Trump is almost certain to embrace a short-sighted – if not outright destructive – public policy. His recent decision to perform further deep cuts at the Center For Disease Control (CDC), the organization in charge of public health initiatives, has ensured that the organization is “not functional,” say experts.
Time quoted Dr. Angela Rasmussen, who specializes in virology at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization located at Saskatchewan University in Canada, said that these new cuts may effectively eliminate an agency that has already been severely weakened by previous cuts led by Elon Musk and Health and Human Services head Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
All of this is coming as Winter will soon be upon the U.S., bringing its particular score of health risks.
If the layoffs turn out to be permanent, then “CDC will have lost its ability to detect outbreaks and respond to them,” said Dr. Rasmussen. “It will no longer be able to track diseases, in America and around the globe,” the doctor added.
“That includes infectious threats like flu, food-borne illnesses, and Ebola, as well as chronic diseases and injuries,” she added.
Trump also has laid off about 70 so-called “disease detectives,” who track illness dangers affecting the public and release the CDC publication Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which informs the public of current health concerns.
“Together, this means the CDC is not functional. It cannot carry out any of its mission,” Dr. Rasmussen told Time. “America has no national public health agency anymore,” added the virus specialist.
Trump is doing what he always does – making terrible mistakes and blaming everyone else for his massive errors.
He’s attempting to blame Democrats and other opponents for these firings, due to the recent budget impasse and government shutdown. Yet, as usual, he conveniently forgets that a huge number of the crippling personnel cuts at the CDC were performed by his accomplices Elon Musk and Trump-picked CDC head Robert Kennedy, Jr. – months before the government shutdown.
The recent round of cuts do nothing more than finish off an organization already bleeding to death by the perhaps criminal mismanagement of Trump and his hand-picked underlings.
In March of this year, Trump was forced to re-hire numerous CDC officials he had fired, since the cuts in the early part of the year were apparently so deep they made the publicly-owned organization a dysfunctional mess.
No one knows how many CDC officials went back to work in March, or whether they were fired again by either Musk or Kennedy. An ever-increasing amount of the people’s business is being kept from the people these days, so it’s increasingly hard to confirm details.
What is beyond doubt is that all this personnel shuffling made CDC activities a near-impossible task as early as February.
“CDC layoffs strike deeply at its ability to respond to the current flu, norovirus and measles outbreaks and other public health emergencies,” stated Professor Jordan Miller, back in February of this year in an article published by The Conversation. Miller is a professor of public health at Arizona State University.
The government shutdown didn’t began until October 1st of this year – far too early for Trump and co. to blame others for a mess of their own creation.
Oh and the “straw man” that sadly attempts to blame Democrats for ‘refusing to fund the government,’ and causing the shutdown? No, the current shutdown is over keeping portions of the Affordable Care Act, which the Republicans are happy to see expire at year’s end. The Affordable Care Act is itself part of the federal government, and for many middle-class and less affluent Americans, it is a necessary investment in their lives and the lives of their families.
If your child needs a certain drug to live, which parent is to blame for stopping treatment – the one who demands a continuation of investment in the drug and its life-saving treatment, or the one who refuses to purchase the necessary drug?
So, it’s the G.O.P. that refuses to fund necessary parts of the federal government. Blaming others for your own foolishness seems to be the only thing conservatives do well these days.
