President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have said they’re now running the federal government like a business, which presumably is a good thing. But business is hardly humming for USA Inc. over at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where layoffs, confusion and fear have all but ground work to a halt at the world’s premier public health agency.
Since nearly all businesses do performance reviews, let’s see how the CDC was doing until this month.
For those who may not know, the CDC started on Peachtree Street in Atlanta in 1946 as the “Communicable Disease Center.” The goal was to stop the spread of malaria, which was still prevalent in the American South at the time. As the CDC still does, it dispatched on-the-ground prevention measures to a dozen states, including an army of trucks and mosquito sprayers. By 1951, malaria was considered eliminated, with the only new cases flying in from overseas.
That started the CDC’s track record of identifying, addressing and often even eliminating major public health threats. For example, we can thank the CDC for realizing the debilitating effects of lead poisoning, including permanent brain damage in children.
Because of the CDC’s work, we no longer pump leaded gas at the gas station and we know to test older homes for lead-based paint, since it was banned in 1978.
Researchers with the CDC also figured out how to prevent Earth-based germs from being transported to space by NASA astronauts in the 1960s. And they helped cut smoking deaths to a fraction of former levels from the 1970s. After the 9/11 attacks, CDC researchers learned of the terrible damage done to first responders who responded to ground zero and then established long-term health programs for them.
The CDC is also credited with eliminating polio and measles in the United States until recently. The list goes on, including the CDC’s prominent role during the COVID pandemic. And even that does not include the catastrophes we never knew could happen, but were averted.
But that’s the point of public health, Dr. Carlos Del Rio, a distinguished professor in Emory’s Infectious Disease division, said last week, “When public health is working at its best, you don’t see it.”
So there is the CDC’s performance review. But instead of instilling “efficiency” at the agency, the Trump administration seems only to have only injected blind decision making and rank incompetence into an otherwise high-functioning agency.
Credit: David Goldman
Credit: David Goldman
First there was the email every federal employee received in January titled, “Fork in the Road” from the Office of Management and Budget. The email said each federal employee was being given the chance to quit their job. If they chose to remain, they were warned their jobs would not be guaranteed.
The next day, another OPM memo came, this time referencing Trump’s Executive Order on “Defending women,” instructing all offices to immediately eliminate any references to the word “gender” on websites within 48 hours. For the CDC, that meant taking down all forms that collected health data, including age, race, and “gender.” In a panic to abide by the order to the letter, one CDC office even removed an article by a researcher with the last name “Gender.”
More time brought more emails about the Fork in the Road, first reminding people of the deadline for a response, then extending the deadline, and then telling employees to forget about the deadline.
Have you lost track yet? How is business going so far?
While all of this was going on, CDC workers were told not to communicate with anyone outside of the agency, even with state and local health departments.
On Valentine’s Day, the OPM laid off at least 700 Atlanta-based employees. One was Sonya Arundar, a user experience, or UX, specialist at the CDC’s Public Health Infrastructure Center. Although many current and former employees are afraid to speak out, she isn’t one of them.
“I can’t sit by and be quiet,” she said during an interview this week.
After 20 years as a contractor with the CDC, she joined full time last year. “I took a 13% pay cut to join the CDC to address the inefficiencies I saw and save the American public taxpayer money,” she said.
Arundar had worked in the private sector for years before working for the CDC, but she said no business would operate the way the Trump administration has run the CDC since January.
“The cuts were completely indiscriminate. They were not strategic,” she said. “It was across the board. Every department, every division, every group has been impacted. Work is at a standstill.” She has never heard another word from the CDC since the email telling her she was fired.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Dr. Emaad Hassan is an epidemiologist with experience fighting outbreaks both Ebola and Measles. He had been with the CDC for 10 years when he was fired last week, despite the fact that the administration said the cuts were for probationary employees only.
“The agencies didn’t even know who’s on the list, who was not on the list, or what to do, because this ‘probationary status’ doesn’t show up on employment forms,” he said.
With his experience, Hassan would be in high demand in the private sector or even globally, but he said the damage done to public health in the United States by firing people with deep expertise cannot be undone.
“It ultimately costs lives,” he said. “If I’m not there, and people with my skills are not there, the next crazy outbreak that happens in Africa and any other country, it has a potential of coming here.”
The general response to the cuts at the CDC from some seems to be, “Eh, who needs the CDC?” But with a measles outbreak in Texas, an “unknown” illness spreading across Congo, and Musk admitting Wednesday he accidentally cut Ebola prevention when he sacked the entire staff at USAID, I’d be willing to say we all need the CDC right now.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration may realize that too late, after critical parts of the agency have already been put out of business.
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