RFK Jr. Expected To Lay Off Entire Office Of Infectious Disease And HIV/AIDS Policy

"RFK Jr. Has Not Yet Provided A Clear Plan On Who Now Will Handle Different Aspects Of Infectious Disease Control Tearing stuff down is a typically whole lot easier than building up things. For example, asking, “Who can trash a house” will probably get more takers such as many of your classmates when you were in high school than asking, “Who can build a house?” By jettisoning the staff and advisors for the OIDP, the federal government will lose years and years of experience and expertise that will be super hard to replace.

Of course, there is the possibility that some of these initiatives, plans and advisory committees will somehow resurface in some other forms in the near future. However, neither RFK Jr. nor the rest of the Trump Administration has provided a clear and adequately detailed plan to date of how HSS specifically will be reconfigured and what scientific, health and public health efforts will be covered by what part of this new version of HHS and in what way.

For example, no one whom I have talked to at HHS and in the infectious disease community knows where in HHS the prevention and control of healthcare associated infections will eventually reside and how many people will be involved in such efforts. In fact, the word “chaos” has come up frequently in conversations. And chaos would not be a good way to combat infectious pathogens.

The first term of Donald Trump’s presidency should have been a lesson on what can happen when you get rid of or lose experts on preventing and controlling infectious diseases. Recall that in 2018, the Trump Administration disbanded of the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit that was responsible for pandemic preparedness. That same year Timothy Ziemer, the top White House official in the National Security Council for leading U.S. response against a pandemic, departed. And guess what happened less than two years later. Hint, it rhymes with the words “a pandemic.” Imagine how the response to COVID-19, which was often described as chaotic, may have been different had the government kept its pandemic preparedness experts.

It’s never a good time to play around with infectious disease prevention and control capabilities without first having a clear plan. This is particularly not a good time with a range of different ongoing infectious disease threats. Fore example, the U.S. still has no clear long-term strategies on how to deal with COVID-19 and the growing burden of long COVID. Since the COVID pandemic emerged in 2020, there have been repeated attempts by politicians from both major political parties to sweep COVID under the rug rather than deal with it head on as needed. But you can’t sweep under the rug the fact that people are still getting COVID-19, getting COVID-19 brings the risk of long COVID, and there still aren’t enough adequate treatments for this chronic ongoing condition.

Meanwhile, there is apparently still no clear plan on how to deal with H5N1 avian influenza, which has been spreading among other animals and could at some point become a real threat to humans. Even if this bird flu doesn’t eventually become the p-word, other pandemic possibilities will likely emerge in the coming years. How ready will the U.S. government be to deal with them? Hopefully not 2020-ready in hindsight."