Trump Directs Halt on Health Agency Advisories, Scientific Publications!

A public health expert described it as “the beginning of censorship” when the Trump administration ordered federal health agencies to cease all public communications, which had been keeping Americans informed during the recent outbreaks of Covid-19, influenza, and norovirus.

According to a report by The Washington Post on Tuesday night, officials from the administration instructed staff at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to stop outward communications. These agencies are all part of the Health and Human Services Department (HHS), to which President Donald Trump has nominated vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the head.

If confirmed, Kennedy has expressed intentions to overhaul the FDA and modify federal vaccine policies, potentially restricting or abolishing the CDC’s program that offers free vaccines to children who are uninsured or underinsured.

The directive to suspend public communications is for an undefined period and affects various outputs, including the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). This publication is a crucial epidemiological resource providing “timely, reliable, authoritative, accurate, objective, and useful public health information and recommendations” to healthcare professionals and the public.

Throughout the final year of Trump’s first term, as the coronavirus pandemic escalated, HHS officials criticized the MMWR as “hit pieces on the administration” and interfered with the CDC’s efforts to publish timely pandemic data that contradicted the White House’s stance.

Epidemiologist Ali Khan noted that while administrative changes at federal health agencies are not unheard of with a new government, the MMWR “should never be discontinued.”

The halt in communications comes at a time when the media is covering the widespread presence of four active viruses across the nation, termed a “quad-demic.”

Current CDC statistics indicate high or very high activity levels of influenza A, Covid-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), with rising cases of norovirus. Additionally, there is an “ongoing multi-state outbreak” of H5N1 avian flu affecting dairy cattle, with 67 human cases reported so far in this outbreak.

This week, there were supposed to be three MMWR updates about H5N1, but these were halted by the new policy. The Post also mentioned that it’s unclear if the communication ban would extend to new reports of avian flu or foodborne illness outbreaks.

Journalist Jeff Jarvis criticized Trump’s policy as a move towards “forced ignorance on health data” and urged officials in scientifically driven states to continue disseminating public health information independently.

The suspension affects not only MMWR updates but also website content, social media posts, clinical advisories from the CDC, and data releases from the National Center for Health Statistics, as reported by the Post.

Lucky Tran, director of science communication at Columbia University, pointed out that halting all external communications is not standard procedure when administrations change. Typically, websites are updated, and disease case counts and other routine operations continue.

Tran remarked that during Trump’s first term, there were similar restrictions on external communications at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior. “Now, in their second term,” he stated, “it seems they are targeting health agencies too.”