America and the threat to global health - what happens next?

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I see Trump has fired the head of the CDC because she won't sign off on non-scientific waffle and is therefore "not aligned" with Trump's vision for American health. My worry, as we saw with Covid, is how quickly communicable diseases can spread across the world. I read last month America had a case of the plague, yesterday it was flesh eating screw worms... At what point do we start quarantining people from countries with dubious healthcare practices? Am I the only one worrying about this?

We can’t control our borders so how do we stop people entering the country with a communicable disease? There’s a lot of worse countries than America regarding healthcare.

Um, global health is global. We are in it together until people (men usually) make stupid decisions and cause war or opt out of science. I worry about all of it but in particular America now as they have cases of nasty communicable diseases and aren't funding research or a scientific approach. As far as I am aware we've not had the plague bought in by any refugees...largely because even their countries do believe that medicines and science work. America is a global outlier.

Um, global health is global. We are in it together until people (men usually) make stupid decisions and cause war or opt out of science. I worry about all of it but in particular America now as they have cases of nasty communicable diseases and aren't funding research or a scientific approach. As far as I am aware we've not had the plague bought in by any refugees...largely because even their countries do believe that medicines and science work. America is a global outlier.

The US used to be a good source of research we could use to help us control disease. That capability being degraded will be bad for us all.

But the main impact will be felt by Americans when effective public health programmes are lost.

As a PP says, there are plenty of countries with poor healthcare. And it's not like you have to be born in a country to catch a communicable disease there. British holidaymakers pick plenty up and bring it back with them.

You do know that screw worm case is from an El Salvadorean migrant, don’t you? So maybe cease all travel from the Americas. And plague is also regularly found in China so, well, you know what to do.

Where they come from is largely irrelevant if you don't do anything to curb it - America is now not reliable to curb and control infectious diseases. We need to act on that.

It’s a great idea. In fact, you could mandate that all visitors and migrants have full vaccinations and doctor checks prior to entry. Will solve a lot of your problems at once (RIP your tourist industry tho)

I'm going to guess you are American from the attitude.
If you can't grasp that global health is something important when looking at one of the largest countries on the planet with disposable income to fly then I'm not sure what your agenda is. Although that is also quite obvious from your first post.

Not sure why youre getting such weird replies, of course its a huge concern if one of the largest countries with lots of global travel stops believing in vaccines and public health measures. You would think we would learn from Covid but too many people seem determined not to.

Sure, but when they get home we have a free healthcare service where they can rock up and be treated by medicines proven to work by science.

What will America do when diseases spread and they are all told to drink Cranberry juice or whatever? Try to come here?

I am assuming AI going rogue - very aggressive pro-American and anti immigration responses, like dog whistle coding...

What will America do when diseases spread and they are all told to drink Cranberry juice or whatever? Try to come here?

Covid vaccine never prevent the spread of Covid, let’s not forget. Is this about the overhaul of the COVID shots? Because they are entirely commonsense

It's already been done. Immigrants from many countries have to take a TB test.

Visitors from what many view as poor, unhealthy countries have to get mandatory health insuramce before they are given tourist visas.

The idea that tourists from other countries do not have health requirements is ridiculous. America should be in that category, a country with poor public health.

It’s not just the USA. Malawi is about to run out of TB drugs because the UK and others cut their aid budgets.

I think for nearly any type of visa will need a background check. Obviously irregular entries are not having those prior to arrival tho

I don't think we need to go as far as the plague. Measles is on the rise.

It’s true and entirely reasonable to be concerned about that specifically.

The biggest threat to global health posed by this administration is the cutting to infectious disease research budgets. The loss of that funding is HUGE and will have an enormous impact. Followed rapidly by the cuts to USAID.

Obviously, the domestic health policies (cuts to food programs, pollution deregulation, hospital closures, anti-science and anti-vax messaging) are utterly disastrous for public health within the US and that will have some consequences as infectious diseases don't respect borders. However, it is mostly a domestic issue affecting the US public. It is and will continue to hit them extremely hard.

And of course, his warmongering, let's not forget that. That's a pretty big threat to global health too.

It’s a concern to global health trends. But the idea of quarantining people from places with ‘dubious healthcare practices’ is entirely political.

We need to quarantine people who represent a threat to our health, which means somewhere with a current epidemic of a dangerous infectious disease.

Yes but now they are slashing budgets and departments in epidemiology and going away from the proven methods, we can't trust them to monitor outbreaks. Which is why it's more of a worry because they may not even know there is an epidemic until they've spread it all over and abroad.

It's easy to read a headline and know nothing of the history or of the norms. The US has always had forms of plague, but they aren't spread person to person, they tend to come from contact with wild animals.

What's happening with monitoring is an absolute disaster, global-healthcare-wise.

And to whoever said "there are far worse countries than the US for healthcare', that's much less true than you think. The US has a cohort of people with excellent healthcare, and a massive number of people with next to none. 100% a symptom of the commercialisation of healthcare that they cling to.

I'm honestly not interested in plague but if you ask about HIV or mpox then people at the top are saying those are going to be the next most troublesome diseases, simply because there is no longer much monitoring or reporting of cases and they take intensive involvement in communities to keep at low levels.

I 100% think this is a worrying firing and that RFK is a risible crank in most of his professional field. But it’s also still true of course that the US has good to excellent health infrastructure for such a big country and most states have much tougher vaccine requirements than for example the UK. As the country that gave Andrew Wakefield to the world we should both be wary and also self aware.