Hantavirus Is a Wakeup Call. Will Trump Hear It?
Deep cuts and an anti-science ideology are leaving us vulnerable to the next big pandemic or biological threat.
Medical experts tell us that the risk posed by the current Hantavirus outbreak, responsible for three deaths, is low. The threat posed by the Trump administration’s posture toward public health is another story.
As seventeen American passengers on the ill-fated Hondius cruise ship are monitored at the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and other U.S. travelers shelter at home, it’s time to acknowledge a far more deadly risk: deep cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an anti-science ideology leave us vulnerable to the next big pandemic or biological threat.
I was joined at the hip with the CDC’s impressive cadre of epidemiologists when I served as the FBI’s on-scene commander at the site of the nation’s first anthrax murder. Those disease detectives and I led what would become the largest hazardous materials evidence recovery effort in FBI history, at the American Media Incorporated headquarters – a three-story, 66,000 square foot building in Boca Raton, Florida.
The CDC immediately surged significant resources to Palm Beach County to begin the painstaking task of determining how and where microscopic Anthrax spores came into contact with the victim. Around the country at multiple locations where anthrax was turning up, hundreds of interviews were conducted, and thousands of samples were collected and analyzed as the deadly bacteria was traced through the U.S. mail system.
The story of how this effort worked has already been told. The question now is, can the CDC do it again?