Used to be, if you had someone with a weird infection your local lab couldn’t sort out, you could send samples to CDC for testing. Now those labs are “pausing” testing. So anyway, Republicans are trying to kill you.

@mcnado

It is gruesomely fascinating to watch a country devolve itself in realtime

@mcnado Yeah, they are. Do you think there are academic labs that might be able to ramp up and fulfill some of those functions?

@Fishercat

I expect that to be the objective: outsource CDC work to commercial labs from people who pay Trump a kickback.

@mcnado

@paulschoe @mcnado Yeah.. that's why I said "academic labs." They're at least nominally nonprofits.

@paulschoe @Fishercat @mcnado

Or just being able to brag that the official rate has dropped to zero...

@Fishercat unlikely. There are some state labs, but they are in states that have been targeted by Trump’s funding cuts, and often at least partially rely on federal grants. It’s a clusterfuck.
@mcnado *nod* I have some (minimal) hope from the nascent blue state consortiums that are replacing ACIP, even though that's a completely different function.
How the Koch Network Is Spreading COVID Misinformation

As the Omicron variant surges, an institute funded by the Koch network may be undermining government attempts to stop the pandemic.

@mcnado if they kill you now they don't have to try to figure out how to feed you in five years when the planet no longer sustains an environment required for sufficient food growth.

@mcnado Who is going to be the first person to die of rabies?

No one should have to type that sentence in 2026, but here we are.

When I was one of hundreds affected by an outbreak of food-borne cryptosporidium, someone from the CDC called me. They were tracing everyone who had reported symptoms, and then contacting everyone else who might have eaten the food and urging them to get tested….impressive work!

I fear those days are long over.

@mcnado

This is why you don't let people who believe in the biblical rapture into power. They're a death cult, that's it.

@mycotropic @mcnado "It's God's will" but applied to government strategy.
@mycotropic @mcnado drinking trump's koolaid harder than the MAGA People.
He wants you to start hating Christianity so he can do things against it.
The Church is one of the final barriers against dictatorship

@jarinks @mcnado

Do you equate folks who believe the rapture is imminent with most Christians?

@mycotropic @mcnado Christ's Return can come at any time.

@jarinks @mcnado

I also read #RaptureReady but I do it for the laughs and to some extent to understand how death cults think and act. I've been an atheist since I was in 6th grade so no, Jesus isn't returning at some point, any point, ever. But you do you my friend!

@jarinks
So you think that tattoo on Hegseths breast and the photos of Trump holding a Bible or praying with lots of holy people in the Oval Office are...?
Part of a plan to do things against Christianity?
@mycotropic @mcnado
@musevg @mycotropic @mcnado Satan masquerades as an Angel of Light, Frater.
@jarinks
Ah… And Hegseth is one of these masquerades, and Thiel, and Trump as well? And all those Christian MAGAists hoping for the Eschaton are being deceived while Trump is going to fight Christians any time now?
@mycotropic @mcnado
@musevg @mycotropic @mcnado indeed. Satan is the father of lies.

@jarinks
Okay. But you're not talking about Trump fighting only those left-leaning Sermon-on-the-hill Christians, those who are worshipping that empathic brown-skinned guy who was preaching about kindness and sharing and solidarity? He'll also fight those very same true Christian believers that are now praying there with him and for him?

Thanks for the information. I'll keep an eye on that.
@mycotropic @mcnado

@musevg @jarinks @mcnado

You know that Norman Vincent Peale was his family pastor and that he learned from Roy Cohn as well, right? He isn't going after Christians, he's using them specifically based on Project 2025, his upbringing and his narcissism. He couldn't care less about them or anyone else but he knows a good, pliant, sycophantic source of storm troopers when he sees one.

@mcnado

The second coming will be along any day now, so it doesn’t really matter does it??

😶 💩

@mcnado I'm not so sure they are trying to kill you as much as they really don't care if you die.
@mcnado If they don't want you dead (that's one less worker drone) they do at least want you to be too sick to rebel but not so sick you can't work. A serf class like the old times, malaise and dread keeping them in check.

@mcnado

Thoughts and prayers!

That was good enough, 3000 years ago, for people who had never heard of a molecule or a bacterium, who thought exciting travel was when the donkey gallops for a hundred cubits, who'd never heard of an ocean or a planet, who thought flies "spontaneously generated" and fossils were tricks by a deceitful and bad-tempered God, who saw that "government" meant impaling or crucifying... in other words, back in The Good Old Days.

So why expect more now? Liberals!

@mcnado always have been?

@mcnado which is well beyond red alert, alarms blaring, nuclear fucking meltdown bad.

Cannot fucking wait for VRSA to develop a new strain. Good fucking luck finding out before it's entrenched and endemic.