Washington D.C. – In further exhibit of the dire state of neglect and incompetence at the Trump-RFK Jr. agency tasked with protecting the public from dangerous diseases and other health threats, the New York Times reports the CDC has stopped “testing for rabies and pox viruses, the family of viruses that includes smallpox and mpox” that, up until now, was used to “assist state and local public health laboratories that are not equipped to conduct them”.
The reason, from NYT: “[W]idespread layoffs, hiring freezes and resignations have shrunk the number of qualified scientists who can assist state labs. The C.D.C.’s rabies and pox virus teams have lost many of their members. By July, the rabies team will be down to just one person with the clinical expertise to advise state and local officials, and the pox virus team will have none.”
The abrupt halt in testing comes after Donald Trump blew off the deadline to nominate a permanent CDC director last week, choosing instead to place-hold the critical role with suboptimal and ‘ineffectual’ figureheads for 218 days and counting despite historic outbreaks of measles and other preventable disease among the unvaccinated.
“Under Donald Trump and RFK Jr, the CDC has become a husk of its former self and dangerously ill-prepared to deal with looming public health threats,” said Kayla Hancock, Director of Protect Our Care’s Public Health Project. “The administration’s obsession with sidelining medical experts and scientists, while stoking completely unfounded fear about vaccine safety has led to a mass exodus of expert CDC staff and a rise in preventable disease. The void of leadership and brain drain caused by the anti-science Trump agenda has also meant that no one is left around to keep an eye on hazardous cases of rabies and smallpox, leaving many state health departments in the lurch. No one should be surprised if the forthcoming Trump budget further guts CDC resources and leaves the public even more vulnerable than it is now, which is terrifying.”
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