ICYMI: ‘In shambles’: CDC layoffs leave U.S. vulnerable to health threats

Georgia Republicans have defended Trump’s firing of CDC workers in Georgia

Doctors and public health experts are warning that Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s illegal mass firings of employees at the Atlanta-based CDC will leave the country sicker and more vulnerable to public health threats. More than 1,000 Atlanta employees lost their jobs last week, and top Georgia Republicans have lined up to defend the layoffs even as Georgia grapples with norovirus, avian influenza, and other serious public health threats.

Gov. Brian Kemp backed the mass firing of Georgians, saying, “I know they have some layoffs at the CDC and other things, but government can stand a little rightsizing.” Republican Rep. Rich McCormick responded to blistering criticism of his support for the layoffs by threatening cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, saying: “If we continue to grow the size of government and we can’t afford it, it’s going to have shortfalls in your Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.”

National Journal: ‘In shambles’: CDC layoffs leave U.S. vulnerable to health threats

Key Points:

• Experts warn the U.S. is now more vulnerable to public health threats as the Trump administration slashes positions within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
  
• Over the weekend, several reports revealed the administration was moving to fire thousands of probationary employees, including at the Health and Human Services Department.
  
• […] Even before the layoffs, Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said there was already long-term underinvestment in the U.S. public health system.
  
• “I think it leaves us in shambles. They’re very close to critically breaking the whole thing,” he said. “That’s really a problem. The federal-state-local relationship is so fragile, and now we’re losing in many ways the core infrastructure for the nation’s public health system. It’s going to take years to recover from this.”
  
• […] The impacts of laying off individuals at the CDC will undermine many efforts, said Joshua Barocas, an infectious-disease physician in Denver and a member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Even if HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s focus is on chronic diseases, those staff members will need to be reassigned during emergencies to respond to the unforeseen crises, said Barocas.
  
• “Where are we going to pull people?” he said. “It’s going to be from the priority areas of this administration: chronic diseases, childhood birth defects, et cetera. We now can’t respond to the ongoing epidemics that are non-infectious—that already exist—adequately, and we can’t respond to emerging ones, either.”
  
• Barocas additionally said the CDC serves as a hub for clinicians “who are trying to treat the patient in front of them.”
  
• “CDC acts as an information hub and also a treatment hub if I need specific treatments,” he said. “Now, if they’re understaffed, how do I call for the rancher in Colorado that develops dengue, malaria, whatever it is. … How do I call? How do I get the treatment for them? I can’t because they’re understaffed and stretched thin.”

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