US taking step back in science

Even as Donald Trump's supporters were going into raptures about his appointment of Robert F Kennedy Jr, a longtime conspiracy theorist and vaccine opponent, as his new health supremo, the World Health Organisation was announcing that, globally, measles cases had soared by 20% to more than 10 million.

South African conservative fans of Trump probably don't know that RFK Jr was part of an anti-vaxx group which spread its message in Samoa, shortly before an outbreak of measles there in 2019, which caused the deaths of 80 children, whose parents swallowed the anti-vaxx propaganda and didn't get their kids jabbed.

That's what US voters may, or may not, have voted for when they put their crosses against Trump's name on the ballot paper.