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CDC cuts expected to decimate Epidemic Intelligence Service
- jmclnx 2y agoJust in time for bird flu, by toilet paper and masks now
- esalman 2y agoHe gutted FAA and we got plane crashes. Today I'm hearing nuclear oversight folks are being gutted. Time to prepare for one I guess.
- advisedwang 2y ago> He gutted FAA and we got plane crashes I do believe Trump's attacks on our regulatory agencies are going to kill people... But it does seem implausible that firing the FAA director, an advisory committee, and a ATC hiring freeze could result in a crash 9 days later.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y agoI agree, and I don't love the facile takes. It's future crashes that could result from fewer resources to investigate and analyze these events.
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- pfannkuchen 2y agoIt’s possible that a major shakeup adjacent to one’s org and uncertainty about the future could affect sleep and concentration. So while it may not be directly causal, it may not entirely be a coincidence either.
- esalman 2y agoThis is true. I had a hard time concentrating on my PhD research during the 45 presidency.
- ivewonyoung 2y ago[flagged]
- JustExAWS 2y agohttps://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/01/30/politics/faa-disability-hiring-trump-fact-check https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/01/30/politics/faa-disability-h...
- esalman 2y agoLove that fact check. People should really take whatever Trump, Musk or the right in general say with huge grains of salt. That Gaza condom thing being a great example.
- dh2022 2y agoThe fact check posted by GP and the discriminatory practices detailed initial post are about completely different things. The initial post details racial discriminatory practices started during Obama's presidency; the fact check posted by GP is Trump's claim about people with mental disabilities working at FAA. As far as I can tell, GP did not refute the initial post.
- esalman 2y agoI don't think it is different. The point is, the same people who did not complain about Obama's policies in 2016 are finding issue with the same policies in 2024. So the motive is purely political and improving FAA hiring practices has nothing to do with it.
- dh2022 2y agoYour reply is borderline mis-leading. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and direct you to the article. You will see people did not know about this situation until recently. It took a lot of effort to find this - including FOIA requests. [edited typo-sorry I am on mobile]
- blueyes 2y agoI disagree with many of the current cuts, but other administrations did the work that got us the plane crashes. https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-faas-hiring https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa...
- tombert 2y agoUgh. It took about two years for the world to more or less return to normal when COVID struck. Instead of conservatives learning a lesson about that, they instead just declared COVID as fake, lied about vaccines, and reelected the demagogue that's partly responsible for the virus's wide spread in the US in the first place. Frankly, it's tiring. I don't know why about half the country wants this.
- BSOhealth 2y agoAlways remember, only 31% of eligible voters voted for the current administration. 69% either disagree, or didn’t vote. If the current administration doesn’t prove their value, the people will start to have a say in another 2 years at the house level.
- bluGill 2y agoIf you didn't vote I count you as agreeing without whatever. If you disagree vote. If you don't like the major candidates vote for a third party.
- buttercraft 2y agoNot voting doesn't mean you automatically agree with the winner's policies, no.
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- roenxi 2y ago[flagged]
- llamaimperative 2y ago> decisive yea/neas on what lockdowns and general authoritarianism actually achieve in medical outcomes. Concretely, how do you do this when you don't know much about the pathogen? > the medical establishment has suffered a severe blow to their credibility because the government used their work in vain Eh, I think the propaganda machine did more damage than any actually poor decisions.
- taxicabjesus 2y ago>the medical establishment has suffered a severe blow to their credibility because the government used their work in vain. It doesn't help that the medical system has been gamed to concentrate wealth. Doctoring pays well, but doctors are much lower on medicine's economic dogpile than insurance and pharmaceutical companies. I think Medicine became an important jobs project in the post-NAFTA era because it's an industry that can't be outsourced. The amount spent on medicine has gone through the roof, but the outcomes are the same as they've ever been.
- maxerickson 2y agoI expect that the high spending on ineffective care is a wealth effect rather than something more indirect. The money is there, so people use it. Veterinary care is sort of similar (spending has skyrocketed as disposable income has increased). There's also probably technology/knowledge effects, new things that are worth paying a lot for, people staying relatively healthy but getting fragile in the process, etc.
- AftHurrahWinch 2y agoI've lived through two major crises as a technical professional: Y2K, where I spent thousands of hours updating date systems, and COVID-19, where I developed pandemic surveillance systems. Something striking connects these experiences: In both cases, the people who worked to prevent disaster were later accused of overreacting, precisely because their preventive efforts succeeded. When Y2K passed without incident, it wasn't because the threat wasn't real - it was because thousands of us worked tirelessly behind the scenes to avert it. Similarly with pandemic surveillance - the data systems we built helped inform decisions that saved lives. Those decisions were often described as authoritarian overreach by people who pointed to the mortality they averted as evidence. The irony is painful: The more effectively we prevent a crisis, the more people claim there was never a real threat. Those who dismiss these efforts as authoritarian overreach are enjoying the very safety that our 'overreaction' provided them.
- ea550ff70a 2y agoThis helps no one. What a disgrace.
- perihelions 2y ago- "EIS officers are hired under Title 42, a mechanism that allows the federal government to bring in the best and the brightest, in some cases paying them at rates higher than the typical public sector wages. It offers workers fewer job protections, however, making Title 42 workers easier to fire." I'd guess this is the main reason DOGE targeted this particular agency for extreme cuts (other sources reporting 50% [0]). It's the same reason DOGE is wiping out all the fed's new hires—because those are probationary, it's possible to fire them with less administrative work. It has zilch to do with competence or efficiency. It's outright anti-aligned with competence, in this case: this agency (EIS) hires–per that quoted paragraph–highly-skilled outsiders at far above public-sector wages. That they're easy to fire means there was a lot less dead-weight, to begin with, in this subgroup relative to the rest of the federal bureaucracy. (Perhaps it's a good time to read up which other federal agencies hire under this Title 42). These people are much more interested in creating a shallow facade of efficient small-government, than in putting in the actual hard work towards building one. Because this isn't efficiency; this is vandalistic looting! [0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-disease-detectives-doge-cuts-health-agencies/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-disease-detectives-doge-cut... ("CDC's "disease detectives" halved as part of DOGE cuts at health agencies")
- krowfromthewall 2y agoI guess next epidemic is going to come out of USA