America Claims to Care About Children, but Really Doesn’t

I grew up believing in America and Americans, and that we were a country that takes care of our children. I no longer believe that is true. There’s so much current proof that we do not.

Epstein trafficking survivors

For instance, we claim we want to stop pedophiles from targeting and abusing children, yet the current administration is refusing to release the entirety of the Epstein grand jury and other files. By doing so, they aren’t protecting children and young girls who are still prey to those predators who participated in the Epstein trafficking and sexual abuse of young girls.

Those girls are now grown, and fortunately, some have found the courage to come forward and call for the release of the files. They have received death threats and other threats to gain their silence. They stepped forward as a group anyway.

I believe their goals extend beyond receiving justice. I think they want to end the trafficking of young girls for sexual purposes in the U.S. Bringing more perpetrators to justice will discourage other traffickers.

More than that, exposing the files and the people in them sends notice to rich predators that they can no longer get away with trafficking and abusing children and underage girls. Their secrets will be exposed.

NOT releasing the files and holding those in them accountable sends the message that the U.S. really doesn’t care what happens to young girls and other children. As long as grown, rich men are protected.

Fortunately, the adult women survivors of Epstein trafficking can easily compile their own list of who abused them and who came to the island on the Lolita Express. I hope they do and reveal those names soon.

I also hope they are being protected as they do so. More protected than they were as young girls.

Vaccine efficacy denial

I was born before most childhood vaccines were developed. Fortunately, some of the ones for crippling or deadly diseases had been developed, and my mother made sure we got them.

I remember waiting in line for my sugar cube containing the polio vaccine. I also later dated a young man who had polio and walked with braces. This was common before the vaccine became available.

I also have the small round scar from the smallpox vaccine. Better a small scar than the disfiguring scars from smallpox — or death. When our neighbor and my mother took care of a baby whose mother was in a sanatorium with tuberculosis, we received that vaccination as well.

What we didn’t receive, because they weren’t invented yet, were vaccines for measles, mumps, chicken pox, or German measles. My two sisters and I contracted all of those, and at the same time. My poor mother gave all three of us oatmeal baths and coated us in calamine lotion for chickenpox. My baby sister was in diapers, and her buttocks were completely covered in pustules.

Mumps was the most miserable because of the intense pain in the throat and neck. There was little that could be done to relieve the pain.

Measles was possibly the most dangerous. Symptoms include a high fever, cough, runny nose, and a rash all over the body. Measles was also treated at home with oatmeal baths and calamine lotion. And aspirin for the fever.

Before the vaccine was available in 1963, measles outbreaks occurred every two to three years, with 2.6 million deaths each year. Measles can lead to pneumonia, encephalitis, and death. I feel lucky my sisters and I survived.

I’m extremely grateful my own son didn’t have to suffer with these diseases like I and his aunts did. He received all his vaccinations.

According to the World Health Organization,

An estimated 107,500 people died from measles in 2023 — mostly children under the age of five years, despite the availability of a safe and cost-effective vaccine.

Accelerated immunization activities by countries, WHO, the Measles & Rubella Partnership (formerly the Measles & Rubella Initiative), and other international partners successfully prevented an estimated 60 million deaths between 2000–2023. Vaccination decreased an estimated measles deaths from 800,062 in 2000 to 107,500 in 2022.

With our current administration denying the efficacy of vaccines, and the head of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., preaching that vaccines are detrimental, how long will it be before we are back to the death rates from my childhood?

The U.S. is experiencing outbreaks of measles now. Three children have died from measles in the first six months of 2025.

Every child’s death caused by not being vaccinated shows the U.S. does not care about our children. When a child dies, numbers are not important. Each unnecessary death of a child is tragic, life-changing to all who knew them, and inexcusable.

Once these diseases get unleashed, it would take time to eliminate them again. With current vaccination rates, we are on the cusp of measles becoming endemic.

Conversely, according to a study from Stanford Medicine,

Increasing vaccination levels by just 5% brings the number of measles cases down, safely away from returning to endemic levels.

How likely is it that vaccines will increase 5% with the government downplaying or denigrating vaccines? Not very likely.

More to come

My next article on the hypocrisy of a country that claims to care about its children, but clearly doesn’t, will cover welfare and medicaid cuts and changes that harm children. I’ll address the government’s efforts to end Head Start and free school lunches.

I’ll talk about how abortions are restricted because fetuses are “persons”, but once that person is delivered, there are fewer and fewer safety nets for the children born.

In a third article, I’ll address lack of gun control and the resulting deaths of children in our schools, as well as the caging of children at our borders.

I will also share many of my stories of working with children and parents who struggle to just survive, much less thrive, in our society.

Here’s my story on the Epstein trafficking and those who should have stopped it.

How Do You Board a Jet Called the Lolita Express and Not Know What That Means

Are all the men who flew on that plan illiterate — or just one

medium.com

Or read it for free here.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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