Former California County Supervisor Gets 5 Years in Prison for Bribery, Misusing COVID Funds
A former Southern California county supervisor was sentenced June 9 to five years in federal prison for accepting $550,000 in bribes and steering more than $10 million in COVID-19 relief funds to an organization affiliated with his daughter.
Andrew Hoang Do, 62, who was elected to the Orange County Board of Supervisors in 2015, resigned in October 2024 as part of an agreement to plead guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy to commit bribery.
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RFK Jr. Purging the CDC Advisory Committee Will Put Lives at Risk
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifying during his Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions confirmation hearing on January 30, 2025 in Washington, DC Credit - Kevin Dietsch—Getty Images When Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. began his tenure as Health and Human Services Secretary, he pledged, 'We won't take away anyone's vaccines.' However, recent policy changes under his leadership—coupled with the unprecedented dismissal of all 17 members of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) on June 9—have proven that statement false, raising grave concerns for our nation's COVID-19 response and broader vaccine policies. These shifts not only jeopardize public health but also threaten to erode trust in our health institutions at a critical time. In May 2025, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) introduced a new COVID-19 vaccine framework, limiting access to updated vaccines for Americans aged 65 and older or those with specific risk factors. Furthermore, Secretary Kennedy announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for 'healthy' children or pregnant women—bypassing the standard ACIP review process. Compounding these changes, the abrupt removal of ACIP's entire panel of independent experts, who have guided evidence-based vaccine policy for decades, risks destabilizing a cornerstone of public health. These actions collectively restrict access to a vital tool for saving lives and undermine confidence in our health systems. Read More: What to Know About RFK Jr. Removing All Experts From CDC Vaccine Advisory Committee During my tenure as Surgeon General under the first Trump administration, we faced significant public health challenges, from addressing the opioid epidemic by increasing access to Naloxone to launching Operation Warp Speed for the COVID-19 vaccine development effort. The vaccines developed under Trump's first term have proven to be one of our most effective defenses against COVID-19; yet, the current administration's new policies limit their availability, potentially leaving millions vulnerable. The dismissal of ACIP's experts—without a clear plan for replacing them with qualified scientists—further jeopardizes trust in the institutions tasked with protecting Americans. The major flaw in the new vaccine framework is its narrow assessment of risk. Although the immediate dangers of COVID-19 have lessened, it remains a leading cause of death and hospitalization, claiming nearly 50,000 lives in the U.S. in 2024—more than breast cancer or car accidents. The fact is, 75% of Americans have risk factors, such as obesity or diabetes, that increase their vulnerability to severe COVID outcomes. However, the burden is now placed on individuals to self-identify as high risk, creating confusion and inconsistency in access. Unlike other countries with centralized systems for identifying at-risk individuals, the U.S. expects patients—many of whom lack easy access to healthcare—to navigate eligibility alone. Risk assessment should also consider individual circumstances beyond underlying health conditions. A 58-year-old bus driver or healthcare worker faces significantly greater exposure than someone working remotely. By limiting vaccines to specific groups based solely on preexisting health status, the policy overlooks these critical contextual differences. Secretary Kennedy's team argues that there is insufficient evidence to support updated COVID-19 vaccines for healthy Americans under 65, but this claim is flatly unfounded. Years of real-world data demonstrate that vaccines save lives and reduce hospitalizations across all age groups. During the 2023 to 2024 fall and winter season, 95% of those hospitalized for COVID had not received an updated vaccine. While the administration cites other countries' more restrictive vaccine policies, such comparisons ignore the unique health landscape in the U.S., which includes higher obesity rates, worse maternal health outcomes, and uneven healthcare access. The policy also neglects the issue of Long COVID, which affects millions with debilitating symptoms lasting months or years. Though older adults are at higher risk for severe acute infections, Long COVID disproportionately impacts adults aged 35 to 49—and children are also affected. Vaccination reduces the risk of developing Long COVID, an essential reason many healthy individuals choose to stay up-to-date with their vaccines. Read More: What's the Risk of Getting Long COVID in 2024? Particularly concerning is the decision to end COVID vaccine recommendations for 'healthy' pregnant women, which contradicts the FDA's own guidance. Pregnant women face heightened risks of severe COVID outcomes, including death, pre-eclampsia, and miscarriage. 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We must seize this opportunity to unite around science and ensure a healthier, safer, and prosperous future for all Americans. Contact us at letters@
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
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Slashing public health funding is a national security disaster in the making: Howard Dean
Federal and state government officials are axing public health funding—and justifying the cuts with appeals to fiscal this slash-and-burn approach is enormously shortsighted. Every dollar 'saved' now will cost us far more—in both dollars and lives—when the next health emergency inevitably know the toll an infectious disease outbreak can take. We just lived through one. COVID-19 killed over 1 million Americans and cost our economy trillions. Government-funded initiatives—such as federally backed research into mRNA vaccines and 'field team' deployments to local outbreaks—saved us from an even worse those very systems are being torn apart. This year alone, over $1.8 billion in NIH research funding has been terminated. The CDC's Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee, which sets safety standards for hospitals, was just eliminated. The new federal budget could cut funding for the Department of Health and Human Services by over a it's not just pandemic preparedness systems suffering from mass layoffs and budget cuts. Institutions designed to protect Americans from foodborne illnesses, antibiotic-resistant infections, and bioterrorism are being gutted as put, this is a catastrophic mistake—one that doesn't merely threaten our health and economy, but also our national officials have long warned that pandemics, bioterrorism, and emerging infections are critical threats to U.S. stability. The Defense Department reported to Congress earlier this year on how it continually works to monitor and prevent infectious disease outbreaks, given that 'a pandemic could potentially impact every component of the Department's ability to perform its mission.'The National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology also warned about the growing threat posed by biowarfare in a recent report. Because America's biotech industry is falling behind China's, in part due to the government's dwindling support for research, we're increasingly vulnerable to bioweapon attacks from adversaries, the report United States spends billions to prepare for military threats we hope never materialize. Our leaders need to fund disease prevention efforts with the same urgency we give to tanks and missiles. As we learned from COVID, infectious diseases can cause more death and destruction than even the most powerful conventional also showed us that pandemic preparedness pays dividends. Countries that invested more in limiting disease risks, such as Iceland and New Zealand, experienced lower mortality rates. By contrast, America suffered because we had allowed our public health infrastructure to erode for cannot afford to repeat—or worse, deepen—that mistake. Policymakers can prevent that from happening by restoring funding for public health agencies and investing in resources, such as labs, vaccines, and rapid response teams, that serve as our first and last lines of public health funding may be politically expedient, but preventing infectious disease isn't a partisan issue. Pathogens don't check party affiliation, respect national borders, or stop at state have a solemn duty—both to current citizens and to future generations of Americans—to strengthen the public health institutions that keep us safe. It's time for our leaders to act like Dean is the former chair of the Democratic National Committee and former governor of Vermont. The opinions expressed in commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune. This story was originally featured on
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
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‘We dissent': NIH officials issue declaration, say Trump's agenda puts public at risk
Nearly five years ago, as the pandemic continued to claim the lives of thousands of Americans every day, the public was confronted with a highly controversial joint statement called the 'Great Barrington Declaration.' While the statement endorsed protections for the elderly and those with compromised immune systems, it simultaneously argued that public health officials should pursue a radical version of 'herd immunity' by allowing Covid to spread untrammeled through the rest of the population. When Donald Trump effectively stopped trying to deal with the Covid crisis, White House officials said it was because he liked the policy indifference recommended by this 'declaration.' After the president won a second term, he tapped Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of its signatories, to serve as the next director of the National Institutes of Health. Now the 'Great Barrington Declaration' has prompted a sensible bookend called the 'Bethesda Declaration' that's worth paying attention to. The Washington Post reported: More than 90 staffers at the National Institutes of Health signed their names to a letter of dissent to Director Jay Bhattacharya in a rare sign of open resistance by career government employees. The letter warns that Trump administration policies such as terminating peer-reviewed grants, interrupting global collaborations and firing essential staff are wasting public resources, undermining the NIH's mission and harming the health of people in the United States and beyond. 'The life-and-death nature of our work demands that changes be thoughtful and vetted. We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources,' the three-page letter says. 'Many of us have raised these concerns to NIH leadership, yet they remain unaddressed, and we are pressured to implement harmful measures.' The document is called the Bethesda Declaration, of course, because the NIH headquarters are located in Bethesda, Maryland. (Its unsettling 2020 predecessor was prepared at a gathering in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.) It argues that the administration's actions are causing 'a dramatic reduction in life-saving research,' with signatories adding that 'For staff across the National Institutes of Health (NIH), we dissent to Administration policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe.' In case this isn't obvious, such a statement is far from normal. On the contrary, it's unprecedented for so many current NIH officials not only to denounce their own agency's leadership and the White House's agenda publicly, but to warn the public that the administration is making decisions that put Americans at risk. As for what might happen to those who put their names on the Bethesda Declaration, Bhattacharya said during his confirmation hearings that he would remain open to those with competing ideas. 'Dissent,' he said, 'is the very essence of science.' As The Associated Press reported, 'That commitment is being put to the test.' This article was originally published on
