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Nick Paro, Dr. Eric Lullove, Dr. Angela Rasmussen · Sick of this Shit Publications

Nick Paro and Dr. Eric Lullove brought virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen — science chair of the Save America Movement and co-editor-in-chief of the journal Vaccine — onto Diogenes Club to take apart the executive order directing HHS to split the MMR shot into three monovalent doses by November. Rasmussen’s verdict is blunt: parents can safely ignore it. The president has no legal authority to make immunization recommendations, that power sits with the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and a federal judge already voided the Kennedy-appointed ACIP’s decisions, which puts the country back on the 2025 schedule. No monovalent measles, mumps, or rubella vaccine is FDA-licensed; manufacturing one would require new phase one, two, and three trials — Lullove pegs the average at seven to eight years and well over 25,000 participants — for a product with no demand. The order cannot produce a vaccine, but it can produce doubt, and Rasmussen argues that is the actual deliverable: “This thing is lying to you to make you doubt the combined MMR vaccine,” and in the face of doubt, people stay home.

The three of them then traced what that doubt costs. Measles needs 95% coverage to stop; the MMR is 97% effective, and Lullove’s sharper number is not the falling vaccination rate but the exemption rate, which he says climbed roughly 80% — from 2.5% to 4.2% — in under a year. Rasmussen’s own epidemiological modeling projects over three million cumulative U.S. measles cases across the next decade, and she flags rubella as the underrated threat to pregnant people, who cannot receive the live attenuated vaccine and must be immune before conception — a problem in states like Arkansas, where Nick notes most counties have no OBGYN at all. Lullove ties the same thread to money: physicians’ Medicare conversion factor has not been inflation-adjusted since 2001, sitting at $33.65 against an inflation-adjusted $65.16, while hospitals collect a statutory 2.4% annual raise. Rasmussen is now pointing her AI and Bayesian modeling work — the same methods she uses to predict viral disease outcomes — at CMS and OMB data to forecast the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s health impacts down to the county level, and she is careful about the distinction: the models are standard machine-learning classification, not generative AI, and she will publish the data sources and methods. Nick calls the cumulative effect gene pool management. Rasmussen calls it the pathogenesis of fascism. Neither is speaking in metaphor.

Dr. Angela Rasmussen — PhD virologist at the University of Saskatchewan, science chair of the Save America Movement, co-editor-in-chief of the journal Vaccine; the episode’s guest.
Dr. Eric Lullove — practicing physician and health policy writer, Diogenes Club co-host, who brought Rasmussen onto the show.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — HHS secretary; Rasmussen argues his decades of anti-vaccine messaging, not just his current office, drove immunization rates down.
Dr. Anita Patel — double board-certified critical care pediatrician joining Rasmussen for a live vaccine Q&A on the Save America Movement channel.
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove — Rasmussen’s Save America Movement colleague who proposed applying Bayesian modeling to track policy impact.

Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) — the federal body that must approve vaccine recommendations; currently stayed by court order after the American Academy of Pediatrics’ lawsuit.
Save America Movement — the organization where Rasmussen serves as science chair and is building her health-policy forecasting model.
Vaccine Integrity Project, American Academy of Pediatrics, Infectious Diseases Society of America — the professional sources Rasmussen recommends over the CDC site for vaccine guidance.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) — source of the expenditure data Rasmussen is modeling for county-level impact forecasts.

Monovalent vaccine — a single-antigen shot; splitting MMR into three monovalents means six pediatric injections instead of two, with no licensed product to give.
Exemption rate — the share of students opting out of school vaccine requirements; Lullove treats its rise as more alarming than the coverage decline itself.
Conversion factor — the Medicare multiplier applied to each procedure’s work value to set physician payment; frozen in real terms since 2001.
p-hacking — manipulating statistical tests until a result clears the 0.05 significance threshold; Rasmussen’s example of the older version of the trust problem now attached to AI.
Gene pool management — Nick and Dr. Eric’s term for eugenic health policy, adopted after platform moderation flagged the word “eugenics.”

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I’m Nick Paro, and I’m sick of the shit going on. So, I’m using poetry, podcasting, and lives to discuss the intersections of chronic illness and mental wellbeing, masculinity, veteran’s issues, politics, and so much more. I am only able to have these conversations, bring visibility to my communities, and fill the void through your support — this is a publication where engagement is encouraged, creativity is a cornerstone, and transparency is key — please consider becoming a paid subscriber today and grow the community!