As the flu and covid are on the rise again vaccines are on the decline due to the tRump admin claiming that the best science we have is wrong based on feelings and in the case of the people like JFK Jr it is greed. People don’t realize he makes his money suing drug manufacturers that produce vaccines. Every time he thinks he has some wacked out idea he sues and nothing they can show him will matter to him, all he wants is money and to stop vaccines for other people, as his families kids are protected. Think on it, he is vaccinated, their family has the money to get the vaccines without medical insurance, all he is doing is making it harder and more costly for your kids to get them because you need the medical insurance to help pay for it. Hugs
Under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s guidance, the CDC no longer recommends routine vaccination to protect against meningococcal disease.
Jan. 11, 2026, 7:00 AM EST
By Kaitlin Sullivan
Deaths from a rare and dangerous bacterial infection could rise if fewer teens are vaccinated, doctors warn.
After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that all adolescents get vaccinated against meningococcal disease in 2005, cases of the potentially deadly illness plummeted in the United States by 90%.
However, cases have sharply risen since 2021, likely due to a combination of mutating bacteria and declining rates of vaccination overall, especially among teens getting a booster dose for bacterial meningitis, doctors suggest.
Dr. Luis Ostrosky, an infectious disease doctor at UT Health in Houston, is concerned that as cases of bacterial meningitis climb in the United States, the CDC’s recent overhaul of the childhood vaccine schedule could lead to more deaths.
Under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s guidance, the CDC is no longer recommending a meningitis vaccine for all adolescents. The vaccine and booster protect against the most common types of the infection in the U.S., serogroups A, C, Y, W.
“We see quite a few cases of meningitis per year,” Ostrosky said.
Under the new guidance, the vaccines will be recommended for “high-risk groups,” although parents can still ask doctors to vaccinate their children through a process called “shared clinical decision making.”
Teenagers and college-age adults, who often spend a lot of time in groups or communal living spaces such as dorms, and people with HIV are considered at highest risk for the infection, caused by a group of bacteria called Neisseria meningitidis.
Vaccination is important not because the disease is common — around 3,000 people are diagnosed with bacterial meningitis in the U.S. each year — but because the infection is both extremely serious and fast-moving.
Bacterial meningitis can progress quickly, causing the brain to swell and limbs to develop gangrene and sepsis, and can kill within 24 hours.
Symptoms such as headache, stiff neck, vomiting and fever come on suddenly, and may be mistaken for other minor illnesses. It can be treated with antibiotics, but even with rapid diagnosis, about 15% of patients die.
Fast-acting and life-threatening
Why some people are susceptible isn’t well understood. The infection develops when usually harmless bacteria travel through the respiratory tract and infiltrate the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord, causing severe inflammation. These bacteria, which commonly live in the back of the throat, can spread from person to person through close contact.
It can lead to a life-threatening infection in someone whose immune system is compromised — sometimes by a simple cold or flu virus — or who doesn’t have immunity to those bacteria. Viruses and fungi can also cause meningitis, but bacterial meningitis is the most serious.
Among patients who survive, as many as 20% have lifelong disability or complications, including amputated limbs, hearing impairment and neurological problems.
“You can die from a brain hernia, or from sepsis,” Messacar said. “And if you survive a brain hernia, you will most likely have severe complications.”
In 2024, the CDC issued an alert about a rise in cases of a type of invasive meningococcal disease. More than 500 cases were reported, the highest since 2013. Most of the infections were due to a specific strain of the Y serogroup of bacteria, which is included in the previously recommended vaccine. The cases were more common in adults ages 30 to 60, in Black people and in people with HIV.
“It’s even more important now that we get meningococcal vaccines out to people given that we are seeing a spike in this Y strain,” Messacar said.
The Food and Drug Administration has approved three types of meningitis vaccines. In 2005, the CDC began recommending that 11- and 12-year-olds get vaccinated against the most common meningococcal serotypes, A, C, Y and W. Because of waning immunity, the CDC in 2011 added a booster recommendation for 16-year-olds to protect them through young adulthood. A vaccine for meningitis B and a combined shot are available for children or babies who are considered at high risk.
In a statement Monday, Kennedy said that the CDC’s new childhood vaccine schedule was “aligning the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule with international consensus.”
Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease doctor at the UCSF School of Medicine in San Francisco, said the new approach to meningitis vaccination in the U.S., which is based on Denmark’s, is flawed.
“You can’t just look at another country’s vaccine approach and photocopy it. You really have to look at what is happening in your own country,” Chin-Hong said. Given the safety of meningitis vaccines, “it makes sense to vaccinate.”
Alicia Stillman, who serves on a World Health Organization task force for eliminating meningitis, worries that by moving the vaccine into shared decision making, the CDC is creating hurdles for parents who want to protect their children.
Stillman’s daughter, Emily, died from meningitis B in 2013. Emily had been vaccinated against meningitis A, C, W and Y, but the FDA didn’t approve a vaccine for meningitis B until 2014.
Emily Stillman, pictured with her mother, Alicia, was 19 when she died from meningitis B. Courtesy Alicia Stillman
Because many types of bacteria can cause bacterial meningitis, different vaccines are needed. The meningitis B vaccine hasn’t been recommended for all children but is available for people at high risk through the shared decision making process.
“I have watched medical professionals not bring [meningitis B vaccination] up,” said Stillman, who is the co-executive director of the American Society for Meningitis Prevention. “I have watched parents who are maybe a little less educated and not know how to ask about it, or they go to a public clinic instead of a private clinic where they have less time with a provider.”
She believes that could happen more broadly with the changed guidance.
What the research says
A CDC statement said the changes to the recommendation reflect the need for more data on certain vaccines, “including placebo-controlled randomized trials and long-term observational studies to better characterize vaccine benefits, risks, and outcomes.”
While there haven’t been placebo-controlled trials for meningitis vaccines — which would test how well a vaccine works either by deliberately infecting people with bacteria or by seeing how well they fare if they are infected in the real world — there have been many randomized clinical trials and other studies that use decades of data collected from both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals in the real world.
Chin-Hong said placebo-controlled trials aren’t realistic or ethical for every drug, especially for life-threatening and rare diseases.
“A well-designed observational study, especially using decades of experience, can be just as informative as a randomized controlled trial,” Chin-Hong said.
A 2020 CDC report analyzed 20 clinical trials on meningococcal disease vaccines, including data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VS). The most common reported side effects were “mild to moderate,” and included swelling, fever and headache.
In 2005, Katie Thompson, now 39, was infected with an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacterial meningitis when she was a college freshman, the same month the FDA approved the first MenACWY vaccine.
“I don’t know how to describe it besides it’s pure hell,” she said.
After five weeks in the hospital and nearly dying, she went home, but not without lifelong complications. Thompson, who lives outside of Charleston, South Carolina, still struggles with migraines and vestibular disorders that cause vertigo and nausea. The infection was hard on her organs and she uses a bladder stimulator that helps regulate both her bladder and nerves in the base of her spine.
“It’s just not a disease that you want to take a risk on,” she said. “It’s not one that you want to gamble with your child’s life.”
Two vaccines that remain universally recommended by the CDC — the Haemophilus influenzae type b, or Hib, vaccine and the pneumococcal vaccine — protect against some causes of bacterial meningitis. However, these vaccines don’t protect against meningitis A, C, W, Y or B.
Kaitlin Sullivan
Kaitlin Sullivan is a contributor for NBCNews.com who has worked with NBC News Investigations. She reports on health, science and the environment and is a graduate of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at City University of New York.
Belle talks about the right wing propaganda being generated to discredit the woman shot by ICE in Minnesota, Renee Good. It was not even a good fake hit piece as Belle describes it. I posted a few weeks ago about Russian and other enemy off the US countries posting stuff that is not true so that once it is circulated it discredits the real news in peoples minds. Ron fell for that himself.
Ron watches YouTube clips in the morning with his coffee. Yesterday he was listening to what he thought was a financial newsgroup called Buffet Unfiltered. That site reported that Deutsche Bank had called in tRump’s loans and seized tRump Towers. I questioned it because no other news source reported anything and I felt with news that important they would have. Today they reported how underwater on loans and to creditors tRump was, again that is believable but not the way Ron was telling me was being reported. So I again warned him about misleading propaganda. He asked me who to check the stuff out. I showed him how to both search out the group, which on their YouTube about page said they were fictional dramatizations, then I showed him how to search new groups like ground news for the story reported. Now he is upset these groups do this. But it was a good lesson for both of us. I post a lot of what I think is real news. However I have made mistakes and posted stuff not true or quite accurate. Thankfully the people who come here are smart and have pointed these out to me and I can correct or take the posts down. Thank you for helping keep this site as honest and correct as it is important to me. Hugs
Paul Eaton in Baghdad in June 2004. Eaton spent 37 years in active service. Photograph: Brent Stirton/Getty Images
Donald Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, are mounting an aggressive push to politicise the top ranks of the US military – a push that smacks of Stalinism and could take years to repair, the former infantry chief who trained troops to invade Iraq has warned.
Maj Gen Paul Eaton has sounded the alarm, saying in an interview with the Guardian that the effort to bend the higher echelons of the military to the US president’s will was unparalleled in recent history and could have long-term dire consequences. He warned that both the reputation and efficiency of the world’s most powerful fighting force was in the balance.
“There is an active effort to politicise the armed forces,” Eaton said. “Once you infect the body, the cure may be very difficult and painful for presidents downstream.”
He added that the actions of Trump and his chosen head of the Pentagon were putting the standing of the military as an independent entity, free from party politics, at risk. “As the phrase goes, reputation is built a drop at a time and emptied in buckets.”
Eaton, 75, has spent his entire life in military circles, including 37 years in active service. His father was an air force pilot whose B-57 bomber was shot down over Laos in 1969, when Eaton was 18.
Air force Col Norman Eaton’s remains were found and identified in 2006.
Eaton himself trained at West Point, the US military academy in New York that trains commissioned officers, graduating soon after the end of the Vietnam war. He rose through the ranks of the US army to infantry chief and then, after the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003 was completed, was sent to that country to rebuild the Iraqi armed forces.
In recent years Eaton has been a sharp critic of Trump’s manipulation of military structures. In the summer of 2024 he participated in war games conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice thinktank, that sought to anticipate the then Republican nominee Trump’s most dangerous authoritarian moves were he to return to the White House.
Many of the actions predicted in those tabletop exercises – including politicisation of the military and other key government institutions, and deployment of the national guard into Democratic-controlled cities – have already come to pass under Trump’s second presidency.
In Eaton’s analysis, Trump’s first step towards compromising military independence was the act of appointing Hegseth as secretary of defense. The former Fox & Friends host had been an adviser to Trump and had supported his first presidential run in 2016.
“Hegseth not only swears loyalty to Trump, he swears fealty to Trump – whereas the military swears an oath to the constitution,” Eaton said.
Soon after Hegseth was ensconced in the Pentagon the firings began. Within a week of Trump’s inauguration the military inspector general who acted as an independent watchdog was dismissed, followed by the top military lawyers (judge advocates general) who advise on the laws of armed conflict.
Out, too, went the top officers. Charles Brown, chair of the joint chiefs of staff, was ousted in February and replaced by Lt Gen Dan Caine who Trump claimed had express his love for the president and would “kill for him” (Caine denied ever saying such things). The top officers in the navy and air force were ditched in quick succession.
The Pentagon purge sent a clear and chilling message that reverberated throughout the military services, Eaton said. “Toe the line, or we will fire you. You’re in a different world now. This is Trump’s world, and by God, this is what we’re going to do.”
The dismissals also sowed doubt throughout the ranks. Would senior officers kowtow to Trump and his defense secretary? Or would they stand up for following the military rules of engagement?
Eaton said the effect reminded him of Joseph Stalin’s 1940s purges of the top officers in Soviet forces. “Stalin killed a lot of the best and brightest of the military leadership, and then inserted political commissars into the units. The doubt that swept the armed forces of the Soviet Union is reminiscent of today – they are not killing these men and women, but they are removing them from positions of authority with similar impact.”
The end result, Eaton said, was that “you’ve got a 1940s Stalin problem inside the American military right now”.
The furor over the lethal US military strikes on boats in Latin American waters is for Eaton a sign of the damage that is being wrought. The administration claims the strikes have been targeted on “narco-terrorists” who are in “armed conflict” with the US by bringing illegal drugs into the country.
The first of more than 20 strikes that have occurred took place on 2 September. It involved a controversial second strike that killed two survivors who had been clinging to the bombed wreck of the boat.
The Washington Post revealed that Hegseth had given an order to “kill everybody”. Under the Department of Defense manual on the laws of war, it is forbidden to order that every combatant must be killed irrespective of whether they pose a threat.
Eaton has no doubts about the illegality of the 2 September second strike. “It was either a war crime or a murder. So we have a real problem here. This decision looks a whole lot like a U-boat commander machine gunning victims in the water during world war two.”
Hegseth sought to drive home the new way of doing things in a bizarre summit in September in which he gathered military commanders to Quantico in Virginia. He berated them about so-called wokeness, liberal thinking, and the presence of “fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon”.
For Eaton, the meeting was “disgusting” and “antithetical to the US military. The senior leadership of our armed forces are sober people who do not speak in terms of fatness or ‘kill them all’ or ‘the gloves are off’.”
Looking ahead to 2026, Eaton is profoundly concerned that the violations of rules of war that have arguably been committed by the Pentagon outside US territory might soon become a reality domestically. The Trump administration has federalised national guard troops and sent them into numerous cities against the wishes of Democratic mayors and state governors.
The presence of national guard soldiers in Los Angeles, Washington DC, the Chicago area and other locations has been challenged in federal courts, where cases continue to play out.
In October Eaton took part in a delegation that included the organisation Vote Vets, to which he acts as an adviser, to see the Democratic governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker. The retired two-star general said they counseled Pritzker to stand firm in countering troop deployment to Chicago.
“We told him: you have a requirement to protect your citizens from federal assault.”
Eaton’s biggest fear is at some point a dramatic clash of forces might take place, with the federalised national guard facing off against state and local police. He conjured up the imaginary scenario of the Texas national guard being federalised – ie ordered out of state control into national control – and imported into Baltimore, Maryland, contrary to the city and state’s wishes.
“What could go wrong?” Eaton said. “You can very easily see an escalation in which both sides think they are right, obeying orders that they believe were given legally.”
Sooner or later, he warned, a “memorable event” was likely to take place. “There are going to be people getting hurt who really don’t need to get hurt.”
tRump has never purchased anything personally like normal people. He doesn’t go to stores and shop. He has always been a pampered rich boy even in bankruptcy. I don’t know about anyone else but Ron and I have to stretch our first half of the month income to be able to afford groceries and medications. We ended last month with $30 in the checking account. This month is always bad for us. So I want to know where this lowering of costs are. Ron wears me and the car outgoing from store to store to get the best deals. We suffer in too cold or too warm a house to keep the electric bill down. But yes Florida is a high cost of living state, would love to move, but … yup we can’t afford it. Hugs.
Donald Trump’s claims about bringing down prices comes just weeks after he told families to limit the number of presents that they buy for their children
From coast to coast, Americans are being harassed, assaulted, injured, and even murdered by sneering masked thugs hired to attack their countrymen as part of a vengeance presidency that is obsessed with hurting people for sport.
Portland Avenue and 34th Street in South Minneapolis where City of Minneapolis officials have confirmed an ICE agent shot an observer. A neighbor who saw what happened told local MPR news: “She was trying to turn around, and the ICE agent was in front of her car, and he pulled out a gun and put it right in — like, his midriff was on her bumper — and he reached across the hood of the car and shot her in the face like three, four times,” (Photo: Chad Davis)
Under wannabe dictator Donald Trump, the federal agencies of the United States tasked with keeping the nation safe are rapidly becoming a grave threat to the physical safety of the American people, as trigger-happy officers open fire on those they’re supposed to be protecting with increasing frequency in communities across the country.
Then, on October 5th, 2025, agents shot thirty-one-year-old Marimar Martinezin Chicago’s Brighton Park neighborhood. Martinez was not seriously injured and was thus able to drive away. Although she committed no crime, Trump’s minions charged her and a companion for assault and attempted murder. But prosecutors were forced to drop all charges against both of them only a few weeks later, with her attorney stating: “These agents jumped out and shot Ms. Martinez, a U.S. citizen, whose only crime was warning her fellow community members that ICE was in the neighborhood… That is not a crime. She didn’t deserve to be shot.”
Today, officials at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis said that “armed U.S. Border Patrol officers came on school property during dismissal Wednesday and began tackling people, handcuffed two staff members and released chemical weapons on bystanders.” MPR News spoke to a school official about the incident, who related on condition of anonymity: “The guy, I’m telling him like, ‘Please step off the school grounds,’ and this dude comes up and bumps into me and then tells me that I pushed him, and he’s trying to push me, and he knocked me down… They don’t care. They’re just animals… I’ve never seen people behave like this.”
Also today, right here in the Pacific Northwest, CBP agents opened fire on a man and woman believed to be a married couple in the parking lot of Adventist Medical Center Pavilion in southeast Portland. Here’s more from The New York Times: “The driver of the vehicle that federal officials fired into drove off after the shooting, local officials said, and the victims were found by the police more than two miles away, with gunshot wounds. Emergency medical technicians who rushed the victims to hospitals described both as Spanish speakers in conversations captured by emergency radio broadcasts. The woman had a gunshot wound to the chest, an E.M.T. told a dispatcher. The man was described as having two gunshot wounds.
Details about this latest shooting in Portland are still coming into focus. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) posted a statement to Twitter about the shooting which was subsequently deleted — and that leads us to worry that the investigation may already have been compromised by political interference from Trump’s regime.
“This violence in our community is devastating,” Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said. “These are not statistics. These are human beings. Portland is not a training ground for militarized agents. When the administration talks about using ‘full force,’ we are seeing what that means on our streets. The consequences are not abstract. They are felt in hospital rooms, in living rooms, in the quiet moments when families try to make sense of what happened. We know what the federal government says happened here. There was a time when we could take them at their word. That time is long past.”
“That is why we are calling on ICE to halt all operations in Portland until a full and independent investigation can take place. Our community deserves answers. Our community deserves accountability. And most of all, our community deserves peace.”
“We are all shaken and outraged by another terrible, unnecessary violent event instigated by the reckless agenda of the Trump administration, this time in our own state, in our largest city, coming just one day after the tragedy in Minnesota,” said Governor Tina Kotek, the chief executive of Oregon.
“While details remain limited, one thing is clear: when a president endorses tearing families apart, and attempts to govern through fear and hate rather than shared values, he fosters an environment of lawlessness and recklessness.”
“I am aligned with Mayor Wilson: the priority right now is a full, completed investigation, not more detentions,” the governor added. “The Attorney General, district attorneys, and I have been clear about our concerns with the excessive use of force by federal agents in Portland, and today’s incident only heightens the need for transparency and accountability. Oregonians deserve clear answers.”
“There are those who want to cause chaos. But Oregonians know how to stand up and speak out, peacefully. We must remain united in peaceful opposition to efforts to tear our communities apart and turn against one another. We will not take the bait.”
“I am grateful to the first responders who have been on the frontline of today’s events. The state will continue to support Portland, and stand united with Minnesota.”
“Huge concern about a reported shooting of two individuals by federal agents outside Portland Adventist Hospital,” said Senator Jeff Merkley, Oregon’s junior United States Senator. “My team and I are closely monitoring this situation and are working hard to get answers. I will share any updates as I learn more.”
The Preamble to the United States Constitutions explicitly refers to “domestic tranquility.” That’s how important it was to the Framers that the people of this country be able to live peacefully and prosperously, without fear of social disorder or unrest. Domestic tranquility is a key objective of our plan of government, and the federal government is supposed to meet that objective by enforcing the laws with great care and discretion.
Obviously, that’s not happening right now.
And that’s fine with the people who worship Trump.
What happens when law enforcement officers attack the very people they’re supposed to protect? What then? People are trying to go about their lives in this country and they’re ending up killed or injured because trigger-happy agents full of testosterone have been told they can be as brutal, aggressive, and careless as they want to anyone they happen to come across — and they won’t be held accountable or punished.
This is not “law and order,” this is oppression and systemic violence. Trump has decreed it and Republicans at every level — federal, state, and local — are enabling it.
Renee Nicole Good was murdered on-camera. The footage is widely available. It’s ghastly and horrific. We can see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears that we are being lied to on repeat about yesterday’s tragic events.
That’s exactly what Trump-controlled federal agencies are doing.
With Trump’s kakistocratic regime, no American is safe. This is a government of the least qualified and most unscrupulous individuals in the land. It’s the worst government in modern American history by a lot, and the terrible people who are in it seem determined to staking a claim to being the very worst government of all time.
It is our patriotic duty and moral responsibility — all of us who are loyal to the Constitution and to the values of freedom, inclusion, peace, and tolerance — to fiercely oppose this regime and all the evils it is trying to inflict on our country.
In memory of Silvero Villegas-Gonzalez and Renee Nicole Good and everyone else who has died at the hands of the thugs working for Donald Trump, we will carry on.
Annie at the link above has some grand information that we all should be aware of. She even included things people can do even if they can’t or are frightened to go to a protest. Please give the site a read, at this point we all need to do anything we can to stop the Stephen Miller’s out of control unrestrained untrained Gestapo gang thugs from terrorizing the public while demanding complete unquestioned obedience. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 