Public health has been bracingly awful since the second Trump administration began, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. leading the Department of Health and Human Services. Now the administration appears to be finding its stride, which is terrible news for anyone fond of competent government or basic disease prevention.

The government is considering undoing COVID era requirements that nursing homes track and report respiratory infections every week. The former Biden administration made those reporting requirements permanent as it wound down, but the nursing home industry has complained that the rules are too burdensome.

Ending the mandate would mean facilities no longer have to provide the same regular accounting of respiratory infections. That could leave the public without required weekly information about whether another pandemic may be emerging or whether a particular chain of nursing homes is especially unsafe.

The industry’s burden argument is particularly rich after nursing homes became raging centers of infection during the COVID pandemic. Keeping track of respiratory illnesses may require work, but that work is precisely the point when facilities are responsible for monitoring infections among their residents.

The proposal also fits the administration’s eagerness to let big business operate at the expense of Americans’ health. Better yet for an administration seemingly allergic to inconvenient information, eliminating the reporting requirement means it would no longer have to confront those required reports when COVID numbers rise.

Vaccine access has offered another grim example. Although this season’s COVID-19 vaccine is theoretically available, the administration had been sitting on supplying it through the federal Vaccines for Children program, leaving millions of eligible children caught in bureaucratic limbo.

Eleven states and one territory are universal users of the program, meaning all children in those jurisdictions receive vaccine access through it. In other states, the program provides vaccines for Alaskan Native and Native American children, children who are uninsured or underinsured, and children enrolled in Medicaid.

About 52% of children are eligible for vaccination through the Vaccines for Children program, according to a 2024 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The administration’s delay therefore threatened to fall especially hard on lower income families that depend on the program for access.

After nearly a month of uncertainty, The Washington Post reported Wednesday that access through the program would return soon. The report did not provide a firm date, leaving families with another vague promise from an administration that had already allowed the vaccine to remain in limbo.

The eventual return of access does not erase the episode or the questions it raises about future vaccine decisions. If the administration was willing to delay this vaccine, concern remains that it could decide to withhold additional vaccines from the same program.

At the same time, the Trump administration is kicking 760,000 people off Affordable Care Act plans over alleged fraud. The administration has not clearly explained what qualifies as fraud in these cases, even as hundreds of thousands of people lose their coverage.

Taken together, the moves form a distinctly Trumpian public health program: collect less information, delay vaccine access, and remove people from health plans under an unexplained fraud label. Apparently, knowing whether disease is spreading or whether families can obtain vaccines is just too much government competence to tolerate.

The administration’s approach makes it easier to avoid bad numbers rather than address the conditions those numbers reveal. If nursing homes are no longer required to report respiratory infections each week, officials and the public lose a regular source of information about what is happening inside those facilities.

Meanwhile, families relying on the Vaccines for Children program have already endured nearly a month of uncertainty over this season’s COVID-19 vaccine. Add 760,000 people being removed from Affordable Care Act plans, and the administration’s health agenda looks less like public service and more like an organized campaign of neglect.

Perhaps Americans are supposed to compensate with peptides, nootropic stacks, piles of meat, or a soothing coat of beef tallow. That snark may sound absurd, but it fits an administration making essential reporting, vaccination, and insurance access seem like optional inconveniences rather than public responsibilities.