Lately confirmed Well being and Human Providers Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is reportedly shedding practically half of the general public well being workforce, which handles responding to emergencies just like the measles outbreak unfolding in Texas.
Staff on the Epidemic Intelligence Service, a vaunted coaching program run by the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, are among the many practically 1,300 well being staff being terminated. The EIS focuses on investigating illness outbreaks each domestically and internationally.
RFK Jr. shakes palms with President Donald Trump.
Together with firings on the Nationwide Institutes of Well being, Politico estimates that RFK Jr., DOGE Chair Elon Musk, and President Donald Trump have focused a minimum of 3,600 federal well being staff in a downsizing effort of administrative infrastructure. Most of those preliminary HHS firings are of staff with the CDC and NIH.
“This is absolutely tragic,” one CDC worker instructed NPR. “If we lose these people, we lose important capacity and in a very real sense we lose our CDC future.”
“The nation is much less protected,” former top-ranking CDC official Anne Schuchat instructed CBS. “These are the deployable assets critical for investigating new threats, from anthrax to Zika.”
In the meantime, Texas is experiencing certainly one of its worst measles outbreaks in many years. The variety of confirmed instances, which began within the state’s under-vaccinated Gaines County, has routinely doubled—reaching 48 on Friday.
The Houston Chronicle stories that Texas well being officers concern that 200 to 300 individuals have already been contaminated.
“HHS is following the Administration’s guidance and taking action to support the President’s broader efforts to restructure and streamline the federal government. This is to ensure that HHS better serves the American people at the highest and most efficient standard,” HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon mentioned in a press release to NPR.
The dismantling of public well being underneath the Trump administration continues as america additionally faces an ongoing avian flu outbreak, affecting livestock throughout the nation and leading to egg shortages and skyrocketing costs.
However don’t fear, with out a public well being or illness management equipment, Trump’s workforce has an answer: “A better, smarter, perimeter.”
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Kevin Hassett on Trump’s avian flu plan: “What we need to do is have better ways w/ bio-security & medication & so on to make sure that the perimeter doesn’t have to kill the chickens. To have a better, smarter, perimeter…they’re killing chickens to stop the spread, but chickens don’t really fly”
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-02-16T16:06:09.039Z
Hassett, who referred to Individuals as “our human capital stock” throughout the top of the coronavirus pandemic, blamed the Biden administration for killing chickens contaminated with the avian flu.
His repair for public well being points appears to be making a magic “perimeter” whereas killing the entire wild geese and geese in america. Between that and RFK Jr.’s mass public well being layoffs, what might probably go unsuitable?
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