#health + #politics

“The CDC is not even a player,” said Lawrence Gostin, an international public health expert at Georgetown University. “I’ve never seen that before.”

Not until late Friday did CDC actions accelerate.

The CDC’s diminished role in this outbreak is an indicator the agency is no longer the force in international health or the protector of domestic health that it once was, some experts said.

The hantavirus outbreak is “a sentinel event” that speaks to “how well the country is prepared for a disease threat. And right now, I’m very sorry to say that we are not prepared,” said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, chief executive officer of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

For decades, the CDC partnered with the WHO in such situations. The CDC acted as a mainstay of any international investigation, providing staff and expertise to help unravel any outbreak mystery, develop ways to control it and communicate to the public what they should know and how they should worry.

Such actions were a large reason why the CDC developed a reputation as the world’s premier public health agency.

But this time, the WHO has been center stage. It made the risk assessment that has told people the outbreak is not a pandemic threat.

“I don’t think this is a giant threat to the United States,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown University’s Pandemic Center. But how this situation has played out “just shows how empty and vapid the CDC is right now,” she said.

Amid a lobbying blitz and a flood of campaign cash, senators inserted language into this week’s emergency spending bill that eliminates rules designed to prevent food contamination and foodborne illnesses at farms and restaurants, according to legislative text reviewed by The Lever. The bill would also limit the development of rules to regulate ultra-processed foods, despite such foods being derided by the “Make America Healthy Again Movement,” championed by President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Last year saw a doubling of Americans who were hospitalized or killed by contaminated food outbreaks, according to data compiled by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. In all, there are now “10 million cases of foodborne illnesses annually in the United States (and) these illnesses result in about 53,300 hospitalizations and over 900 deaths,” according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office. Despite that, the new funding bill blocks federal rules designed to trace sources of outbreaks, and to prevent contamination of produce. One provision in the legislation states that no funds “may be used to administer or enforce the ‘Requirements for Additional Traceability Records for Certain Foods,’ published on Nov. 21, 2022.” Originally proposed by the first Trump administration during the pandemic when COVID-19 posed severe risks of contaminating food systems, the Food and Drug Administration’s traceability rule aimed to establish new record-keeping standards for companies to track their food products across the supply chain. Those records could help regulators identify the point of origin in the event of a major disease outbreak or food contamination event. The rule applied to produce, seafood, and certain dairy products, such as cheese, and exempted small businesses from the rule.