THE NEW REPUBLIC – Hours after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged that the Department of Health and Human Services would not undergo a staff purge, it did.
The Trump administration laid off half of its Epidemic Intelligence Service, otherwise known as the “Disease Detectives.”
The lay off affected 1,260 staff, reported NBC News’s Lewis Kamb.
Top-ranking officials with the CDC, the HHS subagency that oversees the program, told CBS News that the cuts would have a devastating effect on the country’s ability to assess blooming diseases.
They are just some of the thousands of probationary workers taking a hit as Elon Musk’s DOGE combs the federal government for possible programs to slash.
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“The country is less safe,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, an alumna of the disease research program, told CBS. “These are the deployable assets critical for investigating new threats, from anthrax to Zika.”
Many staffers that go through the program serve on the frontlines of public health responses before later rising through the ranks of the CDC.
Another health official observed to the news outlet that many of the fired staffers were early career professionals …