{"id":48559,"date":"2026-06-06T13:00:43","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T20:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=48559"},"modified":"2026-06-06T13:00:45","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T20:00:45","slug":"as-ebola-virus-spreads-we-see-the-terrifying-effects-of-trump-dismantling-usaid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/06\/06\/as-ebola-virus-spreads-we-see-the-terrifying-effects-of-trump-dismantling-usaid\/","title":{"rendered":"As ebola virus spreads, we see the terrifying effects of Trump dismantling USAID"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Healthcare<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Posted in Politics and Movements: US<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump slashed more than 30 CDC experts and 140 USAID staff who managed the 2018 Ebola outbreak on the ground in the DRC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by\u00a0Sasha Abramsky<\/a><\/strong> June 5, 2026 (therealnews.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Healthcare workers put on personal protective equipment (PPE) in the dressing area under the supervision of specialists before going to examine patients in the isolation ward during their shift at the Ebola Treatment Center (ETC) following its rehabilitation by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Munigi on June 2, 2026. Photo by Jospin Mwisha \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This article was originally published by Truthout<\/a> on June 04, 2026. It is shared here under a  Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)<\/a> license.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2018, when the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) experienced a severe Ebola outbreak<\/a>, more than 30 experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), close to 20 disaster-response specialists from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and 120 additional USAID staff were on the ground attempting to manage the outbreak, according to estimates from Friends of USAID<\/a>, an advocacy organization mainly made up of ex-USAID staffers. With that level of staffing in 2018, by and large, they succeeded in limiting the extent to which the disease spread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, as a particularly virulent strain of the Ebola virus \u2014 the Bundibugyo strain, against which there is no approved vaccine and for which there are no medicinal cures \u2014 runs rampant in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Friends of USAID estimate there is only one CDC staffer on the ground there, along with five additional State Department personnel. There are of course no USAID workers present, since the Trump administration dismantled USAID during the purges led by the so-called \u201cDepartment of Government Efficiency<\/a>\u201d (DOGE) in 2025, summarily firing local health care contractors around the world, including in countries with extreme poverty rates such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, since Donald Trump signed an executive order pulling the U.S. out of the World Health Organization<\/a> in early 2025 \u2014 a pullout that was completed in January of this year \u2014 CDC experts are no longer allowed to communicate with World Health Organization personnel. And despite a waiver having been granted for Ebola-related correspondence, in practice there has been a significant breakdown in communication between the two agencies over the past year \u2014 a breakdown promoted by the Trump administration, which recently sent out an email reminder to CDC staff not to correspond with the World Health Organization<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The consequences have already been devastating. In past Ebola outbreaks, even before mass testing of disease victims got underway, the CDC and USAID were able to tell when an epidemic was picking up steam based on on-the-ground medical observations and data about excess mortality figures. And, in response, they were able to position medical resources effectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the current outbreak, the decimated remnants of the CDC were caught unawares, only finding out about the outbreak once hundreds, and possibly thousands, of people had already been infected \u2014 thus making it far more likely that this outbreak will prove particularly difficult to corral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because so many experts have been fired over the past 16 months, and because political overseers have been limiting what the remaining scientists can say and write, \u201cthe CDC is not really functional anymore,\u201d Angela Rasmussen, professor of virology at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, told Truthout.<\/em> Rasmussen, who also serves as science chair for the Save America Movement, a nonpartisan organization that works to stop ongoing assaults on public health, added that the administration was no longer bothering to consult remaining CDC experts when making policy to respond to the outbreak. \u201cIt used to be an evidence-driven process and now it\u2019s a political-driven process,\u201d Rasmussen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI equate it to having the mayor\u2019s office taking on a fire without having a fire department or a fire hose,\u201d Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the CDC\u2019s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told Truthout<\/em>. Daskalakis, who resigned last August because he was so concerned about the direction that the Department of Health and Human Services was taking under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s leadership, says that when faced with grave public health challenges, the administration is simply resorting to \u201ca lot of posturing, with, I think, bad consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I equate it to having the mayor\u2019s office taking on a fire without having a fire department or a fire hose.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Faced with the twin public health emergencies of the Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, alongside the hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship from which people disembarked to the four corners of the Earth, the Trump administration\u2019s response has been, at best, ad hoc. Instead of implementing expert-driven protocols, it has leaned on its nativist instincts to simply attempt to lock the virus out. That attempt proved a colossal failure during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. And, according to Rasmussen and Daskalakis, the signs are not auspicious for it being a successful strategy against the global health crises of 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For U.S. residents exposed to hantavirus, the Trump administration has ordered mandatory<\/a> 42-day quarantines in a secure facility in Omaha, Nebraska \u2014 despite the fact that experts say the virus doesn\u2019t spread easily and that home quarantine would be just as effective. For U.S. residents exposed to the Ebola virus in Africa, the response has been to refuse them entry back into the United States and to instead have them isolated and, if need be, treated in Kenya \u2014 a situation that Rasmussen and other experts say makes little sense given the huge investments made over the past decade in secure biocontainment units in the U.S. \u201cThey\u2019re throwing evidence-based risk assessment out the window, and are trampling people\u2019s 14th Amendment rights,\u201d Rasmussen told Truthout<\/em>. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to take Americans\u2019 freedom away, there should be a real basis for that \u2014 and there\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It took so long for the CDC to say anything about hantavirus or to hear from the DRC about Ebola. Relationships that took decades to build have simply disappeared.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Telling people in the U.S. that if they get exposed to the Ebola virus, they won\u2019t be allowed back into their home country for months is, experts believe, a surefire way to discourage U.S. doctors and public health professionals from heading to Africa to try to contain the outbreak. In other words, it is a strategy all but guaranteed to make a bad situation worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, African victims of the disease, who could certainly benefit from access to the treatment center being established in Kenya, are being deliberately excluded from it. \u201cThere\u2019s an equity issue,\u201d Daskalakis says of this policy. This, too, will end up hurting public health, as the Ebola patients denied access to the Kenyan facility will, in all likelihood, end up spreading the disease further in their communities or in poorly resourced medical facilities to which some eventually may turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aryn Backus, a CDC employee who has been on administrative leave for more than a year since her job was targeted by DOGE, and who is now deputy executive director of the National Public Health Coalition, told Truthout<\/em> that the ham-handed U.S. response to the outbreak overseas makes it more likely that the disease will ultimately find its way to the United States. \u201cDiseases don\u2019t understand borders,\u201d she said. And, without detailed international coordination, the likelihood of their spreading far and wide grows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are seemingly not at the table anymore,\u201d Daskalakis added, as he detailed the myriad ways that the U.S.\u2019s role as global public health leader has been corroded. \u201cIt took so long for the CDC to say anything about hantavirus or to hear from the DRC about Ebola. Relationships that took decades to build have simply disappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sasha Abramsky<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Sasha Abramsky is a freelance journalist and a part-time lecturer at the University of California at Davis. Abramsky\u2019s latest book, American Carnage: How Trump, Musk, and DOGE Butchered the US Government, is available for pre-order now and will be released in January. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, New York Magazine, The Village Voice and Rolling Stone. He also writes a weekly political column. Originally from England, with a bachelor\u2019s in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford University and a master\u2019s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, he now lives in Sacramento, California. More by Sasha Abramsky<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Posted in Politics and Movements: US Trump slashed more than 30 CDC experts and 140 USAID staff who managed the 2018 Ebola outbreak on the ground in the DRC. by\u00a0Sasha Abramsky June 5, 2026 (therealnews.com) Healthcare workers put on personal protective equipment (PPE) in the dressing area under the supervision… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1880],"tags":[1987,1986],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48559"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48560,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48559\/revisions\/48560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}