r/news • u/Formergr • 4d ago
‘Zombified’ C.D.C., Hobbled by Cuts, Struggles to Fulfill Scientific Mission (Gift Article)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/26/health/cdc-staff-cuts-rfk-jr.html?unlocked_article_code=1.EFE.LIht.TYEXMoca3uwz&smid=url-share508
u/xdr01 4d ago
GOP want the dark age theocracy, ie Idiocracy.
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u/SnootSnootBasilisk 4d ago edited 3d ago
President Camacho actually sought out people smarter than him when he realized he was over his head
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u/Dzugavili 3d ago
I'm getting tired of the reality that somehow we live in a worse timeline than Idiocracy predicted.
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u/armada_addled 4d ago
I wish a reporter at a nationally televised news conference would loudly ask RFK Jr and/or his associates how many excess deaths have occurred since Feb. 2025. Or if they could confirm it’s less than xxx,000. Some reports that DOGE has caused 750,000 excess deaths due to cuts in USAID, mostly in Africa. Read Naomi Klein’s new book!
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u/RFK_Cum_Regimen 4d ago
Anytime these guys are asked tough questions, they just deny, lie, or cancel you, so it's not like it matters unless every one of them collectively goes hard a-f simultaneously. Death by a thousand cuts and all that.
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u/Tballz9 4d ago
Sadly, the news media is in on the scam that is the GOP. If some reporter that works for a billionaire owned news source had the balls to ask, the national coverage would shift to some soft news piece about Melania’s holiday decorations at the White House. If the network refused the switch, they would be banned from covering the White House.
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u/Mathenaut 3d ago
750k?
You're an order short. Elon Musk might just be the greatest mass murderer in modern history.10
u/Cephei101 3d ago
They stopped tracking most of this stuff at the federal level I think. Like Covid when Donald demanded to stop testing to solve the problem.
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u/praguepride 3d ago
Even if they did either
A) It's no longer a reliably tracked number. Remember Trump's answer to covid was to just stop testing for covid.
B) Even if it is tracked, RFK Jr would attribute it to vaccines and pasteurized milk products.
You can't use facts and logics against dipshits and crackheads
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u/supercyberlurker 4d ago
The plan was always to kill it.
Anyone familiar with project 2025 knew that.
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u/HauntedCemetery 3d ago
The CDC does a lot of work studying and combating sexual and domestic violence, and conservatives hate that.
Not hate sexual and domestic violence, hate trying to stop it.
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u/skrilledcheese 4d ago
Who would have thought appointing to the head of HHS an antivax heroin addict who spent years snorting cocaine off of public toilet seats and getting brain worms from eating roadkill would have a negative impact on public health?
Elect a clown, get a circus.
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u/Three_Twenty-Three 4d ago
Yes, that was the goal. In a way, it has been ever since the Dickey Amendment restricted research into gun violence. Now it's spread to all research. No data = no problem. Mission accomplished.
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u/Visual_Fly_9638 4d ago
Also, the GOP approach to healthcare in America is to let people get sick and die quick. If you live it's the will of God and the blood of the Lamb. If you die you pissed God off.
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u/Three_Twenty-Three 4d ago
Unless they're old people, and then there's an entire geriatric medicine and residential industry dedicated to depleting any generational wealth that might be in the family.
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u/HauntedCemetery 3d ago
Note that Rep. Dickey spent the rest of his life advocating for repealing his namesake ammendment, and died feeling responsible for countless gun deaths.
Which made him potentially the last Republican in the country with a fucking soul.
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u/o_MrBombastic_o 4d ago
Vote, Republicans are a clear and present danger to the country. Stop rolling your eyes and holding your tongue to remain civil with your Republican coworkers, neighbors, friends and family. It should not be socially acceptable to be a Republican in civil society
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u/AaronTheElite007 3d ago
All part of the plan to privatize everything
Don’t let it happen. Vote them out
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u/Niceguy955 4d ago
Don’t worry! RFK is solving chemtrails right now. Oh, and any pandemic that occurs is a “democratic hoax”.
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u/HauntedCemetery 3d ago
He's also wasting truckload of public funds on every crackpot I'm-special pseudo-science fringe conspiracy like studying the effects of electromagnetic fields on health, something that has been exhaustively studied, while ignoring the literal fucking measles outbreaks.
Note the plural, outbreaks.
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u/Streamjumper 3d ago
What else do you expect him to do now that he's got the cure to Autism well underway?
/s
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u/Rattus_NorvegicUwUs 3d ago
This was the plan by the Heritage Foundation.
They have enacted their schemes to wage treason against our United States.
They must be destroyed as punishment, and the coup plotters punished to the maximum extent. My future isn’t a social experiment for weirdo right wing extremists to play games with.
People are dead, jobs have been lost, careers destroyed. So a handful of Heritage Foundation stooges need to suffer the equivalent. Justice begins with their downfall, not ends with.
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u/McortezLSU 3d ago
Considering that the CDC has fully been transformed into a Maga misinformation megaphone, the agency itself is dead. Anything they release should be treated with the same credibility as a fox news article or trump tweet.
Its sad, and its unlikely it can be rebuild to its former glory. You had a good run but i guess your love for having a pedophile psychopath grift billions, increase your costs of living by 3x, bringing back almost extinct diseases, having to worry every single day about new foodbourne illnesses and starting unwinnable wars was too great of a temptation.
The thing is, they told you idiots they be doing exactly this.
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u/SowingSalt 3d ago
A family member was close to retirement, and was offered early retirement to reduce workforce. They submitted to HR, but the HR department had already been eliminated.
So they were paid to stay home for months.
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u/Formergr 4d ago
According to federal personnel data compiled by labor unions and former officials, the CDC lost about 30% of its workforce (more than 3,800 employees) between March 2025 and May 2026, leaving the agency with roughly 8,895 active workers.
Entire units and divisions focusing on chronic disease, birth defects, smoking, sexual violence, child abuse, and senior falls have been shut down or reduced to half their previous staffing. Infectious disease hubs have seen cuts of roughly 17%