America's Public Health System In Crisis

A massive self-inflicted wound that will kill Americans

April 01, 2025

Today the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lost 18% of its workforce. This nature of the cuts show that this is not an effort to improve efficiency and reduce waste. This is a move targeted to cripple the US public health system and to directly harm the most vulnerable Americans.

Workers who were fired were given no opportunity to make sure their work was transferred elsewhere. Leadership was given no notice. People’s email and building access in many cases simply stopped working.

Supposedly, the firings are meant to focus the CDC more on infectious disease, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. Nor is that the Centers’ mission:

CDC works 24/7 to protect America from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S. Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, curable or preventable, human error or deliberate attack, CDC fights disease and supports communities and citizens to do the same.

CDC increases the health security of our nation. As the nation's health protection agency, CDC saves lives and protects people from health threats. To accomplish our mission, CDC conducts critical science and provides health information that protects our nation against expensive and dangerous health threats and responds when these arise.

The CDC “saves lives and protects people from health threats.” This isn’t just infectious diseases. And the idea that infectious disease is the new focus is belied by the cuts. For example, the HIV prevention program lost at least half its staff. HIV cases will likely rise fairly quickly (as they will in Africa with the end of USAID, PEPFAR, etc.). The CDC helps poor and rural areas with things like HIV prevention education and medication (PrEP—preexposure prophylaxis which is basically 100% effective at preventing HIV).

Kids will be hit very hard, with the loss of programs to track lead poisoning, asthma and air quality, tobacco control, and many others.

Of course kids are already under attack—we are in one of the worst measles outbreaks since the disease was declared eliminated in the US twenty-five years ago. Current health leadership is doing nothing to mitigate the outbreak, and is even making it worse. HHS Director Kennedy is actively downplaying the importance of vaccines and is encouraging use of disproven and toxic therapies like Vitamin A.

It is impossible to overstate how much trouble we’re in. We are losing necessary and successful programs that cannot be replaced on the local or state level. Public health is public—it requires support from the highest level to be effective.

It is likely that we will be feeling the repurcussions of this day for decades. In the the future, when we look at graphs of HIV infection and deaths, measles cases, lead poisoning, etc. we will see a huge “Trump bump”. And it will take decades to recover. That won’t bring back the people who will die as a direct result of these policies.

Please, please contact your representatives: call them, email them, send postcards. And don’t stop. Demand that they restore our public health system, that we restore funding to vital CDC functions. Because if they don’t, we will all suffer.

-pal