Hey, Independents, Want Some Public Health News with Your Salmonella?

If you follow the news closely, you know that the Trump regime is dismantling our public health system agency by agency, office by office, regulation by regulation. The most recent example, as reported by the Washington Post, is the U.S. Department of Agriculture nixing federal regulations proposed by the Biden administration to limit allowable salmonella in raw chicken and turkey.

If you’ve ever had food poisoning and tested positive for salmonella, there is absolutely no way you’d be against these proposed regulations. But if former presidents Biden or Obama proposed it, Trump will try to erase it from history out of envy and petty jealousy no matter how much good it is for you.

Where is the public outrage?

The answer is the public doesn’t follow the news closely.

I make the assumption that everyone follows the news as closely as I do, especially healthcare news. As a journalist, I’m a news junkie. I surround myself with news: newspaper in the morning, cable news on in the background all day, news radio in the car, social media channels on breaks. I’ve been covering healthcare for more than 40 years now.

My assumption is dead wrong, at least according to an interesting little survey finding buried among big survey findings in a report released this week by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the de Beaumont Foundation and supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The report is based on a survey of 3,343 U.S. adults ages 18 or older on their views of the public health “landscape” after the first 100 days of the Trump regime. The headline-grabbing finding was that 44% of those surveyed said they trust public health agencies “a little” or “a lot” less than they did before after Trump installed uninformed puppet leaders at the agencies. (That’s my version of the survey question, not Harvard’s.)

To me, the more interesting finding was who’s not paying attention to what’s going on in public health.

When asked, “How closely are you following news about the change in leadership of government public health agencies?” here’s what the respondents said:

• 27% of all respondents said “not too closely” or “not at all closely.”
• 26% of Republicans said “not too closely” or “not at all closely.”
• 24% of Democrats said “not too closely” or “not at all closely.”
• 43% of Independents said “not too closely” or “not at all closely.”

Forty-three percent of Independents!

I used to think that being an independent meant you weren’t affiliated with any political party, and that you would vote Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Green, etc., depending on the position on an issue near and dear to your heart.

Boy, was I wrong. This survey finding tells me that Independent means independent of news or of critical thinking on an important issue. It means head in the sand while the public health system swirls down the drain. It helps explain why tens of millions of eligible voters didn’t vote in the 2024 presidential election.

Well, the next time you get bloody diarrhea, a fever, stomach cramps, nausea and vomiting after eating an undercooked chicken sandwich, think about following the news and voting next time.

Thanks for reading.