It has solely been 5 years, and greater than 1.2 million American deaths, since we had been all locked inside throughout a pandemic that Trump repeatedly stated would merely “go away.”
Now President Donald Trump’s Well being and Human Companies Division, with assist from Elon Musk’s so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity, is reducing COVID-19-related funding for state and native public well being departments by not less than $11.4 billion, they introduced Wednesday in a press release.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will now not waste billions of taxpayer {dollars} responding to a non-existent pandemic that People moved on from years in the past,” the HHS stated in a press release. “HHS is prioritizing funding tasks that may ship on President Trump’s mandate to handle our power illness epidemic and Make America Wholesome Once more.”
Dr. Céline Gounder, editor-at-large for public well being at KFF Well being Information, instructed CBS Information, “This … is cash that had been going to state, native, territorial, tribal well being departments throughout the nation, and as we all know, as was the case with lots of COVID funding, it was not simply supporting COVID-related applications, however many different issues.”
These “different issues” embody a variety of efforts, together with wastewater detection techniques that monitor rising ailments in areas like Texas—which has had $877 million in grants canceled by Kennedy and DOGE. Kennedy’s dealing with of the state’s largest outbreak of the measles in 30 years, has been justifiably criticized.
In a press release to NBC Information, Colorado’s Division of Public Well being and Surroundings stated that Kennedy and the HHS’s wholesale funds minimize, “threatens Colorado’s potential to trace COVID-19 developments and different rising ailments, modernize illness knowledge techniques, reply to outbreaks, and supply essential immunization entry, outreach, and schooling—leaving communities extra susceptible to future public well being crises.”
California Division of Public Well being Director and State Public Well being Officer Dr. Erica Pan elaborated to CBS on how necessary these funds are to public well being.
“This funding helps the general public well being work and knowledge techniques improved throughout the pandemic that helped California fill gaps in its current public well being infrastructure, together with ongoing response to COVID-19 illness and different respiratory and vaccine-preventable ailments that require related assets.”
Extra cuts embody a $577 million program devoted to figuring out and growing antiviral medication for SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, together with six different forms of viruses with pandemic potential.
Jason McLellan, a structural virologist on the College of Texas, Austin, instructed Nature that the strikes are “clearly shortsighted. To cancel the complete grant as a result of a small portion concerned SARS-CoV-2 goes to be harmful for future pandemic preparedness.”
Kennedy’s place atop our nation’s public well being division is already harmful to our nation’s well-being. His anti-vaccine stances and uncooked milk enthusiasm are unscientific and are already jeopardizing necessary scientific analysis in fields like most cancers remedy and prevention.
The billions in cuts additionally include hundreds of misplaced jobs, as Trump, Kennedy, and DOGE are demanding big reductions in our public well being system’s workforce and capability. This consists of firing nearly 25% of its full-time workforce and reducing regional places of work in half.
5 years in the past, nearly to the day, Trump had claimed that COVID would simply “go away” solely six or seven instances. However as The Washington Publish confirmed:
There are an estimated 20 million People affected by a variety of lengthy COVID signs. Researchers have estimated that losses to the workforce from lengthy COVID prices the worldwide economic system round $1 trillion per yr. These cuts will harm the necessary analysis being executed on this discipline, as there’s nonetheless a lot we don’t know.
However one factor we do know is that COVID has by no means merely “gone away.”
Marketing campaign Motion
