Pardon the lateness of the newsletter this week—I was at my local No Kings protest. If you’re protest-curious, these rallies can be a great start. They’re chill and can connect you to other movements and people! I collected several zines and info on other political action I can join later. Plus, there were lots of costumes this time (sadly no Portland Frogs in my area). There was only one pathetic agitator yelling “Trump is king” before being completely drowned out by the crowd.

With that out of the way, this week I’ve got some bad news, some good news, and some news I can only describe as “ugly.” You really wanna gawk at the ugly, I promise it’s worth the cringe.

A couple quick things to mention before getting into this week’s CDC firings—if you consume protein powder regularly, you should read this analysis from Consumer Report on lead levels in protein supplements:

Outbreaks of measles are continuing in several states, including South Carolina, Minnesota, Utah, and Arizona. The CDC is continuing to update their measles dashboard on Wednesdays, despite the government shutdown. Check it out if you want to see how many cases have been confirmed in your state or region. On to the big bad news this week…

Late on October 10th, I read a Bluesky post breaking the story of a massive wave of firings at the CDC. I was devastated to read that the layoffs included the Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report (MMWR) team, members of the measles response team, as well as people in the Epidemic Intelligence Service. 1,300 people got their notice! 1,300! The MMWR layoffs completely took me by surprise. I’m very familiar with their vital reports, as I’ve read and cited many of them for a variety of reasons in my career. I couldn’t even imagine being suddenly let go from work that helps doctors, scientists, public health professionals, and governments stay aware of the latest information we have across public health. I saw a lot of outrage and upset online over these firings, too.

In a classic Trump move, many of the layoffs were promptly reversed. I am not kidding, y’all, these people working on key areas of public health and safety are being jerked around because of a “coding error.” Yeah, OK. I personally would not want to piss these people off, yet here we are, coding error-ing their jobs away. It’s hard to tell how much of this is carelessness as opposed to maliciousness, at this point.

Unfortunately, not all of the firings were reversed. The MMWR is back (for now), but hundreds of CDC employees remain fired, including staff on the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). If you’re not familiar, they’re largely the reason RFK Jr can loudly proclaim that Americans eat too much ultra-processed foods. The NHANES really helps us understand the American diet. Apparently the cuts here are enough to threaten planning and conducting future surveys, leaving us in the dark on yet another area of public health in America.

In summary, the administration is basically turning the Evil Dial and constantly checking posts online if people get mad in case they need to undo it. Kinda like TV focus groups! Wow, I hate having a TV president!

There is quite the legal battle happening around the shutdown layoffs, thankfully. While this isn’t a silver bullet to stop the administration from gutting the CDC, it seems to be slowing things down. We need every moment we can get to ensure the work continues.

Additionally, a new public health alliance seems in the works for the governors of several states. The website is pretty bare bones, but you can read more here about which governors are already getting involved. This could bode well for keeping public health afloat in different regions of the country, as things don’t seem to be stabilizing any time soon. I shared a different coalition of states organizing local public health initiatives few weeks ago. That was for the Northeast US; there’s also a West Coast alliance forming. As time goes on, we’ll see which of these initiatives move forward effectively. While far from ideal, it’s better to have people working hard to keep public health going than nobody doing it. Disease certainly isn’t going anywhere while the US, um, melts down? I don’t know how else to describe the current moment. Regardless, my hope is that alliances like these help Americans face disease and disaster with as much information as possible to keep communities prepared and safe.

It’s undeniably scary for public health as a whole to face such huge threats. This is your regular reminder from me that nobody is giving up on public health. There are still passionate people all over that care about public health and keeping us all ready to face the health challenges ahead.

If you need a distraction (and we all do, at times), I’ve got you. This month you should check out the ShortBox Comics Fair! There’s a treasure trove of debuting comics featuring stories of all kinds right at your fingertips! I love comics so much!!! You should definitely read comics instead of doom scrolling, so get to browsing this year’s collection!

I think we can officially confirm that RFK Jr and Dr. Oz are secretly locked in a competition to see who can say the most insane thing to the American public and get away with it. That’s the only way I can wrap my mind around these two saying, uh, the weird stuff they said this week. “What’d they say?” you think to yourself. I’m sorry you asked.

RKF Jr came out swinging in the competition to say “our parents aren’t having children.” Here’s the clip, if you want to watch for yourself. I’ve got the longer quote below if you can’t stomach seeing the guy.

Alright, so that’s weird to say and a weird way to say it! But what’s Dr. Oz got for us in this competition? This one is so weird, I can’t even find a video clip:

UNDER. BABIED. Yeah. Underbabied. Apparently, Dr. Oz seems to be trying to make “the art of the heal” happen, too. It’s like he’s been in a lab concocting phrases that make me specifically cringe to my core. UGLY.

Oh, and speaking of ugly… RFK Jr’s wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, has decided she needs to go on The View to defend her husband? Promote her book? I’m not sure, but it’s official, this is the TV presidency in full glory. We don’t need policy. We don’t need so-called “evidence.” We need as many freaks on TV getting loud and strange for unclear reasons. Hines says on The View “I’m not a political person,” before going on to talk all about RFK Jr and Trump. OK, girl. Whatever you say.

How’d the interview even go? Well, the audience clapped when one of the hosts, Sonny Hostin, said RFK Jr has done a lot of harm, so far. Here’s that video, if you want to see this. If you don’t want to watch any of this crap, you should see the other noteworthy thing she said in that interview in headline form (it’s funniest this way):

Is Larry David writing all of this? I feel like he could write this episode. I’m really hoping that soon, I can look back at this with y’all and we can laugh really hard about all this, knowing it’s over. In the meantime, I’ll see you at the next protest or coping by listening to this for the billionth time this year. We should never have a TV government ever again, I think!

Professor Batty