Three years after my co-authors and I described the anarchy of the public health economy in 2022, the prescience of our manuscript came into full focus with the Trump administration’s policies undermining public health - targeting public health funding and the federal public health workforce. Our advice for public health research and practice reforms went unheeded. In 2024, I published my dissertation study on the uncritical use of race in public health research, which included a critical appraisal tool and training. In effect, an ecosystem from researchers to journals and funders had ignored scientific standards for studies involving race. Many researchers over several decades had questioned the scientific value of race. Others saw methodological issues but continued to publish race essentialism. I produced the field’s first critical appraisal tool on race. Now, my study has prompted questions about the validity of decades of research and potential waste of billions in public funding.

This essay explores the phenomenon of social blindness to argue that the US potentially faces major decline. I outlined several possible futures involving fiscal insolvency, a bifurcated economy, and a constitutional crisis. Then, I argue that all of these scenarios would involve precursors that we would have or should have anticipated - except for willful blindness in 2025.