At What Point Does Common Sense Return?

Remember when we eradicated things?

• When measles wasn’t trending.
• When polio wasn’t lurking in wastewater.
• When HIV wasn’t a looming public health rollback, but a story of scientific progress and hard-won policy success.

Apparently, that was too much to sustain.

Because now, in 2026, we’re not just flirting with the return of diseases we once controlled, those in charge are actively making policy choices that could bring them back.

And now, the reins of public health have been handed to those who’ve spent years undermining it…like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now guiding federal policy despite a long record of casting doubt on settled science.

What could possibly go wrong?

Relearning the Same Lesson—Again

A recent frightening piece in New York Magazine doesn’t mince words. It describes what’s happening as a slow walk “back into an AIDS nightmare.”

Why?

Policy decisions, like those unfolding in Florida, are actively undermining access to the medications that made it possible to control HIV in the first place.

• Income eligibility for life-saving HIV drugs slashed from roughly $64,000 to about $21,000
• As many as 16,000 people at risk of losing treatment access
• Experts warning of a potential 28% increase in new infections if coverage is lost

Let’s pause on that.

We didn’t stumble into progress on HIV. We built it…through science, sustained investment, and the undeniable reality that treatment prevents transmission. It took decades of research, advocacy, and deliberate policy choices to expand access and save lives. That progress was earned, and it can just as easily be undone.

A Bold Strategy: Ignore What Works

At the same time:

• Vaccine-preventable diseases are resurging
• Public health funding is being squeezed
• Proven programs are being scaled back

And the response from some corners of leadership?

Question the science. Cut the programs. Hope for the best.

It’s a fascinating strategy…if your goal is to recreate the exact conditions that made these diseases dangerous in the first place.

This Isn’t Complicated

The New York Magazine article makes something else very clear: when people lose access to HIV medication, the consequences aren’t theoretical.

Without treatment:

• Viral loads rise
• Transmission risk increases
• And we move closer to the kind of outcomes that defined the early AIDS crisis

This isn’t speculation. It’s cause and effect.

And Yet…Here We Are

We are watching:

• Diseases we once controlled come back
• Systems that worked get dismantled
• And voices that dismissed public health rise to power

All at the same time.

And we’re supposed to believe these things are unrelated?

So…Let’s Ask the Question

At what point does common sense return?

At what point do we stop pretending that undermining vaccines, restricting treatment, and sidelining science won’t have consequences?

At what point do we admit that putting vaccine skeptics in charge of public health might not be the winning strategy?

Because We Already Know the Answer

• Vaccines work.
• Treatment works.
• Access works.

We proved it.

The science hasn’t changed. Only the willingness to follow common sense has.

And if we continue down this path, we won’t just be revisiting diseases of the past…we’ll be recreating them, by choice.