ATLANTA — CDC researchers are being forced to skip a pivotal conference on infectious disease this week due to the government shutdown, missing out on high-level discussions not long after surges in measles and whooping cough hit the U.S.
IDWeek, the largest annual meeting of infectious disease experts in the nation, is the leading venue for experts to trade information about diagnosing, treating and preventing threats including bird flu, superbugs and HIV, among many other topics.
The CDC typically sends scores of researchers and outbreak investigators. But of the hundreds of speakers listed in the printed program for the four-day conference, about 10 were identified as CDC scientists. And even that small number didn’t show up.
The main reason is the government shutdown that started Oct. 1. Federal scientists aren’t being paid and conference appearances are postponed unless they are funded outside of annual government budgets.
Problems were apparent long before the shutdown
The Infectious Disease Society of America and its conference partners selected Atlanta, where the CDC is based, as its host more than a year ago.
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Organizers were excited to have the meeting in “the heart of public health,” and CDC officials agreed to be heavily involved in planning, said Dr. Yohei Doi, a University of Pittsburgh researcher who helped organize the meeting.
But soon after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, there was an immediate, if temporary, freeze on CDC communications and participation at medical meetings. That was followed by layoffs and research funding cuts.
“As things started to evolve, they said they no longer would be able to attend,” Doi said of CDC speakers.
Disease threats are looming
The CDC’s absence comes as infectious disease specialists should be in high demand, in part because the worst pandemic in a century hit only a few years ago. Measles and whooping cough have been surging. And new threats are constantly emerging.
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he wants the CDC to primarily focus on infectious diseases, though he was a leading voice in the antivaccine movement before Trump appointed him to lead the federal government’s health agencies.
The CDC has already lost a quarter of its workforce through layoffs, buyouts, resignations and other actions. And the Trump administration is trying to lay off hundreds more, an effort temporarily blocked by a federal judge.
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“It’s the most painful irony of all” to see these actions by the administration amid serious threats, said Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota infectious disease researcher.
Osterholm, who spoke at the conference Sunday, said he is working with others to take on work that the CDC has curtailed.
He announced a new open-access publication called Public Health Alerts to put out the kind of reports that were the staple of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Separately, a collaboration involving dozens of foundations would pool resources to fund some of the disease research work that the government has stopped doing, Osterholm said.
“This is not business as usual anymore, but it doesn’t mean that we have to sit back and take it,” Osterholm said.
HHS has discouraged federal collaborations with some medical organizations, including IDSA, and that likely had a chilling effect, said Dr. Debra Houry, who was the CDC’s chief medical officer until she resigned in August to protest agency changes.
A HHS spokeswoman, Emily Hilliard, said the administration believes federal scientists should share their research and expertise with peers and the public, and that conferences are vetted “to ensure compliance with ethics rules and the responsible use of taxpayer funds.”
Dr. Anna Yousaf, a CDC infectious disease doctor, told The Associated Press she was invited to present findings about long-term outcomes of COVID-19-infected children who develop a rare inflammatory condition. She wasn’t allowed to attend this week’s conference, though a collaborator at another organization was planning to share the research, she said.
Other CDC scientists were in similar predicaments, she said, and it’s not clear how many of them could find such a workaround. That potentially means some research findings won’t be shared with researchers and physicians who could put the information to use.
Yousaf is currently on furlough due to the government shutdown, and said she was not speaking in an official capacity.
“It appears to me that HHS’s goal is to prevent the dissemination of scientific information,” she said. “It’s insane.”
— Mike Stobbe
