Washington D.C. – Today, U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), Wisconsin Lt. Gov Sara Rodriguez, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, Dr. Amish Shah, and former USAID employee Jess Lewis joined a virtual press event hosted by Protect Our Care and 314 Action to call out the dangerous leadership vacuum at the Trump-RFK Jr.-HHS that has put American lives at risk amid round after round of serious public health threats, including measles, Hantavirus, and Ebola.
AT ISSUE: The dire lack of qualified, competent health department leadership is unprecedented for an administration well into its second year. There is no permanent FDA head, no permanent Surgeon General, and no permanent CDC director. In the middle of an Ebola outbreak that is at risk of becoming ‘deadliest on record,’ the administration even pushed out the head of NIH’s Infectious Disease Institute. The perilous and persistent HHS leadership crisis comes on top of a series of deeply short-sighted decisions the Trump administration made that left them ill-prepared to deal with the latest global health threat and keep Americans safe: Decisions including: Letting U.S. Ebola spending plummet 99% since the last outbreak; Ousting 80% of top officials at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Leaving the CDC without a permanent director for nearly 9 months and counting; Shuttering USAID and cutting themselves off from W.H.O, – decimating our disease surveillance and response capability; Leaving American health workers exposed of Ebola behind to die rather than bring them home for safely for the best care in the world.
KEY EXCERPTS FROM SPEAKER REMARKS:
U.S. Senator Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD): “How heartbreaking it is for me, as a senator from Maryland, to watch the decimation of these agencies that have long been trusted by our families, not only here in Maryland, but across the country and across the world. Maryland stands for the very principle of excellence in public health, in research, in science, in medicine, and what we have seen over the last year plus really is the slow deterioration of a standard of excellence that I think will set back our country and by extension really harm people all across the world. And it didn’t have to be this way. We know that leadership matters. I’ve said from the very beginning as the first senator to call upon Secretary Kennedy to be terminated, fired, step down. We didn’t care which came first, but recognized last year, a year ago, when I called on him to be removed, that he was harming us. What we know is that Secretary Kennedy has not only failed us in his own leadership, but since he doesn’t recognize or appreciate or value good leadership, he is also failed to have leaders who could be confirmed in the seats that are so important at the time like this. How shameful it is that at a time when the worst measles outbreak in decades is still raiding, and as Ebola and hantavirus threaten the globe, there is no one in control in these critical positions. But what’s more harmful is that he’s also filling these seats with people largely who are individuals who are loyal to the administration but not necessarily loyal to the American people. Now, what we have done here, along with Senator Wyden, is to compile a running tally of the incompetence that has been on display at HHS. We won’t rest until the American people can feel safe and protected by their HHS secretary again.”
Sara Rodriguez, Lt. Gov of Wisconsin: “I was an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer at the Centers for Disease Control. And here’s what that means, in just very plain terms: when there is an outbreak, or somebody, somebody has to get on a plane, go to where the people who are getting sick and figure out what is happening before more people die. That was my job. I’ve sat in those rooms where those calls get made. I know what it takes to stop an outbreak before it spreads, and I know exactly what it looks like when people in charge know what they’re doing. I spent my career chasing outbreaks. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is creating them right now. There’s an Ebola outbreak, and the World Health Organization calls it a global emergency, one that could become the deadliest one on record. And others on this call are going to walk you through how many empty chairs are at the top of our health agencies, but I’d like to talk about the dangers that are in our own homes right now, because the damage that RFK Junior is doing isn’t just about who he fired, it’s about what he’s telling Americans to believe. He fired an entire panel of independent experts that guides our children’s vaccines and hand-picked them and replaced them with skeptics. He moved to cut the list of diseases that we protect our kids from, from 17 down to 11. A third of that protection just gone with the stroke of a pen, and every single day, the most powerful health official in America tells us to not trust the safest, most lifesaving tool of medicine that we have ever had. So, I’m a nurse, so I’ll put it bluntly. We have a vaccine skeptic running the agency in charge of vaccines, that’s not a difference of opinion. People will die who did not have to. Vaccines are the reason most parents are alive today, have never had to watch a child suffer through measles, whooping cough, Polio. Scare enough families away from vaccines, and those diseases are coming back. It’s already happening. None of this has surprised me. A year ago, when this administration forced out a CDC director for putting science above ideology, I called on RFK Jr. to resign or be fired, and I said it then, and I’ll say it again: every day he stays in charge, more families are at risk, people will get sick, some will die because of his failures. That was a warning, and the warning came true. I’ve driven to all 72 Wisconsin counties in the state every year, and here’s what I’m hearing. So, it’s the family doctor who is up north who now spends way more of her time talking with families about why vaccines are safe and why their children need them. The only thing standing between a family and a preventable tragedy is a public health system run by people who know what they’re doing. Families should not be caught in the crossfire of the conspiracy and chaos pouring out of Washington.”
Demetre C. Daskalakis, MD, MPH, Chief Medical Officer of the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, former director of the CDC National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases: “The best way to have an organization feel as if they’re not important and that they’re not actually functioning to deliver on mission is to not have someone leading the organization. We are now months and months into the CDC not having a permanent head. In fact, not having a permanent head long enough where the current person who is acting in that position has to be given another title because of compliance with regulations and law. So when you look at the leadership at CDC, over 80% of the center directors are now individuals who are in active positions. The head of the CDC is someone who is an acting position who has also been charged with the responsibility of also being in charge of another massive agency like NIH, the position of Director of CDC is not that of an emeritus professor. It is an extremely operational, very hard job that requires extraordinary amounts of attention and hands-on experience, neither of which we’re seeing at the agency. The gaps that you see in staffing at CDC mean that there’s not staff there able to do the disease detective work, and it’s hard to forecast where those, where those absences are. Preparedness depends on people, you can have plans on paper, but without experienced epidemiologists, laboratorians, fascinators, communicators, data teams, field staff, it collapses when it’s most needed. So we need to have that permanent, stable leadership and a strong bench to advocate for the needs of the agency, so that it can be staffed to deliver on mission. A public health workforce cannot be rebuilt overnight, although we saw that it can be destroyed overnight. We are in a situation now where we are not prepared. Preparedness is not a plan that lives on the shelf. It’s the ability to detect threats early, share data quickly, communicate clearly, vaccinate, or give countermeasures or other preventative strategies efficiently and reach the communities most effectively globally. I think that we’re seeing both in the hantavirus response and in the Ebola response that the United States, because of its isolationist strategy to global health, has been shut out. The buckets of staffing, funding, and preparedness have all been attacked by this current leadership at HHS and by this administration, and the result is that Americans are less safe for threats like Ebola or threats like measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases.”
Dr. Amish Shah, ER doctor and former Arizona House Member: “RFK Jr. fired the heads of the US Preventive Services task force, and this is the group that recommends the schedule of screenings, like colonoscopies at age 45 and EKGs, and hypertension screenings. Why is this so important? Because it directly links to what insurance companies will cover for people, so when they make those recommendations, insurance companies have to cover those things, and that means all Americans have access to those things at very low cost. That’s what saves lives. When it comes to setting the nation’s health priorities, we need the perspective of doctors, nurses, those who understand the importance of accurate and factual medical science in treating patients and saving lives.”
Jess Lewis, former USAID and WHO employee: “In the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, there is a serious Ebola outbreak. It has been termed a public health emergency of international concern. There is no currently approved vaccine for this particular strain, which makes rapid response especially important. What’s particularly troubling is that public health experts believe the virus may have been circulating for weeks before it was detected, and that’s exactly what happens when our disease surveillance systems are weakened. Outbreaks, outbreaks become harder to detect, harder to contain, and more costly, both in terms of lives and resources. The actions this administration has taken have consequences. In the past, this type of crisis is an example where the United States would have stepped up and been a global leader through USAID, we helped countries build disease surveillance systems, train health care workers, strengthen laboratories, including local talent, maintain emergency supply chains, coordinate rapid responses, and build trusted relationships with local communities and governments and our partners with the CDC and the World Health Organization to coordinate this local response. The guiding principle was simple, that the safest place to stop an outbreak is at the source. It’s a lot more effective and less costly to do it that way, containing an outbreak overseas, and to wait until it becomes a much larger global threat. When USAID was dismantled, we lost so much more than funding. We lost experienced public health experts, these outbreak response teams, local partnerships, and we deeply damaged trust that our government used to have with governments around the world and with local communities. We also shut down the systems that allowed us to detect and respond quickly when these diseases emerged, weakening our ability to prevent crises before they reached our shores. When we dismantle public health institutions, abandon our international partnerships, and force experienced experts out of public service. We don’t just lose the programs, we lose the rest of that ecosystem, the early warning systems, the trust we’ve built over decades with other governments and local communities, and the scientific expertise that keeps Americans safe. Unfortunately, the question is not whether or not another outbreak will occur, it’s whether we’ll be prepared when it does, and also what kind of world we as a country want to be part of building together. … I’ve been connecting with my colleagues at USAID about this, and for our last outbreak, we’ve deployed three disaster assistance response teams of 40 people each, three teams to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. We have not deployed teams this time.”
Shaughnessy Naughton, President of 314 Action: “In addition to cutting billions of dollars in scientific research, firing career scientists, leaving directorships vacant, RFK Jr. has left us completely unprepared for disease outbreaks, both at home and abroad. Last year, the with the cruel and short-sighted cuts to USAID, which included PEPFAR and disease surveillance in Africa, JFK, RFK Jr. stopped over $500 million of funding for vaccine development in the United States to further his anti-vaccine agenda, when every day we are seeing that vaccines not only prevent transmissible diseases, but also are increasingly being seen as cancer prevention. we have seen millions of Americans, including 2 million children, lose their health insurance since Donald Trump was elected. That’s 2 million children not getting vaccines that keep them healthy and not getting regular medical care, and that is a travesty. While we have an administration that is promoting junk science and vaccine skepticism that we are seeing the real-world effects of. Last year there were 28,000 cases of whooping cough, which is a preventable disease of mostly children, mostly unvaccinated, mostly because they were too young to be vaccinated, that’s a fourfold increase in just a few years, and we’re going to continue to see these type of outbreaks, and just reckless management of our public health under this administration, and particularly RFK Jr. Everything in this administration is being put through a political lens and a loyalty test, and that even goes to what research is being funded. If it doesn’t agree with their personal ideologies, they don’t want to fund it, and they now want to have political appointees overseeing what research budgets get approved. This is something that communist countries, too, not the United States.”
Kayla Hancock, Director of Protect Our Care’s Public Health Project: “The deliberate leadership void at the Trump HHS is a never-ending public health crisis that is putting American lives at needless risk.”
###