A Worldwide Threat
A bad situation is rapidly getting worse
Photo: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Georgia, Atlanta USA March 6, 2020.
By Peter Katona and Seth Freeman
David Eisenman of UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health was working on a promising study of ways to prevent political violence and mass killing incidents when, in March of this year, he received a stop-work order from the project’s funder, the Department of Homeland Security. The study would not have been finished in time to prevent a gunman intent on killing cabinet members and the President from breaching security at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, but it could ultimately have made an important contribution to making America safer. Unfortunately, administration actions undermining such quality public health initiatives are the new normal.
In an article we published in the Pacific Council Magazine just a few months ago, we painted a gloomy picture of the potential negative effects on public health, in the U.S. and abroad, from the policies of the Trump administration. In just a few months, the situation has gone from bad to worse.
A year ago, an alarming memo leaked to the New York Times projected as many as 1.2 million deaths of children over the following five years from cuts to USAID. In just one year, however, the number of deaths from those slashed programs has already passed 700,000, with as many as 500,000 children dying. Updated projections now suggest that USAID cuts could lead to over 14 million deaths in that same period, with 4.5 million children under the age of five dying by the year 2030.
Process that for a moment. Four and a half million children around the world suffering and dying unnecessarily, because of funding cuts, which, as we have explained, will in the end cost U.S. taxpayers more money. On the diplomacy side, these cuts have made other countries reluctant to bail Trump out of his Iran war mess.
In the U.S., cancer patients whose last hope was participation in a clinical trial have seen those potentially life-saving trials cancelled. $900 billion has been cut from health services and research while the administration inflates budget requests for DHS and DOD. Over 15 million people have lost their insurance.
The CDC is in chaos. It has “paused” testing for rabies and pox virus as “…widespread layoffs, hiring freezes, and resignations have shrunk the number of qualified scientists who assist state labs.” It has been caught short, especially in comparison with other countries, in dealing with the outbreak of hantavirus on a cruise ship, only setting up a response team to the crisis a month after the first patient died. A year ago, Musk’s DOGE had scrapped the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program, a pivotal team that works to protect large ships from the danger of exactly what the cruise ship is now experiencing. Having pulled out of WHO, the U.S. is at a disadvantage in getting up-to-date information on this outbreak and all future potential epidemics. In all, over 95,000 U.S. scientists have been fired, resigned, or retired since Trump took office.
U.S. measles cases right now number more than 100 times the annual rate of the early 2000s. Measles is a more serious disease than many realize, causing side effects ranging from diarrhea to immune suppression to death, sometimes years later, in three out of ten patients. The rise in measles infections is just one destructive effect of an anti-vaccination campaign that promotes harmful, unproven alternatives from which RFK Jr., personally profits. Publication of a study showing the effectiveness of the COVID vaccines was cancelled by HHS. Rural hospitals have been allowed to fail, creating healthcare deserts across the country. The mRNA research that made possible the development of anti-COVID vaccines in record time has been halted. Essential hepatitis B and other postnatal, scientifically proven protocols have been abandoned. Newborns with vitamin K deficiency are literally bleeding to death because parents, inspired by RFK Jr.’s ideas, reject the life-saving shot.
In public health, domestically and internationally, across agencies and offices, in the administration and in the field, the U.S. has installed incompetent people who are doing stupid, reckless, and inept things. When government in every department and at every level is incompetent, the effect is greater than just the absence of intelligence, knowledge, and professionalism might suggest because the situation engenders a malignant multiplier effect, creating an even worse disaster than the sum of the failing parts.
Noem, Bondi and other officials are out, and many others need to go, but in the interests of the health and well-being of all Americans, the head of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert Kennedy Jr., should be next. But even removing RFK Jr. will not sufficiently protect the country.
The common denominator across the failing agencies and misguided initiatives is the one person in charge overall. In a recent post on X against the leadership in Iran, Trump threatened to demolish a civilization. He is completely capable of such destruction, but the civilization that he is aggressively destroying is our own.
Peter Katona, MD, a Pacific Council on International Policy member, has been a clinical professor of medicine at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine in Infectious Diseases, and an adjunct professor of Public Health at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health in Epidemiology. He helped design UCLA’s campus COVID policy.
Seth Freeman, MPH, a Pacific Council on International Policy member, is an Emmy-winning writer/producer for television, a playwright, and a journalist, who writes about technology, education, policy, and public health.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Pacific Council.
