“He’s the same Bobby Kennedy, 100%” – RFK Jr.’s extreme anti-vaccine beliefs reach the forefront of his leadership of HHS
Welcome to Public Health Watch, a weekly roundup from Protect Our Care tracking catastrophic activity as part of Donald Trump’s sweeping war on health care. From installing anti-vaccine zealot RFK Jr. as Secretary of HHS to empowering Elon Musk to make indiscriminate cuts to our public health infrastructure, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, Donald Trump is endangering the lives of millions of Americans. Protect Our Care’s Public Health Watch will shine a spotlight on the worst of the Trump/RFK/Musk war on vaccines, science and public health and serve as a resource for the press, public and advocacy groups to hold them accountable.
What’s Happening In Public Health?
Catastrophic Cuts Are Creating Chaos And Endangering Americans’ Health And Scientific Innovation
CNN: Internal Trump administration document reveals massive budget cut proposal for federal health agencies The Trump administration is formulating plans to cut roughly a third of the federal health budget, eliminate dozens of programs and vastly whittle down health agencies, according to an internal document reviewed by CNN. The preliminary memo, sent from White House budget officials to the Department of Health and Human Services, previews the administration’s plans to slash discretionary federal health spending and rework health agencies in the image of President Donald Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s “Make America Healthy Again” mandate. The document, dated April 10, could still be finalized with changes. If enacted as is, it could cut total federal health spending by tens of billions of dollars a year. It would also consolidate dozens of health programs and departments into the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA), a new entity unveiled by Kennedy during mass layoffs earlier this month. The plan calls for steep cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which would see its budget reduced by more than 40% under the administration’s proposal. It also eliminates CDC’s global health center and programs focused on chronic disease prevention, and domestic HIV/AIDS prevention. While some of the agency’s work would be moved into new AHA centers, programs on gun violence, injury prevention, youth violence prevention, drowning, minority health and others would be eliminated entirely.
CBS: Beyond Ivy League, RFK Jr.’s NIH Slashed Science Funding Across States That Backed Trump The National Institutes of Health’s sweeping cuts of grants that fund scientific research are inflicting pain almost universally across the U.S., including in most states that backed President Trump in the 2024 election. A KFF Health News analysis underscores that the terminations are sparing no part of the country, politically or geographically. About 40% of organizations whose grants the NIH cut in its first month of slashing, which started Feb. 28, are in states Mr. Trump won in November. The Trump administration has singled out Ivy League universities including Columbia and Harvard for broad federal funding cuts. But the spending reductions at the NIH, the nation’s foremost source of funding for biomedical research, go much further: Of about 220 organizations that had grants terminated, at least 94 were public universities, including flagship state schools in places such as Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Nebraska, and Texas. The Trump administration has canceled hundreds of grants supporting research on topics such as vaccination; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and the health of LGBTQ+ populations. Some of the terminations are a result of Mr. Trump’s executive orders to abandon federal work on diversity and equity issues. Others followed the Senate confirmation of anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH. Many mirror the ambitions laid out in Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership,” the conservative playbook for Trump’s second term.
Washington Post: DOGE begins to freeze health-care payments for extra review The U.S. DOGE Service is putting new curbs on billions of dollars in federal health-care grants, requiring government officials to manually review and approve previously routine payments — and paralyzing grant awards to tens of thousands of organizations, according to 12 people familiar with the new arrangements. The effort, which DOGE has dubbed “Defend the Spend,” has left thousands of payments backed up, including funding for doctors’ and nurses’ salaries at federal health centers for the poor. Some grantees are waiting on payments they expected last week.
Wired: HHS Systems Are in Danger of Collapsing, Workers Say Much of the IT and cybersecurity infrastructure underpinning the US health system is in danger of a possible collapse following a purge of IT staff and leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), four current and former agency workers tell WIRED. This could put vast troves of public health data, including the sensitive health records of hundreds of millions of Americans, clinical trial data, and more, at risk of exposure. As a result of a reduction in force, or RIF, in the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), the sources say, staff who oversee and renew contracts for critical enterprise services are no longer there. The same staff oversaw hundreds of contractors, some of whom play a crucial role in keeping systems and data safe from cyberattacks. And a void of leadership means that efforts to draw attention to what the sources believe to be a looming catastrophe have allegedly been ignored.
New York Times: Leading Nutrition Scientist Departs N.I.H., Citing Censorship For the past two decades, Kevin Hall, a nutrition and metabolism scientist at the National Institutes of Health, has devoted his career to studying how people’s diets affect their health. He has led some of the world’s most important research on ultraprocessed foods, including one study that demonstrated, for the first time, that they caused people to overeat. This linked ultraprocessed foods to chronic conditions like Type 2 diabetes and obesity. Dr. Hall had planned to keep doing this work for many years — and hoped it might accelerate under the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has said that fixing the nation’s food supply is a priority. But now, at 54, he is retiring early. In an interview with The New York Times, Dr. Hall said his decision was driven in part by several instances in which federal officials censored his work. In one, he said he was barred from speaking freely with reporters about a study that might have been seen as contradicting Mr. Kennedy’s stance on the addictive nature of ultraprocessed foods, which include products like chicken nuggets, hot dogs, packaged cookies and chips. “We experienced what amounts to censorship and controlling of the reporting of our science,” Dr. Hall said, adding that he was worried that if he stayed, officials might also interfere with the design and execution of his studies. “That would make me hate my job every day,” he added.
Medpage Today: Medical Journals Get Letters From DOJ A federal prosecutor sent a letteropens in a new tab or window to a medical journal editor, probing whether the publication is “partisan” when it comes to “various scientific debates.” Edward R. Martin Jr., U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, sent a list of questions to CHEST Editor-in-Chief Peter Mazzone, MD, MPH, of the Cleveland Clinic, asking how the journal handles “misinformation” and “competing viewpoints,” among other things. MedPage Today has learned that at least two other journals have received similar letters. “It has been brought to my attention that more and more journals and publications like CHEST Journal are conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates,” the letter stated. Martin’s letter asks five questions, including how the journal assesses its “responsibilities to protect the public from misinformation,” and how it “clearly articulate[s] to the public when you have certain viewpoints that are influenced by your ongoing relations with supporters, funders, advertisers, and others.” It also asks whether the journal accepts manuscripts from “competing viewpoints” as well as how it assesses the role of “funding organizations like the National Institutes of Health in the development of submitted articles.” Finally, it asks how the journal handles allegations that authors “may have misled their readers.” “I am also interested to know if publishers, journals, and organizations with which you work are adjusting their method of acceptance of competing viewpoints,” Martin wrote. “Are there new norms being developed and offered?”
Health Impacts:
Local Impacts:
Chaotic Firings and Re-Hirings:
Cruel and Destructive Policy Changes:
The FDA Is Being Dismantled – Stalling Drug Development And Leaving Us Vulnerable To Food-Borne Illness
CBS: FDA making plans to end its routine food safety inspections, sources say Senior Food and Drug Administration leaders are planning for cutbacks to the number of routine food and drug inspections conducted by the agency, multiple officials say, due to steep layoffs this week in support staff. Around 170 workers were cut from the FDA’s Office of Inspections and Investigations, according to two federal health officials who were not authorized to speak publicly. The Department of Health and Human Services has said layoffs ordered by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with some 10,000 workers let go from the department, would not directly cut FDA’s inspections staff. But in meetings among federal health officials, the agency’s remaining leaders have grappled with how to deal with major delays and disruptions caused by the loss of administrative and management staff who had supported the agency’s inspectors, according to two FDA officials.
- Reuters: US FDA suspends food safety quality checks after staff cuts The Food and Drug Administration is suspending a quality control program for its food testing laboratories as a result of staff cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services, according to an internal email seen by Reuters. The proficiency testing program of the FDA’s Food Emergency Response Network is designed to ensure consistency and accuracy across the agency’s network of about 170 labs that test food for pathogens and contaminants to prevent food-borne illness.
- NBC: A deadly E. coli outbreak hit 15 states, but the FDA chose not to publicize it An E. coli outbreak linked to romaine lettuce ripped across 15 states in November, sickening dozens of people, including a 9-year-old boy in Indiana who nearly died of kidney failure and a 57-year-old Missouri woman who fell ill after attending a funeral lunch. One person died. But chances are you haven’t heard about it. The Food and Drug Administration indicated in February that it had closed the investigation without publicly detailing what had happened — or which companies were responsible for growing and processing the contaminated lettuce. According to an internal report obtained by NBC News, the FDA did not name the companies because no contaminated lettuce was left by the time investigators uncovered where the pathogen was coming from.
Wall Street Journal: Drug Development Is Slowing Down After Cuts at the FDA Biotech companies developing drugs for hard-to-treat diseases and other ailments are being forced to push back clinical trials and drug testing in the wake of mass layoffs at the Food and Drug Administration. Significant delays in the FDA’s core functions—such as approving amendments to clinical trials and guiding companies through processes for drug approval—are hindering the ability to develop drugs, say industry officials. Those setbacks are contributing to drugs taking longer to get through clinical trials and ultimately reach patients—and straining dollars for testing new possible treatments, say people familiar with the matter.
Bloomberg: FDA’s Baby Formula Research Gutted After RFK Jr. Safety Pledge US Food and Drug Administration researchers working on ways to make powdered infant formula safer were told earlier this month they’d be let go, just weeks after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vowed to make the newborn staple healthier. Kennedy announced what he dubbed Operation Stork Speed last month to scrutinize infant formula ingredients and increase testing for heavy metals. Two weeks later, about 15 of 20 workers in the FDA’s Division of Food Processing Science and Technology in Illinois were told their jobs were being eliminated, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal. The cuts included about six workers focused on reducing contamination in powdered infant formula. The research was started after infant deaths linked to a bacteria called Cronobacter sakazakii led to nationwide formula shortages in 2022, the person said. Abbott Laboratories shut down a Michigan factory after FDA inspectors found Cronobacter in the plant, leading to an interruption in the nation’s supply.
Additional FDA News:
RFK Jr. Is An Extreme MAGA Anti-Vaxxer Who’s Breaking His “Assurances” To Key Republicans To Get Confirmed And Mis-Managing HHS
Stat: ‘The same Bobby Kennedy’: How RFK Jr.’s vaccine criticism came rushing back Robert F. Kennedy Jr. downplayed his past criticism of vaccines as he sought to become the nation’s health secretary. Now, just two months after winning confirmation, he’s frequently returning to rhetoric from his time as perhaps the most prominent vaccine critic in the U.S. In recent interviews and appearances, Kennedy has suggested without evidence that some vaccines are risky, argued that others don’t work at all, promoted fringe treatments for a vaccine-preventable disease, called the FDA a “sock puppet” for the industries it regulates, called the state of a key U.S. vaccine safety system “outrageous,” and moved to study — and, by September, potentially determine — the causes of rising rates of autism, which he has previously blamed on vaccines. To those who worked closely with him to foment skepticism of vaccines, his recent remarks sound familiar. “He’s the same Bobby Kennedy, 100%,” said Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine advocacy group Kennedy founded. “I think that he’s on the right track.”
- Axios: RFK Jr.’s potential future targets HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine skepticism may be the hallmark of his public persona, but his and his followers’ questioning of the medical and pharmaceutical establishment goes much deeper. Why it matters: In recent weeks, it’s become pretty clear that Kennedy’s views haven’t changed all that much from his pre-HHS days. That could have implications that go far beyond vaccines and put him at even greater odds with the industries he’s charged with regulating, let alone mainstream science. If his past views hold up, antidepressants, ADHD medication and drugs that use mRNA technology — both those on the market and those under development — could end up as his next targets. In fact, some of his words and actions since being nominated and confirmed as the nation’s top health official suggest they’re already on his list.
Politico: ‘Whole generation of kids is damaged’: RFK Jr. takes MAHA on the road Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Mehmet Oz took the Make America Healthy Again movement on the road Tuesday, reveling in their power to shape public health in an appearance riddled with false statements and dubious claims. Kennedy, the Health and Human Services secretary, spoke of the current “crisis” of chronic disease, autism and reminisced about his childhood years when rates of diseases such as diabetes were significantly lower. “This whole generation of kids is damaged by chronic disease,” he said, while advancing incorrect statistics on everything from vaccines to obesity rates.
Stat: RFK Jr. plans changes to vaccine injury reporting system Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday that he plans to roll out changes to a vaccine monitoring system to automate and increase data collection as well as look for negative impacts of the shots. Reforming the current Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System has long been part of Kennedy’s agenda to raise questions about the safety of immunizations that are currently in use. While the general idea of improving the system is uncontroversial, Kennedy has exaggerated the extent to which side effects of vaccinations go unrecorded, according to researchers. “It’s outrageous that we don’t have a surveillance system that functions,” he said at a Make America Healthy Again event in Indiana, noting that the agency would add datasets to study the effects of vaccinations. “We’re going to find out what contribution vaccines and everything else — mold, [electromagnetic fields], food, all of these other exposures [that] began in the late 1980s — which one of those are the culprits? I suspect we’re going to see that there’s a lot of culprits, but we need to know.”
USA Today: RFK Jr. claims ‘leaky’ measles vaccine wanes over time. Scientists say he’s wrong. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the measles vaccine is “leaky” because its effectiveness wanes over time, something medical experts dispute. Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic who now oversees the nation’s federal health agencies, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is doing a “very good job” of controlling the measles outbreak that has infected more than 700 Americans in 25 states as of April 10. But Kennedy suggested the vaccine effectiveness wanes at a rate of nearly 5% a year – an assertion not backed by scientists
Associated Press: Video shows doctor with measles treating kids. RFK Jr later praised him as an ‘extraordinary’ healer A Texas doctor who has been treating children in a measles outbreak was shown on video with a measles rash on his face in a clinic a week before Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. met him and praised him as an “extraordinary” healer. Dr. Ben Edwards appeared in the video posted March 31 by the anti-vaccine group Kennedy once led, Children’s Health Defense. In it, Edwards appears wearing scrubs and talking with parents and children in a makeshift clinic he set up in Seminole, Texas, ground zero of the outbreak that has sickened hundreds of people and killed three, including two children. Edwards is asked whether he had measles, and he responded, “Yes,” then said his infection started the day before the video was recorded.
Other MAHA Activities:
RFK’s Comments About Autism Draw Widespread Condemnation And Calls For His Resignation
New York Times: Kennedy Calls Autism ‘Preventable,’ Drawing Ire From Researchers In remarks laced with scientific inaccuracies, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said on Wednesday that autism was preventable while directly contradicting researchers within his own agency on a primary driver behind rising rates of the condition in young children. Mr. Kennedy made his comments at a news conference, responding to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that rates of autism had increased to one in 31 among 8-year-olds, continuing a long-running trend. Blaming environmental risk factors for the uptick, he accused the media and the public of succumbing to a “myth of epidemic denial” when it came to autism. He also called research into the genetic factors that scientists say play a vital role in whether a child will develop autism “a dead end.” “Genes don’t cause epidemics,” he said. “You need an environmental toxin.”
CNN: Many in the autism community say RFK Jr. is pushing harmful and regressive rhetoric about who they are At his first news conference as head of HHS, Kennedy said this week that the rising rate of autism in the country is an “individual tragedy” and “catastrophic for our country.” A new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that autism rates in 8-year-olds in the US rose from 1 in 36 in 2020 to 1 in 31 in 2022. The increase continues a long-term trend that experts have largely attributed to better understanding of and screening for the condition. But Kennedy has rejected that concept, instead pushing the idea that autism is “preventable” and part of a “chronic disease epidemic” that “destroys” children and families. “These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted,” Kennedy said Wednesday. People with autism, their families and advocates were quick to refute Kennedy’s comments.
The Daily Beast: RFK Jr. Scrambles to Defuse Outrage Over His Autism Claims as Elizabeth Warren Calls for Resignation Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is in full damage-control mode after causing outrage with his comments about autism during his first official press briefing as health secretary. Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, attempted to dial back the controversy in a sit-down Thursday night with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. He had triggered a firestorm by claiming that people with autism—a neurodevelopmental disorder—will never play baseball, go out on dates, pay taxes, write poems, or hold down a job. He also described autism as a “preventable disease” caused by a mysterious environmental toxin. Kennedy has long claimed a link between vaccines and autism. The Health and Human Services Department’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reportedly conducting a study examining potential links between vaccines and autism—despite the theory having been thoroughly debunked by extensive scientific research. “You actually got emotional yesterday while talking about children suffering from [autism],” Hannity said. “You said they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never pay taxes… people mistook that. Then you said they’ll never play baseball… they’ll never go out on a date, they’ll never be able to live unassisted lives.” Kennedy attempted to clarify that he wasn’t referring to all people with diagnosed with autism, but only to those who are “nonverbal”, meaning that they do not communicate using spoken language.
Stat: RFK Jr. promises autism answers by September. Prominent researchers and advocates have heard little Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says the country will soon know what is causing a rise in autism rates, but there is little sign he has a team in place yet. Nearly two dozen prominent voices from mainstream autism research and in the anti-vaccine world said they have not been approached by Kennedy, and have no details about the proposed studies. On Wednesday, the health secretary appeared at a press conference alongside Walter Zahorodny, director of a New Jersey autism surveillance study. They highlighted a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that suggests autism prevalence rose to 1 in 31 among 8-year-olds — a benchmark Kennedy used to justify more research. “This is part of an unrelenting upward trend,” Kennedy said at the event, during which he called autism a preventable disease. “Within three weeks, probably — we’re hoping two weeks — we’re going to announce a series of new studies to identify precisely what environmental toxins are causing it. This has not been done before, and we’re going to do it in a thorough and precise way. And we’re going to get back to the American people with an answer very, very quickly.” Kennedy said the studies would look at mold, pesticides, food, air, water, and medicines, with a particular focus on exposures that increased during the late 1980s (around when the U.S. saw a large uptick in autism diagnoses). Parental age and health status would also be studied, he said. The studies will supposedly involve university researchers around the world and arrive at “some of the answers” by September. But even Zahorodny, who was featured at the press conference, had no clue about Kennedy’s new autism research initiatives. “I’d like to learn about them, too. Before Monday, I never had contact with HHS or Mr. Kennedy,” Zahorodny told STAT before the conference. Other researchers in the world of autism — who study drivers, risk factors, and predictors of the disorder — responded similarly when asked by STAT if they were involved in the project. Experts at 10 specialized autism research groups across the country said they had not been approached by HHS officials about it. Even members of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, which harmonizes and guides autism research across federal health agencies, knew nothing about Kennedy’s project.
Washington Post: Autism rate rises in new CDC report that contradicts RFK Jr. on cause One in 31 8-year-olds had autism in U.S. communities examined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a small increase from previous years, according to a report released Tuesday. The study comes as autism is attracting intense interest from President Donald Trump and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who have made the condition a priority for the new administration. Kennedy first shared the central finding of the biennial surveillance report in a Cabinet meeting last week, during which he vowed to discover the causes of the condition and eliminate “those exposures.” For years, Kennedy has linked the rising prevalence of autism to vaccines, despite voluminous scientific research that has debunked that claim. In a statement reacting to the report Tuesday, Kennedy said the “autism epidemic is running rampant.” Autism is a spectrum of neurological conditions that affect how people communicate, behave and interact with others. The Trump administration is launching a research program to investigate its causes, but a body of research already demonstrates the condition is primarily genetic and influenced by environmental factors that are still under investigation. Responding to Kennedy in the Cabinet meeting, Trump described the 1-in-31 figure, compared with 1-in-36 in the previous report, as a “horrible statistic.” He posited that there’s “something artificial out there that’s doing this.” Kennedy later blamed the rising autism prevalence on “an environmental toxin.” The CDC report undercuts claims by Kennedy and Trump, instead attributing the recent increase to better screening. The report used 2022 data to examine cohorts of 4-year-old and 8-year-old children in 16 communities. It focused on the prevalence of autism among 8-year-olds, who are more likely to have been diagnosed by that age, using 4-year-old children as a measure of early detection.
More fallout from RFK Jr.’s autism speech:
Disastrous, Dangerous Appointments
The New Republic: Trump’s New Medicaid Chief Has Boneheaded Idea to Lower Drug Costs Dr. Mehmet Oz made a particularly useless comment Friday, after being sworn in as Donald Trump’s administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “It is your patriotic duty, I’ll say it again, the patriotic duty of all Americans to take care of themselves because it is important for serving in the military, but it is also important because healthy people don’t consume health care resources,” Oz said during a ceremony at the White House. “The best way to reduce drug spending is to use less drugs ’cause you don’t need them, ’cause you’re healthy. And it feels a lot better, as well.”
Public Health Threats
Associated Press: Michigan and Pennsylvania join six other states with measles outbreaks. Here’s what to know The U.S. has 800 cases of measles nationwide as of Friday, and two more states identified outbreaks this week. Texas is driving the high numbers, with an outbreak centered in West Texas that started nearly three months ago and is up to 597 cases. Two unvaccinated elementary school-aged children died from measles-related illnesses near the epicenter in Texas, and an adult in New Mexico who was not vaccinated died of a measles-related illness. Other states with active outbreaks — defined as three or more cases — include Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Oklahoma, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Mexico. The U.S. has more than double the number of measles cases it saw in all of 2024.
- CBS: Large number of measles cases being missed, CDC says A large number of measles cases are being missed by health authorities, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official said Tuesday, as the agency is now struggling to keep up with requests for support from states responding to outbreaks. “We do believe that there’s quite a large amount of cases that are not reported and underreported,” said Dr. David Sugerman, senior scientist for the CDC’s measles response this year. Sugerman’s remarks, at a meeting Tuesday of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, mark the first time that a CDC official has been made available by the Trump administration to field questions publicly about the record measles outbreak this year.
CBS: CDC scraps plan to help Texas schools curb measles over layoffs, employee says The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has scrapped a plan to offer help curbing measles in Texas schools after some staff working on the agency’s response to this year’s record outbreak of the virus were warned they could face layoffs, an agency employee said. CDC officials had initially weighed expanding a service they had been offering to hospitals in Texas — onsite assessments to root out how errors in ventilation and air filtration could be enabling spread of the virus – to other kinds of facilities like schools as well. “Being on the ground allows us to actually look at the filters that are in place, look at the HVAC systems, how they’re set up, how they’re being used, how they’re being monitored. And after seeing what we did, I’m glad we did,” Dylan Neu, who had led the CDC’s ventilation assessments in Texas, told CBS News. Neu is a biomedical engineer for the CDC’s National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, which was largely eliminated by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s first wave of layoffs earlier this month.
Politico: CDC is ‘scraping’ to find resources to help Texas with measles, official says A top CDC scientist said the agency is scrambling to pull together the means to support states amid the ongoing measles outbreak. “We are scraping to find the resources and personnel needed to provide support to Texas and other jurisdictions,” Dr. David Sugerman, a senior scientist in the Division of Viral Diseases, said today at a virtual meeting of the agency’s panel of outside vaccine advisers. “There are funding limitations, in light of Covid-19 funding dissipating.”
CBS: As bird flu hits cattle herds in U.S., scientists say these H5N1 factors worry them most As the H5N1 bird flu virus mutates and rapidly spreads through American cattle herds — a first for the U.S. — doctors and veterinarians are fearful that if the virus is left unchecked, it could spiral into a possible pandemic Avian influenza is constantly changing. Every new infection increases the odds bird flu could potentially become more deadly or easily transmissible between humans, infectious disease expert Dr. Kamran Khan warns. Today, the virus does not spread person to person, but Khan warns that could change. His company BlueDot was among the first to flag the virus in China that led to the COVID pandemic. Khan said bird flu is just as concerning. Khan said he wants people to know “this is a very serious threat to humanity” and that the longer bird flu is left to spread, “the greater the risks are going to be.” “We are really at risk of this virus evolving into one that has pandemic potential,” Khan said. “And the reality is none of us know whether this is next week, or next year, or never. I don’t think it’s never. But it may be here far sooner than any of us would like.”
Public Health Threats Around The World:
Opinion and Commentary
- Bloomberg (Editorial): RFK Jr. Needs to Explain Himself
- Bloomberg (Lisa Jarvis): RFK Jr.’s Autism ‘Investigation’ Reflects His Ignorance
- Boston Globe (Jon Garelick): RFK Jr., America’s Lysenko
- MSNBC (Eric Garcia): I’m autistic, and I work. And I made sure to let RFK Jr. know it.
- New York: What It’s Like to Be a Vaccine Researcher in Trump’s America
- Stat (Logan Beyer): The NIH called my health equity research ‘antithetical to scientific inquiry’
- Stat (Meghan F. Davis, Kirsten Koehler, Judy Bass, Julie Sorensen, and Gurumurthy Ramachandran): The CDC’s critical occupational safety institute has been virtually wiped out
- Stat (Alison Barkoff, Kathy Greenlee, Sharon Lewis, and Henry Claypool): Dismantling the one U.S. agency focused on older adults, people with disabilities is startlingly inefficient
- Wall Street Journal (Nicole Saphier): The Madness in RFK Jr.’s Autism Method
