We are used to seeing time as a forward movement when it comes to infectious diseases. This has been due to improved socioeconomics and public health, including vaccinations. As of this year with vaccine skeptics leading our public health system, measles is back as a threat we had started to not even worry about. There are now also early indications that tuberculosis is becoming more common again and it is widely anticipated that HIV will become more common in this country and definitely in other countries that had relied on US aid for treatment and prevention. With the newly declared return to fossil fuels, away from clean energy initiatives, many worry that chronic respiratory illnesses will be more common and more severe.
I don’t think we know yet if our chronic lifestyle diseases like obesity, diabetes and heart disease will increase, decrease or stay the same. But it is certainly bewildering to see us step back in time when it comes to infectious diseases.
If large numbers of Americans lose their health insurance, their food stamps or even their jobs, more bad things will happen to the state of health in this country. For example, how can people eat healthier on a smaller food budget?
With cutbacks and eliminations by Executive Order of the institutions that monitor disease trends and guide interventions, will we even know what’s going on? Will we have competing/alternate views of the reality we live in? That trend started before our regime change. Did the mRNA vaccines ultimately help lessen the severity and mortality of Covid, or would the virus have mutated in a benign direction anyway? I, for one, believe they helped, but that’s not what everyone believes.
And whatever one thinks of abortion, gender identity and the other LGBTQ societal trends that have evolved over many years, I find it almost mind blowing that the clock has been turned back to such a degree in so little time, not by consensus but by small voter margins and politically appointed Supreme Court Judges in today’s extremely polarized political climate.
As a physician, I have always avoided talking politics in my patient encounters, but that is becoming harder and more and more ethically problematic right now.
Happy New Year 2026 – or is it?
A Country Doctor Writes: 
You may not be political with your patients, but you sure are here!