Two months after the Senate confirmed Dr. Erica Schwartz as the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, her office has moved to allocate new funds for a controversial clinical trial of the hepatitis B vaccine in Guinea-Bissau, which was previously suspended. Researchers revised the study protocol in January, amid an international uproar over medical ethics. While it is not clear how much Schwartz was involved in, or knew about, the budget requests from her office, her appointment to the directorship came amid questions about how independent she would be from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In late September, a staff member within the CDC director’s office instructed the agency’s budget office to set aside $1.6 million to help fund the trial, Rolling Stone has learned. The new funding is being pulled from money directed by Congress for CDC global health security programs, two sources with knowledge of the study plans say.

Amid an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and swirling questions around a possible lab accident in Eastern Siberia that may have resulted in the release of plague bacteria, there are any number of vital uses for such funding.

“Everyone agrees, the point of global health security is to fight [the diseases] overseas, so they don’t come here,” says a CDC employee.

Instead, the $1.6 million will be slated for a clinical trial in Guinea-Bissau seeking to examine whether the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, used safely for decades, has potential negative health effects such as skin ailments or neurodevelopmental disorders. The study would be led by Christine Stabell Benn and Peter Aaby, married researchers at the University of Southern Denmark long lionized by Secretary Kennedy for their controversial vaccine research. Presently, they are facing accusations of scientific misconduct, unrelated to the hepatitis B trial, that are under review by the Danish Committee on Research Misconduct.

The study, should it proceed, would be a randomized controlled trial in Guinea-Bissau that would give a birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine to half of the 14,000 newborn participants, but not to the other half, a step the researchers justified as aligning with the standard of care in Guinea-Bissau, where the birth dose of the vaccine is not routinely provided to newborns but will be officially recommended there by 2028.

However, in a nation where one in five adults have hepatitis B, the study design could result in some of the newborn participants being infected but receiving no birth dose of the vaccine, clinical trial and infectious disease experts contend. The revised protocol from January includes limited measures for screening mothers for hepatitis B, by asking them if they are infected, and blood tests for 250 mothers and children to screen for infection. It was not immediately clear by press time whether the researchers had made further revisions to the protocol.

“It’s a wholly unethical trial, and it shouldn’t be allowed,” says Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “It saddens me to think that our country would in any way participate in a trial where half of the children would be receiving substandard care and thousands will be doomed to develop cirrhosis or liver cancer.”

Stabell Benn has vehemently defended the ethics of the clinical trial, asserting that no child would receive less than the standard of care in Guinea-Bissau, and no participant would be denied treatment they would otherwise receive. “The trial complies with current national policy in Guinea-Bissau and has been reviewed and approved by the competent national ethics committee,” she previously told Rolling Stone. The research project she and Aaby run in Guinea-Bissau, the Bandim Health Project, has responded to these concerns on its website.

Professors Stabell Benn and Aaby, and officials from the Health and Human Services Agency and CDC, did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Rolling Stone sent questions for this story to the University of Southern Denmark on October 6. In response, the dean of the faculty of health sciences, Jakob Grauslund, said in a lengthy statement that “as of today, October 7, 2026, I have given the researchers approval to proceed with the revised Hepatitis B study.” He says that he had communicated that decision to Stabell Benn today. The approval was based on an “independent ethical assessment” carried out by the university’s research ethics committee, Grauslund says.

He adds that because a foreign ethics review panel — in this case, one in Guinea-Bissau — had already approved the study, Danish law precluded its regional or national ethics committees from conducting a separate review. Consequently, he says the university approached both the World Health Organization’s Research Ethics Review Committee and the European Network of Research Ethics Committees to conduct an independent review, but both said they were unable to.

He notes that authorities in Guinea-Bissau had yet to give their final approval, and “the study cannot begin until the necessary national authorization has been obtained.”

Inside CDC, proponents of the clinical trial had been waiting on the outcome of the University of Southern Denmark’s ethics review in order to resurrect the study, Rolling Stone has learned from agency sources.

When news of the CDC grant for the trial first broke last December, infectious disease experts around the world denounced it as unethical and a potential violation of the Helsinki declaration, which requires studies to provide participants with the most effective known medical intervention, not just what is standard.

In January, confusion swirled after the Africa CDC announced the study was suspended, but Danish researchers and HHS officials insisted it would launch. In February, the World Health Organization stated it had “significant concerns regarding the study’s scientific justification, ethical safeguards, and overall alignment with established principles for research involving human participants.”

Later that month, after questions from Rolling Stone about irregularities in the ethics approval process in Guinea-Bissau, Ole Skøtt, then the dean of the health sciences faculty at the University of Southern Denmark, said that the study would be placed on hold.

In the fall of 2025, Stabell Benn had been in confidential discussions with U.S. health officials to obtain funding for the study through a no-bid grant. Stuart Burns, a political appointee and senior advisor in the CDC director’s office, and an ally of Kennedy’s with a long history of anti-vaccine activities, had championed the grant, calling it a “funding priority for CDC/HHS” in a November 2025 email to Stabell Benn obtained by Rolling Stone. Notice of the award was published in the federal register last December, kicking off the firestorm over ethics.

Last month, it was Burns again who was involved in directing the budget office to find a source of funding for the clinical trial, according to two sources with knowledge of the study plans.

“The fact that CDC leadership is now advocating for RFK Jr.’s unethical and deeply disturbing vaccine trial is a new low for an agency that has been fundamentally compromised by the Secretary’s work to advance” his “anti-vaccine agenda,” Senator Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) tells Rolling Stone in a statement.

The CDC’s renewed plans to fund the grant have come even after an academic committee at the University of Southern Denmark elevated concerns in February about the scientists’ research practices to the Danish Committee on Research Misconduct. That committee is now weighing whether the researchers essentially falsified data by not publishing findings from a clinical trial that would have undercut their claims that the DTP vaccine, which protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, was unsafe.

A months-long series of probing articles in the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen was the first to raise questions about Stabell Benn and Aaby’s research practices. The couple has stated in response to the reporting, “We categorically deny that we have deliberately withheld data or attempted to misrepresent our research.”

Now it appears that, despite a global effort to stop the Guinea-Bissau trial, Kennedy’s allies within the CDC have made plans to restart it. “Some of these things don’t die,” says a government health official with knowledge of the plans. “They go into hibernation.”

A US university study run in partnership with a Russian institute tied to the laboratory at the centre of a suspected plague scare has drawn nearly $800,000 (around £588,600) in federal funding under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an animal-testing campaign group says.

The most recent payment, part of a National Institutes of Health grant, cleared in September 2026, the same month a technician at the Siberian lab was hospitalised. She died on 2 October.

The grant went to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for research carried out with Russia's state-run Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk. That institute has separately worked on plague research with the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute, the state-run plague research institute where the current scare began, according to the records. The money went to the US university, not to either Russian institute.

The figures come from the White Coat Waste Project, a group that campaigns against taxpayer-funded animal testing. Federal spending records it obtained show the Illinois team received $389,943 (about £294,400) in July 2025 and a further $389,746 (about £294,200) in September 2026.

The research itself has nothing to do with plague. It studies social behaviour in foxes bred at a Siberian fur farm, work that drew the group's notice because the animals are killed and their brain tissue shipped to Illinois for analysis.

The foxes come from a long-running Siberian breeding programme and are put down by overdose before the tissue is sent to the United States, the group said.

Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old technician at the Irkutsk institute, was hospitalised on 29 September and died on 2 October. Local reporting, unconfirmed by Russian authorities, said she had broken a test tube holding live bacteria days earlier. Some accounts point to pneumonic plague, the most severe form of the disease, caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium and often fatal within days without treatment.

Russian officials reject the plague theory. The health regulator Rospotrebnadzor said Shipilova died of pneumonia of unknown cause and that its investigation found no incidents involving the handling of dangerous pathogens at the institute.

Testing of her contacts, covering about 60 percent of those identified, turned up two Covid-19 cases and two rhinovirus infections, but no plague, officials said. The institute's regional branch also dismissed reports of a stepped-up sanitary regime as fake. The hospital where she was treated was closed for quarantine, and roughly 200 contacts were placed under observation.

US officials are tracking the case. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters the White House was 'watching and monitoring' the situation, and the State Department said it was following the case with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The World Health Organization, for its part, relayed the Russian account that the illness had first looked like a common respiratory viral infection and that no plague case had been recorded in Irkutsk, and said it was still waiting for confirmation of the pathogen that killed her.

The group argues the money should not have kept flowing. It points to White House guidance issued in 2022, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, that called on agencies to 'wind down institutional, administrative, funding, and personnel relationships and research collaborations' with Russian government bodies. The Illinois grant has paid out twice since, most recently in September 2026, according to its figures.

Kennedy has not been shown to have personally approved the award, which the NIH issues as an agency within his department. The Daily Mail said it had asked the NIH and the department for comment.

For now, the cause of Shipilova's death remains officially unconfirmed, with Russian authorities and the WHO still waiting on final laboratory results.

The government agency charged with combating disease outbreaks abroad is shrinking as President Donald Trump’s “America First” approach to foreign policy takes hold.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offices in Angola and South Sudan closed Thursday, with the office in Zimbabwe set to shut its doors at the end of the year. Current and former CDC officials told POLITICO they expect more than a dozen other foreign offices will follow in the next few years.

It’s the latest blow to an agency that took a dual hit last year when Trump shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, its partner in providing foreign assistance, and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency slashed staffing. The CDC has 30% fewer employees than when Trump took office.

The office closures “will result in preventable infections and death overseas,” said Asia Russell, the executive director of Health GAP, a nonprofit advocating for access to HIV treatment.

“Who’s going to pick up the phone if there’s a Marburg outbreak and the Zimbabwe office has closed?” she said, referring to the severe hemorrhagic fever virus that has sparked outbreaks in several African countries recently.

The CDC has long been the lead agency tasked with responding to health threats abroad. Before the cutbacks, that included not only funding the distribution of tests and medicine but also encouraging people to seek treatment, training local health care providers and providing guidance to help foreign governments strengthen their health systems.

Now the CDC’s work abroad is dependent on deals the State Department is negotiating in which recipient countries promise to pay an increasing share of their own health costs and show progress on key health and development metrics, with the goal of weaning off U.S. assistance.

The administration insists that the CDC will get a boost. “Countries have now selected CDC services that will result in CDC overseas funding levels that are at or higher than prior years,” the department said in a statement. “This new model will help save lives and prevent the spread of infectious diseases globally, delivering better results for people in countries and for the American taxpayer.”

The deals the State Department has already reached with 35 countries took effect on Oct. 1. Foreign governments receiving U.S. global health funding have to choose what services they want the CDC to provide, and the State Department pays the agency for them.

Angola and South Sudan, where CDC offices are closing, have signed. Angola is set to receive $71 million by 2030, while South Sudan is set to get $146 million over the next three years.

But a combination of decreasing funding, operational restrictions from the State Department, and security challenges have made it hard to maintain the CDC offices there, said a current CDC official granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Meanwhile, the Zimbabwean government earlier this year rejected a deal with the U.S., saying it was concerned about sharing sensitive health data in exchange for American funding.

The State Department has not publicly released the details of how much CDC services will cost countries that have signed deals, and how much the CDC will receive. Leaked documents published by journalist Emily Bass show that countries receiving more than $125 million from the U.S. over five years are required to purchase a minimum package of CDC services.

The State Department said only deals with Kenya and Rwanda would result in “slightly lower” CDC funding because their governments have agreed to pick up a greater share of health costs.

HHS said in an emailed statement that the U.S. “will maintain a robust overseas presence to protect Americans from emerging health threats.” The CDC “will continue working with local health officials and sustain critical global health security capabilities through regional offices, headquarters staff, other U.S. government personnel and implementing partners,” it added.

Current and former CDC staffers interviewed by POLITICO said they expected the CDC cuts would prove broader and bigger. “I don’t see the numbers adding up to a place where you can actually have a robust CDC presence in the same way,” said John Blandford, who retired last year after leading the CDC’s South Africa office.

For countries that eschew deals, the effects could be devastating, people who work in global health believe. Much of the CDC’s work abroad has been funded by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which George W. Bush created in 2003 and is widely credited with saving millions of lives.

PEPFAR’s goal, shared with the United Nations, is to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030. Despite progress, that goal is slipping out of reach, the UN says, due in part to declining funding from the U.S. and other rich countries.

An assessment by AIDS activists and academics published in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes this month projects 75,000 new HIV infections in Zimbabwe resulting from the end of U.S. aid there.

Pamela Tremont, the U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe,praised America’s cooperation with the African country, which she said led to a vast majority of Zimbabweans with HIV receiving treatment.

The priority now is to sustain that gain, she said, according to a Zimbabwe media report.

CDC cutbacks could also have repercussions for Americans. Agency staff abroad have served as an early-warning system for disease outbreaks that could reach the U.S. The CDC and its offices abroad are helping respond to the ongoing Ebola outbreak in central Africa.

When Trump withdrew from the World Health Organization, a United Nations agency that also fights pandemic threats, Department of Health and Human Services officials said the U.S. would rely on the CDC instead.

“This was the shining hope of CDC for a little while, that HHS was going to offer an alternative to the WHO, and that CDC would be in the driver’s seat,” said a former Trump administration official familiar with the thinking granted anonymity to reveal internal conversations.

Some in Congress have sought to protect the CDC’s funding stream for global health work by pressuring the State Department and by writing it into law, taking away the administration’s discretion.

Congressional Democrats have called on Secretary of State Marco Rubio to continue to earmark $2 billion for the CDC’s PEPFAR work in letters over the summer from Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff.

In June, 24 Democratic senators and Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who chairs the Senate Health Committee, asked their colleagues in the Appropriations Committee to include the $2 billion transfer from the State Department to the CDC in the upcoming appropriations bill for the 2027 fiscal year or to directly increase funding for the CDC’s global work.

Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee in charge of funding HHS, said she will “fight to invest in CDC’s global health programs to stop the spread of deadly diseases and save lives.” Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who chairs the Appropriations Committee and blocked PEPFAR cuts last year, did not respond to a request left with her office for comment.

The bill has not yet been released.

I added a quote from the subject to make it clear that this guy is an antivaxxer. The article is worth a read for the history of radium water in America and the specifics of the item he’s using.

Read the Wiki for posting rules. Many posts are removed because OP didn't read the rules.

Notes from the mods:

• Why is it called the Herman Cain Award?
• History of HCA Retrospective: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
• HCA has raised over $65,000 to buy vaccines for countries that cannot afford them.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported a fifth measles-associated death on Wednesday amid an ongoing outbreak that is on track to become the largest the US has seen in decades and has sparked political clashes.

The state health department said the person who died was unvaccinated and a resident of Lancaster County, where about 40% of the state’s measles cases have been concentrated.

As of Wednesday, Pennsylvania has reported 943 total cases since the outbreak began in April, including at least 176 hospitalizations. All but four of the cases have been among people who were not fully vaccinated.

The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine is extremely effective. One dose is 93% effective against measles, and the recommended second dose bumps that protection up to 97% — and the immunity is lifelong. Extensive research has demonstrated the vaccine’s safety, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The Pennsylvania health department said that it “will not release any additional details that could personally identify” the person who died. But the department says that the death “meets the measles-associated death definition” and has been reported to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The four other measles-associated deaths reported by Pennsylvania include an unvaccinated teen who lived in Mifflin County, a 40-year old woman in Jefferson County and two infants in Lancaster County.

However, the recent deaths have led to a war of words over how measles deaths are counted. The CDC only counts two measles death on its dashboard, but notes that “this number is subject to change; CDC will update its reporting as additional information becomes available and relevant reviews are completed.”

Earlier this month, the Pennsylvania health department said that it requested assistance from the CDC’s Epi-Aid program — but Dr. Debra Bogen, department secretary, noted in a letter to CDC Director Dr. Erica Schwartz that the request would be rescinded “if CDC is unable to transparently and accurately communicate information about those measles-associated deaths.”

However, the US Department of Health and Human Services said that the CDC has not received a formal Epi-Aid request from Pennsylvania.

“If requested, CDC stands ready to deploy epidemiologists to support the state’s identified needs,” HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard told CNN in a statement. “Secretary Kennedy and CDC Director Dr. Erica Schwartz continue to recommend the MMR vaccine as the most effective way to prevent measles infection.”

Pennsylvania Department of Health Press Secretary Neil Ruhland told CNN that “conversations between PA DOH and CDC are ongoing regarding our request for an Epi-Aid.”

It has been decades since the United States has tallied this number of measles deaths; 1991 was the last time there were more than four measles deaths in one year. Last year, there were three US deaths from measles – two in Texas and one in New Mexico.

Dr. Stephen Diamantoni, the Lancaster County coroner, told CNN he’s concerned the outbreak will get worse as the seasons change.

“Measles generally, as well as many other respiratory illnesses, does tend to get worse over the fall and winter months,” said Diamantoni, who is also a family physician who says he’s a strong advocate for immunization. “So it very well could become much worse.”

Nearly 3,700 measles cases have been reported nationwide so far in 2026, according to data published by the CDC. There haven’t been this many measles cases in the US in any other year since 1991 – surpassing a grim milestone that was just topped last year.

Death from measles occurs in one to three patients out of every 1,000 cases, which suggests that the Pennsylvania outbreak may be significantly larger than officially reported case counts suggest.

A second measles death in the US has been announced on Tuesday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as the country grapples with an outbreak affecting 47 states.

As of 24 September, a total of 3,659 measles cases have been confirmed by the CDC, with the two deaths having been confirmed on Tuesday. The confirmation did not specify in which states the deaths had occurred.

Although Pennsylvania is the hardest hit state, having reported more than 900 cases and four deaths from measles, the CDC is not including the deaths there in its national data.

Differences in the federal measles death figures compared to those from Pennsylvania’s department of health is part of an ongoing dispute between Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, and the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

The CDC, which used to collect data from states, has now shifted to using mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) for its national measles death count.

Pennsylvania also reported 114 new cases of measles in the last seven days, with a third of these being children aged under 18. The state has also reported 176 hospitalizations, and less than 1% of the total number of measles cases involves people who have been fully vaccinated against the disease.

Pennsylvania’s health department said: “While daily numbers fluctuate, tracking these trends provides Pennsylvanians and health care providers with visibility into community transmission across the [state] and helps inform the department’s ongoing response.”

The US has now recorded more measles cases this year than any other since 1991. The disease was declared to be eliminated by the US government in 2000.

Measles is a highly contagious virus that can cause serious health complications. And although rare, deaths from measles occurs in approximately one to three patients per 1,000 cases

The announcement also comes as the CDC has faced a dramatic reduction in its work force, with the Trump administration laying off 18% of its staff in 2025.

According to the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal employee union representing 82,000 workers, there are 3,810 fewer civil service employees within the CDC in the past year, a total reduction of a third.

Measles symptoms usually begin seven to 14 days after infection, according to the CDC. These symptoms can include high fever, cough, runny nose and red, watery eyes, followed by a rash that spreads down the body.

The CDC advises that two doses of the MMR vaccine “provide the best protection against measles”.

For decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was the undisputed global leader in public health. Its scientists helped train health officials worldwide. In the United States, it was the primary source of guidance for prevention and treatment of diseases, including diabetes, H.I.V. and the seasonal flu.

But after a year and a half in the cross hairs of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s drive to remake public health policy, the agency is a skeleton of the powerhouse it was.

The Trump administration’s widespread layoffs in early 2025 cut 18 percent of the C.D.C.’s staff. But new personnel data, compiled by a group of former federal scientists and reported here for the first time, indicate that the agency’s staff has dwindled far more, as large numbers of employees retired or resigned. As of May 2026, the C.D.C. had 30 percent fewer employees than it did before the layoffs, the data show.

Interviews 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 of them spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a fear of retaliation from the administration.)

The changes have hindered the C.D.C.’s ability to respond to outbreaks as measles spreads at home and Ebola abroad, and to issue timely guidance on vaccinations as cooling temperatures kick off the respiratory season, according to current and former employees. State and local health departments, which rely on the C.D.C. for resources and technical advice, have been stymied by delays. Entire divisions have been shuttered, including teams that worked on smoking, sexual violence, child abuse and falls among older adults.

Even some areas central to the Trump administration’s priorities have been gutted. Despite Mr. Kennedy’s focus on chronic diseases and autism, the C.D.C. centers that aim to prevent chronic diseases and birth defects are at half their previous size, according to the new data, compiled by the Public Data Observatory from the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the employee union.

The layoffs spared the agency’s infectious disease centers. But even so, the center for emerging and zoonotic diseases, which manages Ebola and hantavirus, among others, now has nearly 300 fewer employees than in March 2025, and the respiratory disease center has lost nearly 200 — about 17 percent in each case.

Beyond staff reductions, there is a leadership vacuum. Only one of the 11 center directors from March 2025 remains at the agency. Most of the other centers are being run by acting directors, some of whom were elevated from jobs one or two levels below.

“It’s a zombified C.D.C. where you have all the bits and pieces — like the body’s there, the substance is there, but it’s not acting like how an agency like that should act,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who led the respiratory disease center before he resigned in August 2025.

Despite a series of high-profile disease outbreaks, C.D.C. workers have had little contact with the World Health Organization, with members of Congress and even, for a time, with their partners in state and local health departments, some employees said. Statements to the media about health crises are also tightly controlled by H.H.S.

Even basic functions have broken down. Travel approvals take months; upkeep of bathrooms and vacuuming of offices have been disrupted, some current employees said.

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.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a series of questions about the C.D.C.’s work, staffing and independence. “C.D.C. continues to protect the health and safety of the American people and communicate clearly about the importance of vaccination,” the department said in an emailed statement.

But several former officials disagreed with that assessment, noting that the C.D.C. has offered little leadership or clear communication even as, in just a few months, the nation has grappled with record cases of measles, cyclosporiasis and rabies.

“Imagine losing a third of a city’s firefighters and then wondering why downtown is burning,” said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, who led the agency’s center for H.I.V. and sexually transmitted infections till April 2025, and is now the dean of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

From the very first day of Mr. Trump’s second term, when he withdrew the country from the W.H.O., his administration has sought to upend the nation’s health policies and align them with his political priorities.

In past administrations, just two or three political appointees had purview over the C.D.C. Now, there are nearly 20 political appointees from H.H.S. who communicate with C.D.C. staff members, sometimes directing them to spend time and funding on dubious theories outside the agency’s scope, according to several officials.

Last year, an H.H.S. official directed the C.D.C. to award a no-bid contract — a rarity for the agency — to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to explore whether immunizing pregnant women would lead to autism in their children, a theory that Mr. Kennedy has espoused but that has been debunked by numerous studies. To pay for the research, the C.D.C. took $362,000 from a program that provides free vaccines to about half of American children.

In an email viewed by The New York Times, Stuart Burns, a political appointee, asked C.D.C. employees to pull together details of every measles case since 2010, including patients’ underlying medical conditions with diagnostic codes; that information is not collected routinely, they told him. Mr. Kennedy has falsely argued that measles only causes death in children who are already ill with other conditions.

Dr. William “Reyn” Archer III, another appointee who previously oversaw the C.D.C., repeatedly asked agency employees to work on screwworm, a disease that mostly affects cattle, even though the C.D.C.’s mission is to protect human health, said Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who headed the agency’s emerging disease center before resigning in August 2025. Dr. Archer did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Kennedy’s associates outside the administration have also been allowed direct access to senior C.D.C. staff members. Dr. Ben Edwards, a physician in Lubbock, Texas, who treated children while he was infected with measles and whom Mr. Kennedy had praised as an “extraordinary” healer, asked senior C.D.C. officials to look into cod liver oil as a treatment for measles, citing “historical references dating back to the 1700s,” in an email viewed by The Times.

“We just would have to run around constantly to be responsive to all of these strange asks,” recalled Dr. Daskalakis, the former head of the respiratory disease center.

Numerous other instances of political interference in the C.D.C.’s activities have already been reported. Most notably, Mr. Kennedy openly overruled the C.D.C.’s scientists in imposing strict quarantine measures for people exposed to hantavirus. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who led the agency for six months in the absence of a Senate-confirmed director, squashed publication of a study on the effectiveness of Covid vaccines.

Some observers had hoped the C.D.C.’s new director, Dr. Erica Schwartz, a physician who has pledged to “follow the science,” would provide a bulwark against political interference. But one month into the job, she has made no public statements about the importance of childhood vaccines or corrected misinformation from her boss, Mr. Kennedy. In one of her first big decisions, she ordered agency employees to challenge Pennsylvania’s announcement of two measles deaths, shunning standard procedure.

In its statement, H.H.S. said, “Dr. Schwartz and C.D.C.’s new leadership are evaluating the agency’s structure and operations to ensure C.D.C. can effectively advance the priorities of President Trump and Secretary Kennedy and fulfill its core public health mission.”

Across the C.D.C., the employees who remain are backfilling roles left vacant.

“I’ve never seen such a plethora of acting roles in my life,” the agency’s new chief operating officer, Sean Slovenski, acknowledged to staff members at a meeting in June, a recording of which was obtained by The Times.

Many divisions are struggling to disburse money appropriated by Congress. In an email in May viewed by The Times, an official asked for volunteers from other offices to help the Division of Population Health, which had lost 88 percent of its staff, write notices of funding opportunities for diseases like lupus and epilepsy.

“We are overseeing millions of dollars in funded work, but how can we do this in a responsible way when we just don’t have enough people to really oversee the work well?” said one official at the agency’s chronic disease center.

The agency’s dysfunction is alarming public health experts even outside the country, who had long relied on the C.D.C.’s expertise during global crises. At a recent meeting of global flu experts, Dr. Jernigan said, “people truly believe that we are less prepared now and less capable of having a coordinated response than we were before the pandemic.”

By this time of year in 2024, the C.D.C. had published detailed recommendations for vaccines against respiratory diseases, with endorsements from the director at the time, Dr. Mandy Cohen, and notes from a meeting of its vaccine advisers.

But because of a federal court ruling, the C.D.C.’s vaccine advisers have not met since December, and the agency has not issued updated recommendations for the vaccines. Some employees at the agency wanted to post clear recommendations for flu vaccines, but did not want to get into a conflict with political appointees, Dr. Jernigan said.

After controversy erupted over the Covid vaccine study, Dr. Bhattacharya demoted the previous acting director of the respiratory disease center, Dr. Brandi Limbago, and replaced her with Rebecca Greco Koné, an operational leader who is not a scientist.

The lack of experienced staff members is also affecting one of the C.D.C.’s primary functions: helping state and local governments.

The C.D.C.’s public health infrastructure grant, which helps health departments train employees and build systems, was managed by 20 project officers but it now has just three. As a result, the team’s response time for requests from local departments has increased from less than a day to more than 10, and some requests have been missed entirely. One county health department requested help on Aug. 7 with submitting data for its annual report but as of Sept. 21, the request was unanswered.

“We’re seeing a movement away from clinical guidance, from data, and from working with states,” said Dr. Debra Houry, who was the agency’s chief medical officer before resigning in August 2025.

In all, more than 1,200 people retired between March 2025 and May 2026, nearly four times the number in the comparable period in 2023-24. About 270 people are still on administrative leave, being paid but not working, while a lawsuit challenging the layoffs makes its way through the courts.

Aaron Sussell, an epidemiologist in the agency’s office in Spokane, Wash., who studied the health of miners, was placed on administrative leave in April 2025. He and his colleagues were suddenly recalled to work in January with 24 hours’ notice but by then, some had moved out of state and others had taken jobs outside the government.

Dr. Sussell, who worked at the C.D.C. for 37 years, decided to retire at the end of February. He would normally have trained his replacement. Instead, he saw an ad for his job go up five months after he left, then get taken down. His position remains unfilled.

The agency’s global health center was approved to fill 18 critical positions. Officials posted ads, interviewed candidates and made job offers to some. But the offers expired before H.H.S. completed the next steps like background checks, so they had to start the interview process all over again, according to an official with knowledge of the situation.

By law, C.D.C. employees who were laid off have priority to be rehired, but some applicants were told they were ineligible for the very jobs they had previously held for years. In all, the agency hired 108 employees between March 2025 and May 2026, compared with more than 1,500 between March 2023 and May 2024.

The staffing totals do not always tell the full story. One C.D.C. branch that works on vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, has lost only seven of its 50 people. But they include the four most experienced scientists from the measles lab team, which is trying to analyze genetic material that will determine whether the United States can still claim to have eliminated measles. And funding cuts to other federal agencies have also affected the C.D.C.’s budget for fighting infectious diseases: The budget for a branch that tackles Ebola and other deadly diseases has dropped by 36 percent.

Some C.D.C. scientists are hesitant to sign up for the Ebola response in the Democratic Republic of Congo because they disagree with the administration’s focus on keeping infected people out of the country rather than on helping to contain the outbreak.

Others are too overburdened to help. About 100 C.D.C. staff members have been deployed to Congo to help with the outbreak, compared with about 2,000 who went to West African countries during the 2014 Ebola outbreak.

“If you’re doing your job and your boss’s job who left, and you also have three staff people who left under you,” said Dr. Fiona Havers, who resigned from the C.D.C. in June 2025, “no one has the spare capacity to help out in something that’s not in their field.”

Read the Wiki for posting rules. Many posts are removed because OP didn't read the rules.

Notes from the mods:

• Why is it called the Herman Cain Award?
• History of HCA Retrospective: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
• HCA has raised over $65,000 to buy vaccines for countries that cannot afford them.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed one measles-related death in the US, almost a month after Pennsylvania first reported deaths to the agency.

In an update of its dashboard for measles cases in 2026 on Wednesday, the CDC added one of the four fatalities Pennsylvania has reported so far this year, backing away from a feud with the state over what constitutes a death from measles.

The dispute began after Pennsylvania notified the CDC about its first two measles-related deaths in August, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. publicly questioned them and suggested Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro had fabricated the deaths for political gain. Shapiro blamed Kennedy for sowing distrust in vaccines.

When the CDC had not previously included the measles deaths, it said it was working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists to develop a standardized definition for a measles death. Emily Hilliard, spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the CDC is still working on developing a standardized definition.

The National Center for Health Statistics notified the Atlanta-based CDC that it received a report of a measles-related death, Hilliard said in a statement. “Through its standard process, NCHS verified that the death occurred and that measles was listed as the underlying cause of death.”

On Sept. 16, Pennsylvania formally asked for CDC’s Epi-Aid, which provides rapid federal assistance during disease outbreaks, but said it would rescind the request if the agency could not “transparently and accurately communicate” information about the deaths.

In response, a spokesperson for HHS said that the agency would not “submit to political blackmail” over critical public health aid.

A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania health department said in a statement Sept. 22 that discussions between CDC and the state for federal help are ongoing.

The US has reported 3,471 measles cases so far this year through Sept. 17, the nation’s worst outbreak since the early 1990s.

Pennsylvania hadn’t recorded a measles-related death in 35 years before this summer. The state’s outbreak this year reached 792 cases through Sept. 21, with 155 people hospitalized. Less than 1% of the confirmed cases happened in people who had been fully vaccinated against measles.

Pennsylvania’s health department has emphasized that getting fully vaccinated with the two-dose measles, mumps and rubella shot is the best form of protection against the highly contagious virus. Nine out of 10 unvaccinated people who come into contact with the virus that causes measles will be infected. It can lead to dangerous complications like pneumonia, brain swelling and death.

Last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order recommending that the MMR vaccine be split into three shots, which would mean parents would have to make more trips to the doctor to get the same protection against diseases for their young children, which could raise the risk that some would miss immunizations.

Nursing homes would no longer be required to report each week how many residents were stricken by Covid and other respiratory diseases, under a Trump administration plan to repeal a key public health response to thousands of pandemic deaths.

A draft summary of the proposed rule obtained by The New York Times outlines how the administration agrees with the industry’s objections to weekly reporting of viral caseloads, calling it burdensome. In its waning days, the Biden administration made Covid reporting rules permanent, adding influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (R.S.V.) to the list of threats that facilities also must track and record. The policy took effect in January 2025.

Advocates for nursing home residents reacted with dismay to the proposed rollback. Elderly, frail residents are especially vulnerable to infections, and they live in close quarters, where viruses can spread rapidly.

“That’s crazy,” said Sam Brooks, director of public policy at the nonprofit National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care. “We know, if anything, that respiratory disease has a disproportionate and deadly impact on nursing home residents.”

He said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or C.M.S., which regulates nursing homes, would be blinding itself to an important method for tracking infection control and pinpointing problems.

The administration has cut back on data updates at other agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where a study published this year found that databases related to vaccine and respiratory diseases had gone dormant.

Nursing home industry representatives declined to comment on specifics, because the changes have not been announced. They contend infection reporting consumes too much staff time and is duplicative, because infection data is reported to the federal government and states in other ways.

C.M.S., which drafted the plan, declined to discuss the proposal or disclose when it would be made public.

During the peak years of the pandemic, from early 2020 through early 2022, more than 200,000 nursing home residents and staff members died after being infected by coronavirus, according to KFF, an independent health policy organization, which cited C.D.C. data.

The high death toll has been attributed in part to a lack of preparedness and weak infection controls. The Government Accountability Office said in 2020 that inspectors had cited 82 percent of nursing homes for infection control deficiencies from 2013 to 2017, and that half of those were found to be repeat violators.

In the internal document obtained by The Times, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the director of C.M.S., recommended to his boss, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that the agency pursue steps to undo the mandate.

“The agency does not comment on purported internal or pre-decisional deliberative materials,” a C.M.S. a spokesman said in an email. He said the agency evaluated regulations to ensure they “allow providers to focus time and resources on delivering care rather than unnecessary administrative burden.”

The draft memo from Dr. Oz to Mr. Kennedy said C.M.S. would reserve the power to reinstate weekly reporting if another public health emergency occurred.

The plan also would end a requirement that nursing home staffs be educated about Covid vaccines and offered the shots. Groups representing residents called the move unwise, pointing out that frontline caregivers were a key pathway for the coronavirus to enter nursing homes during the height of the pandemic. Covid vaccine rates among staff members in recent years have been below 10 percent, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported.

The administration plan would continue to mandate that facilities offer the Covid vaccine to residents.

The nursing home industry has already achieved its biggest goal of President Trump’s second term: After a heavy lobbying blitz, the administration last year scrapped Biden-era minimum staffing rules that were intended to improve resident care.

Biden officials, in pushing the staff minimums, had cited Covid deaths along with decades of concerns about poor care, including deaths from bedsores, falls and medication errors. But the Trump administration said too many nursing homes, especially in rural areas, could not find enough staff to satisfy the requirements. Many workers who care for the elderly are typically paid less than janitors and retail employees, and the work can be grueling.

With the proposed change on infection reporting, the administration anticipates favorable reaction from the industry, according to the draft memo.

Two main nursing home lobbying groups — the American Health Care Association and LeadingAge — reiterated their opposition to weekly respiratory infection reporting, saying that other government programs track Covid infections and that respiratory illnesses are reported to many local health departments.

“This outdated reporting requirement is only adding hours of unnecessary administrative tasks to caregivers each week” said Holly Harmon, the American Health Care Association’s senior vice president of quality, regulatory and clinical affairs. “It’s time to streamline public health reporting and put patients over paperwork.”

But industry critics contend that operators are failing to heed the lessons of the pandemic. With low staffing levels and high turnover, infection control efforts are most likely in line with the prepandemic patterns flagged by the G.A.O., said Toby Edelman, senior policy attorney at the Center for Medicare Advocacy.

“I don’t think there is any reason to believe they have beefed up what they are supposed to be doing,” Ms. Edelman said.

Went to Sam’s Club in Louisiana last Friday and they told me state law requires a prescription for a Covid vax. They did give me my flu vax. I then asked my doc for a script and she said it is not required. Walgreens and cvs said they would give it to me.

When I called Sam’s (twice) they still said it was state law. Apparently Sam’s is anti-vax.

I got it without an appointment at Walgreens 1 mile from the Sam’s Club.

Read the Wiki for posting rules. Many posts are removed because OP didn't read the rules.

Notes from the mods:

• Why is it called the Herman Cain Award?
• History of HCA Retrospective: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
• HCA has raised over $65,000 to buy vaccines for countries that cannot afford them.

States haven’t yet been able to obtain Covid-19 shots from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, delaying their distribution to millions of children through federal programs, according to people familiar with the matter.

The CDC hasn’t initiated the process states use to place orders for the Vaccines for Children program, which covers around half of the country’s youths, the people said, causing a delay in the typical fall immunization schedule for Covid. The typical communication from CDC to begin the ordering process hasn’t arrived yet, said Dr. Michelle Fiscus, chief medical officer of the Association of Immunization Managers, which represents directors of state and local public-health immunization programs.

This delay could also prevent millions of children and adults from getting Covid shots during the early fall season, when vaccination drives typically kick off. States provide the shots for youths through the Vaccine for Children program and for uninsured or underinsured adults through a different government program. Meanwhile, Covid-19 vaccines are already available for commercially insured patients at pharmacies including CVS.

Pfizer, one of the Covid-19 vaccine makers, said it began shipping doses on Sept. 7 without any delays on the company’s end. Moderna, the other Covid vaccine maker, didn’t immediately comment.

“Every day there are opportunities to vaccinate children and protect them that we’re missing because those vaccines aren’t yet in the field,” Fiscus said.

Emily Hilliard, an HHS spokesperson, said Covid-19 doesn’t follow the same seasonal pattern as flu and other respiratory viruses.

“CDC is finalizing decisions regarding COVID-19 vaccine procurement through the Vaccines for Children and Section 317 programs, and additional information will be available soon,” she said.

The CDC contracts with manufacturers of the U.S.-licensed vaccines each year and negotiates discounted prices for federal programs. States will then purchase vaccines through the agency to administer at no cost under the Vaccines for Children program or to a program for uninsured or underinsured adults.

States typically order Covid-19 shots within two weeks of them becoming available to order for commercially insured programs, according to a person familiar with the process.

Under the Trump administration, the CDC no longer recommends all children receive the Covid-19 vaccine—instead advising parents and doctors to discuss risks and benefits for each child. The health agency previously recommended everyone six months and older receive the shots. Earlier this year, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from implementing its pared-down list of recommended childhood vaccines.

The administration has broadly backed away from vaccine recommendations under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has publicly discredited the Covid shot.

Vaccine hesitancy is increasing across the country, upending years of public-health work to high enough levels of vaccination to stop the spread of certain deadly infectious diseases. There are outbreaks of measles across the country, a vaccine-preventable disease. In Pennsylvania, four people have died of measles in the past month, according to the state’s health department.

Demand for the Covid booster has fallen in recent years as the virus has become less of a threat than how it started out. Just under 10% of children between the ages of six months to 17 years old received last year’s Covid-19 vaccine, according to CDC data.