’ll be covering it Friday for Taking Shots, as usual. Thanks to Dr. Juliet Morrison for co-hosting last week. Due to popular demand, we’re working on getting Juliet back sooner than later for more neverending virology talk.
Table of Contents
1. Secretary Kennedy gets his own podcast
2. ACIP has a new charter
3. Robert Malone has multiple complaints
4. The White House only wants to cut NIH to the tune of $5B next year
5. Casey Means is still a thing
6. We’re almost at double the measles cases for all of 2025 and it’s only April
7. Canadian H5N1 ostrich fascist documentary with Angie is out on April 10
Say Hello to Podcast Bobby
US Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has once again threatened the American people with a good time. By “good time,” we mean he just announced a podcast that sounds a lot like a reboot of the anti-vax conspiracy theory hour he used to host before entering government service, just with the official seal of HHS on it. Kennedy says the government has been lying to people for too long, so he’s assembling his top tier squad of MAHA experts to ensure that the MAHA message continues to be broadcast far and wide.
Although there are a lot of rumors about Kennedy’s future and it is very clear that the Republicans would generally like to downplay Kennedy’s vaccine policies in particular, he seems to be on board with the MAGA midterm plan. This podcast makes sense as a way for him to both focus on the more popular “Eat Real Food” nonsense (which is still not evidence-based) and to walk back some of his more extreme vaccine positions. Kennedy is a master of revisionist history with regard to his own actions and public statements on vaccination, so expect every episode of Podcast Bobby’s HHS Propaganda Hour to take a “vaccine skeptical” tone: I’m not anti-vax, but I have questions! In many cases, those questions are definitively answered (do vaccines cause autism? NO), and the vaccine skeptics will not accept the answers. Usually that’s because they have something to gain or something to sell.
We are calling it now: every “independent doctor” and “respected scientist” who shows up will either be promoting their own pet scientific brand or content (lab leak, functional medicine, etc) or peddling supplements, ivermectin (“early treatment”), phototherapy, mitochondrial nonsense, untested synthetic peptides and nootropics, energy healing, hormones, diets, cold plunges, tests you don’t need, wellness protocols, and assorted other pseudoscientific quackery. We will be tracking guests as they come in and out so that you don’t have to.
ACIP Has a Freshly Renewed Charter
There are few things that bring as much joy as a federal register notice that has something to do with vaccination, and by “joy,” we actually mean abject dread. So naturally we were delighted to see that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) had its charter renewed, which happens every two years.
Too bad ACIP can’t meet until the federal court order staying the panel is lifted. Judge Brian E. Murphy issued the stay due to the abject lack of qualifications or any kind of vetting process of the members appointed by Kennedy last June.
When we discussed this on the heels of yet another cancelled ACIP meeting a few weeks ago, we were uncertain about the future. In one sense, it is good that the many anti-vaxxers and MAHA yes-men of ACIP are restricted to lamenting their loss of status by inventing unhinged conspiracy theories on various Rumble shows (see Robert Malone discussion below).
On the other hand, it’s very bad if ACIP can’t meet at all over the long term. Vaccine access depends on ACIP recommendations. Kennedy is rumored to be on a very short leash leading up to the midterms, with specific directives to rely on falconry or whatever he does in his spare time to scratch his crazy itch. He can’t allow ACIP to be cancelled indefinitely and he also likely wants to maximize ACIP’s utility for laundering typical anti-vax garbage into Gold Standard Science.
There are only two options for bringing ACIP online anytime soon. One is to restore the ACIP that Kennedy fired last June, since they are highly qualified and were properly vetted. They have written multiple articles and given many interviews on their strong disapproval, including two peer-reviewed papers in Vaccine that quantify their replacements’ degraded performance. It’s extremely unlikely that these colleagues are regarded as anything but enemies by MAHA. The other is to change the rules for who is qualified and eligible to be on ACIP, as well as selection criteria.
That brings us to the renewed ACIP charter, which has gotten a subtle glow-up that may be intended to smooth the path for the return of the ACIP members in exile. This is the main change:
This doesn’t seem too bad, except when you consider that prior criteria was restricted to disciplines relevant to vaccination. That makes sense, since it’s an expert advisory committee on immunization. This has now been broadened considerably to include biostatistics, general clinical practice, and toxicology. It’s hard not to view this as Kennedy’s next move to restock ACIP with bumbling non-experts who oppose vaccines, particularly since it came on the heels of a letter from anti-vax ambulance chaser Aaron Siri on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) advising Kennedy to change the charter.
This could open the door to restore Kennedy’s anti-vax ACIP in compliance with the federal stay order. This “balance” seems tailored to include many people who didn’t meet the prior Charter’s established standards.
Robert Malone Has Grievances
Of all the spurned MAHA ACIP members in exile, nobody has taken the court order as hard as Vice Chair Robert Malone. He quit ACIP despite the panel being disbanded, for the stated reason of wanting to avoid drama.
Since then, Malone is stoking the content engine to which he owes his fortune: extremist conspiracy theories and grievance-based medical freedom grifting. First he appeared on The Highwire with ICAN founder and president Del Bigtree last week to complain that ACIP’s vaccine descheduling would have proceeded harmoniously if there weren’t a mole secretly interfering with the MAHA agenda. “The word ‘saboteur’ has been used,” Malone confided in an incredulous Bigtree, who was so shocked by Malone’s revelations that he could merely stammer “wow.” The identity of the ACIP mole remains unclear. However, it seems the federal government still teems with MAHA enemies, because there are a lot of people on Malone’s shit list.
A few days ago, he appeared on Redacted, a “news” podcast that regularly features 9/11-was-an-inside-job technical analysis, hosts intellectual luminaries like raging crackpot antisemite Holocaust denier David Icke (he believes Jews are secretly lizard people), and is a two-person content generating operation for assorted anti-vax, UFO, Egyptian pyramid, freemason, and New World Order globalist conspiracy theories.
In the interview, Malone identifies White House Domestic Policy Council Deputy Director Heidi Overton as the main problem in interfering with Kennedy’s yearned-for destruction of our national immunization program, as she is the lead architect of the MAGA political plan for the midterms. Malone doesn’t stop with Overton. He goes on to blast Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary, who was apparently Overton’s postdoctoral mentor, for continuing to block the big reveal of the proof that COVID vaccines supposedly killed at least 10 kids.
He claims he has his own mole, a “Senior FDA Official” who occasionally visits the Malone horse farm to spill tea on some sort of implied behind-the-scenes pro-vaccine Operation Warp Speed conspiracy that is influencing Trump. Malone extensively lamented the many slights and setbacks he’s suffered at the hands of conventional scientists, physicians, public health practitioners, journalists, anyone interested in factual accuracy, and assorted MAHA enemies. There is also some fun discussion about secret government weather control technology, chemtrails, glyphosate, the lab leak theory, and Malone’s favorite villain: the MSM. No, not men who have sex with men, but the mainstream media, who are covering up widespread vaccine injury and death (as well as UFOs and whatever else).
Watching too much Malone content has prompted Angie to write the first ever interior design style power analysis for the MMMWR, examining whether the golden lion head that Malone has hung as a centerpiece between his wall of diploma shelves and his framed other Important Robert Malone Documents succeeds at enhancing his aura of kingly grandeur.
Good news, though. Malone tells Redacted that he’s not leaving public service. He’s merely switching from ACIP to making an AI-powered bioweapon detector for the State Department. We can rest easy knowing that an unstable charlatan prone to rage-quitting has vigilantly set Grok to the task of making sure we catch America’s adversaries with their fingers in the synthetic biology smallpox jar before they can lab leak it at us.
The White House Sends Its Annual Wish List of HHS Funds to Redirect to Itself
The White House has submitted its annual budget request. This year, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought would like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to get by with $5 billion in fewer grants that the current administration finds ideologically distasteful. They want to shut down several NIH Institutes and Centers (ICs), as well, on the grounds of being excessively DEI. This represents “wasteful spending,” because the Fogarty International Center, which has had an extraordinary impact advancing health both in the US and abroad, supports programs geared toward building global health infrastructure and preventing and treating HIV, all of which promote “dangerous ideologies that undermine public health.”
Caption: Only in a MAGA budget do you see a budget justification for a multi-billion dollar cut on the basis of the evidence-free claim that it “broke the trust of the American people”
Last year the White House asked for an even bigger cut. That was firmly rejected by Congress. Last time, the request was more extreme: the NIH budget would be cut by $20 billion, with NIH being reduced to a handful of ICs from its current 27. Congress rejected such a radical cut, but they are still unlikely to accept a substantial cut this year, even if smaller. In the run up to the midterms, most Republicans are not likely to embrace wanton razing of further government services.
Unfortunately, this isn’t particularly good news. The NIH budget is being cut anyway via other mechanisms (mostly just cutting grants or not funding them and then lying about it) by NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya. Paul Krugman analyzed the current state of American science and found that “the U.S. scientific enterprise is threatened with severe damage, even collapse, over just the next year.” Given the extent to which NIH funding has flatlined, the number of staff that have been lost, the number of grants that haven’t been funded, and the dismal future forecast, the prospects for collapse seem more plausible than ever. The question is, what are we going to do about it?
We are working on some ideas. Stay tuned.
Vote No on Means
Can you believe that it’s APRIL and we still have to talk about MAHA functional medicine grifter Casey Means’ nomination for Surgeon General? We cannot, because it’s quite clear that Means has no business being Surgeon General or leading the entire US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. She did not complete her training. She is not a licensed physician. She does not practice medicine or see patients. She opposes vaccines, doesn’t appear to understand how sex hormones or the endocrine system works, hates glyphosate, and whose entire philosophy can be described as pseudoscientific, inaccurate, and extreme. The Surgeon General is the nation’s top physician. Casey Means fails that basic job description. She earned a medical doctor degree, but she is not a physician by training, practice, or occupation.
For the tenth (?-we’ve lost count) week in a row, cowardice and/or stupidity remain major distinguishing features of the Republicans on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee. The stupid faction of HELP Republicans will advance her because they don’t care. The cowardly faction, comprised of Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Susan Collins (R-ME), prefers to wait until her nomination ages as poorly as miasma theory. Cassidy could call for a vote at any time, and has chosen not to, despite the fact that he is a board-certified hepatologist. It’s difficult to understand how he can ignore that Means once tweeted that the hepatitis B vaccine birth dose was a “crime.”
Cassidy likely hasn’t called for a vote to advance Means out of the HELP committee because he is waiting for her nomination to languish until it has to be withdrawn. He is being primaried in Louisiana and Trump has endorsed his opponent (whose campaign is managed by the recently departed Principal Deputy Director of the CDC, Ralph Abraham). He’s likely hoping that Means’ nomination is tanked by the White House, so her figurative low glucose blood won’t be on his hands. Hoping is likely the operative term, because it’s very unclear what the White House will do regarding Casey Means. Two days ago, President Trump threatened to kill an entire civilization and there were genuine concerns that he would launch nukes at Iran. We cannot count on the White House to accurately assess risk or make rational decisions. The HELP committee still needs to act.
So…CALL your Senators. We still won’t have a Surgeon General (we haven’t had one since Vivek Murthy stepped down in 2025). No Surgeon General is better than an incompetent one. If Cassidy can’t show the courage or the commitment to his medical ethical obligations, he isn’t qualified for his job, either. Call your Senators and tell them.
Residents of the US (Senate Switchboard): (202) 224-3121
Residents of ALASKA: (202) 224-6665
Residents of LOUISIANA: (202) 224-5824
Residents of MAINE: (202) 224-2523
More MAHA, More Measles
It is rapidly becoming unremarkable, but the US has more than 1700 measles cases so far. That is probably underreported compared to the actual number. At this rate, we are a month out from blowing past the record 2,200 measles cases in the US for all 2025.
Going forward, we may start to see really erratic updates to measles case numbers. This is because large outbreaks are reported by CDC, but the data is not primarily collected by them. Local officials in states and counties where outbreaks occur report diseases to CDC officials. Because of lost federal funding to local health departments, limited access to health care, and severely degraded capacity at CDC, there will be large delays and lag times in updating national case numbers. Given that deemphasizing the preventable disease consequences of the MAHA policy experiment so far is a priority for the Trump White House going into the midterms, I expect that there will be no political incentive for CDC to shore up its reporting. In the before times, this would not have mattered, since it would have been a scientific issue for our colleagues at CDC to address. Now, however, that is all that matters, as CDC priorities are determined by the political appointees leading the agency and not the dedicated public servants who remain at the agency, committed to the CDC’s mission and doing their best to fulfill its promise to the American people, even as its leadership tears it to pieces.
Just when you thought it was safe to forget about the ostriches…
Angie wishes she could, but alas…the ostriches seem to be her eternal curse. CBC’s The Fifth Estate asked if she would participate in an hour-long documentary episode about the H5N1 ostrich freedom debacle and…sure, she was already the subject of an unprecedented campaign in the University of Saskatchewan’s history to have her fired that involved thousands of calls, emails, and social media posts directed at nearly every senior person at the university and her research institute. These were often accompanied by additional suggestions to have her prosecuted, imprisoned, abducted, beaten, tortured, raped, or killed, since that had been already occurring for months thanks to encouragement from professional pubic louse Viva Frei.
Why? For being one of three scientists in Canada who would stand behind the truth that there was real risk to animal and human health from not culling the ostriches, providing receipts that the ostrich farmers were grifters, correctly assessing that refusal to cull risked the entire $2 billion Canadian poultry export market, and observing that the ostrich supporters were rallied by convoyers—also known as traitors—and bankrolled by foreign, far right extremist political interests. Also, Angie not only willingly associated with Dean Blundell, but both of them repeatedly made jokes and used profanity when discussing the thousands of abusive messages that she received for accurately analyzing the situation and sharing her own expert opinion.
However, self-censorship is the point of mob abuse, and it usually indicates that the person targeted has something important to say. Self-silencing rarely benefits anyone, least of all the person self-silencing. Angie has never known when to shut up anyway, so she sat for a long interview with Mark Kelley when she was in New York a few weeks back. The episode will be available to stream and will air on CBC at 9 pm on April 10 (Friday). The Fifth Estate team did some incredible reporting and there are going to be some pretty wild ostrich revelations. Don’t miss it!
Good for you Angie - the Universal Ostrich "Farmers" don't deserve our sympathy.
I hope you get well soon...your expertise is truly needed.
JJF Phm 🇨🇦