A couple of weeks ago we discussed how the cuts made to HHS and specifically the CDC’s FoodNet tracking platform were making it much harder to track and back trace the source of the country’s current cyclosporiasis outbreak. You’ll have heard about this outbreak in the news by now. It’s the one where you begin pooping yourself uncontrollably. It is not, however, funny. 10% of cases will result in hospitalization. The most recent counts from the CDC suggest that there have been more than 22,000 cases of the illness across 15 states. Those numbers are very much in question, however, both due to general underreporting and, again, funding and staffing cuts at CDC.
Just this week, in fact, we have now learned that two people in Michigan have died from cyclosporiasis. That information was and is, at the time of this writing, missing from the FDA’s dedicated page to inform the public on the outbreak. That page hasn’t been updated since July 24th, in fact, which is the exact opposite of what you’d want the government to be doing in a public health emergency. And it’s reportedly not because the government isn’t aware of these deaths.
While news of the deaths made widespread headlines Monday, federal health agencies under the Trump administration were mostly silent. The Food and Drug Administration—which is conducting traceback investigations to identify foods contaminated with the parasite—has not updated its outbreak investigation page since July 24, nearly two weeks ago, as of publication time.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, meanwhile, added a banner notice on its outbreak update webpage saying that the agency was “aware” of the two cases. But its reporting data was not updated to include the two deaths as of this publication.
Why has this government been so slow to report accurately on these unfortunate deaths and the overall case counts for the outbreak? Some combination of those same budget and staff cuts along with a general apathy at HHS. With fewer people and resources to not only track the disease, but to maintain the dashboards meant to update the public, the numbers are slow to come in and untrustworthy when they do.
And with RFK Jr. at the helm of public health, well, the government is generally in the land of We-Don’t-Give-A-Shit.
Two weeks ago, Kennedy confidentially told reporters that the Cyclospora outbreak—linked to lettuce and other unidentified fresh produce—was “under control.” Last week, he announced his own cooking show on YouTube and released the first episode in which he helped prepare a meal that included a fresh salad.
The buffoonery on display from Kennedy and our health agencies is breathtaking. They should be assisting in combating this outbreak, along with those of measles and pertussis. Putting that aside, they should at least be able to tally up the case count numbers to demonstrate their own failures, but it’s clear they’re not really interested in doing that either. Instead, Kennedy in particular wants to host his cooking show and yell at journalists instead. Kid Rock must not be returning his calls any longer, I suppose.
Now, to be clear, this illness carries a 2 week incubation period, and the recalls of the suspected produce that is believed to have caused all of this are within a time frame that cases may still be stemming from that same source. But that’s not a certainty, and it will be important for our federal health agencies to continue to track cases in near real time to determine if there is, in fact, another vector by which cyclosporiasis is spreading.
Unfortunately, every indication is that those same health agencies just aren’t all that interested in doing this the right way.