‘Zombified’ CDC, staff cuts and oversight issues under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
So fuc*ing infuriating and sad. The CDC used to be the crown jewel of the world's scientific firmament. Other countries came to us for help fighting deadly diseases. Its disease detectives learned what caused illness and helped change practices to prevent them. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/26/h...
Politics and Health 🗳️ 🩺105Along comes #RFKJr and his anti-science, anti-vaccine, anti-anyone smarter than him attitude, and many of the brilliant minds have left. Especially grotesque: the staff of the chronic disease unit--didn't he say he wanted to study chronic diseases?--is half what it was.
Liberal Libbie17This is a HUGE nail in all of our coffins !
RockCandyMtns14Fucking republicans. Useless mfers living on our dime. WORSE than useless criminal filth. On purpose.
jhaygood12Weird this post was right above for me... bsky.app/profile/hist...
dabxdee.bsky.social11The real welfare queens and terrorists are not coming from other countries, they're right on Capitol Hill, holding office, wearing robes and badges, and running multi billion dollar corporations. All on your dime. Your oppression is their profession. pathological psychopaths.
Politics and Health 🗳️ 🩺9Why in God's name are these people not in prison? bsky.app/profile/gavi...
Khashoggi's Ghost537Interviews with more than 30 current and former employees reveal the agency is now tightly controlled by Mr. Kennedy and his associates, and its scientists are finding it increasingly difficult to do their jobs effectively. (Some spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a fear of retaliation.)
David Gorski, MD, PhD99Sad, but entirely predictable after putting an antivax loon like RFK Jr. In charge of HHS. The same predictable destruction is occurring at NIH as well.
Jonathan Howard44These people got what they wanted. No one can say the threat was hidden. It was ignored and disbelieved.
Catincognito skeeting since 07/3/20236It's be design Not an accident Killing innocent children and old ppl...is their goal
Sister of Wendy #AbolishICE 🐸3Gutting our public health infrastructure serves to purge our country of "useless eaters," as Hitler once said. And that's their ultimate goal. It's yet another gift to billionaires who are no longer satisfied with stealing our last penny, they want our dying breath, as well. 🤬 #VoteBlue #SheShed
Dr. Sparklefairy3It's going to take decades to recover if we ever do
midnucas 🇵🇷2Objectively notion that the USA’s CDC was a world leader should have been shattered by their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic under both Trump and Biden , but people who write threads like these don’t give a damn about facts
Connie2The moment the CDC caved to airline CEOs to reduce Covid isolation protocols, it was the beginning of the end. Both Democrats and Republicans played a part.
I’ve been reporting on the CDC for years, and have written about many of its troubles over the past year. I was still shocked by the extent of the staff losses and political interference I found when reporting this one. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/26/h...
Apoorva Mandavilli120I talked to nearly 30 current and former CDC employees. The agency is no longer the independent beacon of public health it once was, they told me. Nothing — from bathroom cleanup to Ebola response — is working the way it should.
Randall Gates22You can’t enact a great culling of the population through diseases if you have a competent CDC able to prevent it.
Matthew Budman, book guy17RFK Jr. rejects the notion of public health—he believes that more people, not fewer, should be dying—and he is living that philosophy by killing humanity's flagship health agency. His boss, who agrees that people with "good genes" are destined to rule, is just fine with the CDC dying on his watch.
RainOrShine9913Thank you for your reporting and for posting here on BlueSky. I listen to the Osterholm Update Podcast (CIDRAP) and their reporting is also very horrifying and deeply saddening re: CDC and the entire national abrogation of duty to the nation from the top of the administration. Heartbreaking.
Okay, so about that…7This is in project 2025 Trump is a Russian asset His goal is to destroy America’s Crown Jewels - from national parks to CDC to higher ed etc CDC was a beacon of pride for the world until Trump touched it with COVID response hampering and DOGE cuts
quackerz.bsky.social7We're already in deep trouble right now, but if we don't become a blue tsunami in November it's all over for democracy. I'll never forgive the Republicans for standing around just watching instead stopping Trump.
Brian Lyman375A 48% drop in employees at National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Yikes.
Don Moynihan243“Imagine losing a third of a city’s firefighters and then wondering why downtown is burning.” Connecting the dots between cuts and public sector failures is often difficult, but we are seeing the damage in public health. The only category of employee growing at CDC are political appointees.
It's ME(Jaime)55We watched CDC staff be ousted or suddenly decide it was time for retirement; provisional employees were fired en masse last year, and in some cases, trainings have been frozen so no one new can fully engage. CDC has been a ghost ship this year. Thanks to Apoorva for her reporting on this.
@NewsJennifer (Jennifer Schulze)51“Imagine losing a third of a city’s firefighters and then wondering why downtown is burning” This is excellent reporting on the destruction of the CDC. Kennedy is every bit as horrible & dangerous as you think he is, maybe even worse.
Prof Gavin Yamey MD MPH21I’ve been genuinely shocked by how rapidly & how extensively RFK Jr & Jay Bhattacharya dismantled the CDC It will take a generation or more to repair it & restore it to its former glory—pre-MAGA/MAHA, it was revered & seen as one of the finest public health agencies in the world Great reporting 👇
John Wiswell12This is what they've done.
babs ✨7it’s so awesome that on the one hand this is happening but on the other it is very cool discourse to make fun of people trying their hardest not to get sick(:
Alyson Smith6In less than 3 minutes, @apoorvanyt.bsky.social shows - and tells - us what’s happened inside the CDC. Everyone needs to watch ❤️🩹
Carrie Brown5This is horrifying. "One senior official said it felt as though the agency was being held together with bubble gum and duct tape, with employees running from crisis to crisis, and nothing working the way it is supposed to."
Bob Morris, MD, PhD4RFK Jr. and Trump ARE the chronic disease. They are a cancer on public health that will take decades to cure.
