Late on a Friday night (10/10/25), Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired more than 1,000 scientists, doctors, and public health officials at the Center for Disease Control. Entire offices were closed, including the CDC office in D.C. Whole teams that investigate disease outbreaks, manage infectious disease responses, and communicate with Congress were fired by email.
Now the government is scrambling to get some of those fired to report back to work. But even if everyone at the CDC is recalled, our public health situation remains perilous.
America has no border control against the world’s scariest diseases. After all the drives in 2025 to defund health research, universities, and sci- ence in general, the latest attack on the CDC makes us more vulnerable than ever.
Diseases that pass from wild animals to humans are increasingly dangerous as we overpopulate the planet and drive other species extinct or into closer proximity with us.
However, Kennedy fired the top team of American epidemiologists researching bird flu.
Now Kennedy has withheld $500 million in funding for vaccine research.
Our leaders know better. Public health emergencies are “when,” not “if.”
Remember when everyone was scrambling in 2020 with no coronavirus plan? That was because Trump disbanded the pandemic response team in May 2018. He bragged at the time that he could get the best people and put together a new team immediately, if one were needed. Of course, this is not what happened. Regrouping on a dime is not the way science or scientists work. It takes sustained, coordinated effort.
Top US scientists are leaving for positions in countries that support science and that cooperate internationally. America is sacrificing expertise with every badly implemented defunding push. When a public health crisis occurs, we will not be ready. Nor will other countries rush in to help because Trump has withdrawn America from so many long-standing international agreements.
USAID, the Agency for International Development, disbanded by Republicans earlier this year at Trump’s behest, had a pivotal role in combating disease. We had doctors and scientists who went immediately to the site of an outbreak. But as of September 2025, there is another outbreak of Ebola, this time in the Congo. Any eruption of this bloody, grisly virus anywhere in the world is only an airplane ride away.
We keep shooting ourselves in the foot. The health of Americans keeps being ignored in every one of these cuts to the CDC, including health research, vaccine development, and epidemic response teams. We, the people, must not accept these devastating and avoidable public health risks.