THE COMMUNITY SPEAKS: Hands Off Our Healthcare!

My name is Mary DaSilva, I am a retired public health nurse. My career was communicable disease control. I worked with Dreaded diseases which can maim or kill. The public health laws are effective! We live without fear of plagues killing us. We older folks lived with the threat of polio. But you younger people have never seen someone with polio, even if you are a world traveler.

I worked with scary diseases, such as tuberculosis, meningitis, syphilis, measles, and hepatitis. All of these occurred within the United States. Our robust public health system protects us from these diseases. This can break down if we are not vigilant. We know this is true because we are in the throes of an enormous measles outbreak. We cannot contain this epidemic if we fire the epidemiologists and health care workers. 

An example of a public health nightmare, which I have experienced, is congenital rubella, which can cause devastating birth defects including blindness, deafness, and profound mental retardation. The Texas School for the Blind where I worked was full of kids damaged by rubella. There is no cure or treatment for this tragedy, only prevention with vaccinations.

You may think, my child doesn’t need the MMR, I have never seen a case of rubella. But you have never lived in a country where your own president put idiots in charge of Health and Human Services, fired the experts, mocked the doctors, and threw out the scientists. He cut the nurses and Contact Investigators. He stopped lifesaving medical research. Now he is cutting Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and SSDI. Heaven forbid you find yourself carrying a doomed Rubella pregnancy, you will have no choice about giving birth. And after it is born, there will be no special education in the schools to help you. There will be no compassion from this administration when tragedy strikes as a result of their misguided policies.

It is horrific that this administration is dismantling the public health system. Health and Human Services, which is responsible for tracking health trends and disease outbreaks, is being decimated.

What can we do? Advocate for our government to maintain the CDC, NIH, state and local health departments; please make sure you and your family have been fully vaccinated.

We say HANDS OFF our health care!

(speech given at the Hands Off Rally in Logan UT, April 5th 2025) 

For more information, see Mary's editorial in the Utah News Dispatch (4/18/2025)