No mentions of demons however. Among the torrent of bullshit that is the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025–a blueprint for a second Trump administration–is this section on public health (pp. 453; boldface mine):
These distinct functions should be separated into two entirely separate agencies with a firewall between them. We need a national epidemiological agency responsible only for publishing data and required by law to publish all of the data gathered from states and other sources. A separate agency should be responsible for public health with a severely confined ability to make policy recommendations. The CDC can and should make assessments as to the health costs and benefits of health interventions, but it has limited to no capacity to measure the social costs or benefits they may entail. For example, how much risk mitigation is worth the price of shutting down churches on the holiest day of the Christian calendar and far beyond as happened in 2020? What is the proper balance of lives saved versus souls saved? The CDC has no business making such inherently political (and often unconstitutional) assessments and should be required by law to stay in its lane.
Republicans intende to incorporate saving souls into their public health decisions. This isn’t hyperbole on my part: they literally wrote it down.
How do we measure saved souls by the way? Whose ministries would count? (I can make guesses about that!) Utterly bugshit crazy.
Of course, the CDC does have the capacity to assess social costs, such as mental health effects; that’s part of what they do. Theological effects are another matter though…
mikethemadbiologist
This is why they want to force women to bear children but won’t spend a penny to keep those kids alive after they’ve been born. If the “child” dies in utero their soul can’t get to heaven, but if they die of starvation or disease after they’re born they can!
In the past the CDC has had to balance its mission with the religious beliefs of some of its directors (Bob Redfield) or HHS Secretaries (Tommy Thompson). In each case, the CDC did not allow the religious beliefs or agendas of any single person or administration deter it from performing its mission: CDC works 24/7 to protect America from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S. Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, curable or preventable, human error or deliberate attack, CDC fights disease and supports communities and citizens to do the same.
Sad that for years they weren’t allowed to consider gun violence to be a public health issue, so we really don’t know how many lives (and/or souls) were lost to guns.