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

[somethingnewandexciting]

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?

Yes I agree measles is a more immediate issue, especially since anti-vaxxing went crazy here too via social media and now so many kids are at risk because they aren't protected. So yes that will likely be what we see first affecting us. Again though, we at least have free healthcare.

I mentioned the worst case scenario's because I can see a time when they become more rampant if US healthcare trajectory doesn't change. Densely populated areas like American cities with big tourism and business links could spread these very quickly around the globe. It leaves them very vulnerable to bio security threats too.

Much as I hate the decisions being made by this administration, the plague thing is a non-story. Plague still exists as a vector-borne disease in many parts of the world, including the US. The concern is human-human transmission of the most serious type (pneumonic) and there hasn't been a case of that for a long time (the 20's was the last recorded case in the US). Plague is just a headline grabber because it's scary.

Firearms represent a much bigger immediate public health risk in America than plague or measles (though obviously it's a huge worry that a vaccine preventable disease that has been eradicated is back).

publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/guns-remain-leading-cause-of-death-for-children-and-teens

Yeah like we’ll never get rid of rabies, plague, hanta virus, etc because our wildlife will always carry it. Couple of people annually die of rabies, mostly from bats

@somethingnewandexciting ,

‘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.’

Seriously?!

I suspect even with the cuts, the U.S still spends more on disease monitoring per capita than 95% of the World.

The CDC is the top of a monitoring pyramid that starts at hospital and doctor level and is also done at state level.

Are you proposing we quarantine people from 95% of the world? And for how long, and where?

Even at the height of various epidemics, we have only quarantined people with active disease. And you want to quarantine people just because you don’t like the health policies,!

Vaccines are another issue. A lot of the world still requires evidence of a yellow fever vaccine. Can you imagine the outcry if people in the U.K. were refused entry (or quarantined) in the U.S without evidence of a measles vaccine?

If they aren't tracing disease or curing it, yes. They will become a danger to global health largely because they are a nation that can afford to travel, in many cases before becoming symptomatic even. If we don't know what they have because they lack the basic structure of healthcare - CDC not fit for purpose - they are not on the same page as the rest of the world and become an active threat as incubators of disease.

I'm not alone in worrying, it turns out:

America is threat to global health due to not recognising science's importance in healthcare https://www.bmj.com/content/390/bmj.r1692/rr

https://www.yahoo.com/news/epidemiologist-flags-dangers-donald-trump-091239053.html - global stage

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/health/trump-state-health-grants-cuts.html - in US state health budget cuts

Trump doesn't want to be monitored on global standards https://thedoctor.bma.org.uk/articles/health-society/incredibly-alarming-trumps-usa-steps-away-from-global-health-role/ so effectively encouraging disease in other countries which will end up unchecked in America where they won't track it.