Disease Control and Prevention Centers (CDC). Credit: James Gatani/CDC via Wikimedia Commons.
Until May 1981, a doctor in Los Angeles noticed something unusual: before that healthy young men became ill with pneumonia, usually associated with cancer. Michael Gotlib, the doctor, knew it would take months to publish his observations in a scientific magazine. Instead, he turned to Weekly Maintenance and Mortality ReportPublication of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which has published scientific reports on “Guide to Public Health Actions” of 1950, according to a 2011 historic review, the CDC report quickly publishes Gottlieb’s discoveries. Soon, doctors across the country began to note such discoveries, confirming that the AIDS epidemic had begun.
The long history of the weekly report is now at least temporarily detained. Washington Post On Wednesday, the Trump administration has issued a CDC directive to suspend external communications, including the report. Some observers say that the break in communications is not unusual for a new administration; This is a chance for new officials to touch the ground. In a sense, however, stopping the weekly report is actually unusual. The agency’s report continues to be published in the days after the presidential transition for at least three decades. According to the report’s archives, the government continued to publish even after changes to the Party controlling the White House. On January 20, 2017, the day of the first inauguration of President Donald Trump, CDC published a number, as he did in the coming weeks. But the expected edition on Thursday did not happen.
Thehe Washington Post He cites a few anonymous sources in health agencies that are worried about the overall pause, given the Trump administration’s efforts to control the communication of health agencies during the Covid-19 pandemic. External experts also criticized the communication pause, including its effect on the weekly report. “If this obstruction order delayed tomorrow’s publication, we must prepare the actions of the first Trump administration to become standard for its second,” said a video of the Center for Public Interest, a non -profit organization focused on health.
Other unnamed health officials said The Post That they suggest “good intentions” that the Trump team is simply “disorganized” and that the break is that the new team is breathless. If it lasts for more than a week or two, an employee said, it would be anxious.
In response to questions about the pause in the publication of the weekly report, a CDC spokesman told Newsletter” [The Department of Health and Human Services] has paused for mass communications and public appearances that are not directly related to emergencies or critical health. This is a short pause that allows the new team to set a review and prioritization process. There are exceptions for messages that [departmental] Divisions believe they are critical to the mission, but they will be made on a case -by -case basis. “
Thehe Weekly morbidity and mortality Previously, the report was at the center of the Trump administration’s political intervention allegations. Media reports from 2020 describe in detail the alleged efforts of the administration, which was then criticized for dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, to “get control” on the report, which sometimes offered technical information that indicated obvious reaction gaps of the administration against the pandemic, like its bans on travel. Cnn He reported an accusation that the administration was trying to stop the publication of some of the “all together” reports.
The pause in the publication comes as the H5N1 bird flu epidemic among birds, milk cattle and other mammals continues to keep health experts on the edge, given fears whether the virus can become more deadly and more convenient in humans. A man from Louisiana died earlier this month, the first death in the United States. The Post He reported that this week’s edition of the report had to include reports on the virus.
It also comes when public health experts and scientists are worried about the impact that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Trump chosen to lead the Ministry of Health and Human Services, will have on public health efforts, including the vaccination policy and the policy of vaccination and Scientific research as a whole. Long -time vaccine activist wants to redirect US health efforts to prioritization of chronic diseases instead of infectious diseases. He said he wanted to fire hundreds of employees at the National Institute of Health (NIH), which funded biomedical studies, including pathogen studies.
Science On Wednesday, the new NIH restrictions, which, along with CDC Panel meetings and other sudden changes.
A note from a high -ranking employee at the Ministry of Health and Human Services, received from various media, states that the communication pause will end on February 1.