Epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding on MSNBC's Deadline White House on January 24, 2025 (Image: Screengrab via MSNBC / YouTube)
January 24, 2025
ALTERNET
One scientist who studies disease outbreaks is warning that President Donald Trump's campaign of retribution against his political enemies is stifling important research.
In a Friday interview with MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace, Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding blasted Trump's recent decision to halt communications, travel and hiring for the National Institutes of Health, which oversees more than $47 billion dedicated to funding scientific research and experiments across the country. Science magazine reported this week that the announcement from the Trump White House was causing "uncertainty, fear and panic" among the scientific community.
Dr. Feigl-Ding said the explanation that the announcement was just a "temporary pause" until February doesn't change the fact that the abrupt cancellation of grant review panels, hiring and trips to present new research will be debilitating to important ongoing projects. He lamented that that this week marked the first time in decades that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn't publish its weekly Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
READ MORE: Which infectious disease is likely to be the biggest emerging problem in 2025?
"These in-person meetings actually will be probably rescheduled two, three, four months from now. And the impact of that research is we're talking about medical research, clinical trials that cannot pause, but they are scattered around the U.S., around the world trying to find cures for all these diseases," Dr. Feigl-Ding said. "So the impact on universities will be humongous."
"Entire university budgets might be frozen for quite an extra-long period of time," he continued. "It's devastating because now it also, even if they restart it, there will be this, you know, eerie silence, this unspoken, 'you better not publish anything that we don't want you to publish,' which again, during the pandemic, we know the Trump administration muzzled MMWR scientific reports on the pandemic. Anything that he doesn't like. So they will have a huge chilling effect."
Currently, the United States is in the midst of an avian flu outbreak, which has resulted in poultry farms having to cull entire flocks of chickens who have the virus. This has caused the price of eggs to skyrocket to an all-time high, despite Trump's promises that he would lower the prices of grocery staples like eggs under his administration. Dr. Feigl-Ding called on his fellow scientists to take a stand against the politicization of their research and embrace being "public advocates" for their work.
"The scientific community can't stand back while misinformation, disinformation and the muzzling of science is ongoing," he said. "I think this second Trump administration is truly the time when scientists will hopefully stand up and realize that they can't just rely on doing the science."
Watch the video of Dr. Feigl-Ding's full segment below, or by clicking this link.
One scientist who studies disease outbreaks is warning that President Donald Trump's campaign of retribution against his political enemies is stifling important research.
In a Friday interview with MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace, Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding blasted Trump's recent decision to halt communications, travel and hiring for the National Institutes of Health, which oversees more than $47 billion dedicated to funding scientific research and experiments across the country. Science magazine reported this week that the announcement from the Trump White House was causing "uncertainty, fear and panic" among the scientific community.
Dr. Feigl-Ding said the explanation that the announcement was just a "temporary pause" until February doesn't change the fact that the abrupt cancellation of grant review panels, hiring and trips to present new research will be debilitating to important ongoing projects. He lamented that that this week marked the first time in decades that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn't publish its weekly Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
READ MORE: Which infectious disease is likely to be the biggest emerging problem in 2025?
"These in-person meetings actually will be probably rescheduled two, three, four months from now. And the impact of that research is we're talking about medical research, clinical trials that cannot pause, but they are scattered around the U.S., around the world trying to find cures for all these diseases," Dr. Feigl-Ding said. "So the impact on universities will be humongous."
"Entire university budgets might be frozen for quite an extra-long period of time," he continued. "It's devastating because now it also, even if they restart it, there will be this, you know, eerie silence, this unspoken, 'you better not publish anything that we don't want you to publish,' which again, during the pandemic, we know the Trump administration muzzled MMWR scientific reports on the pandemic. Anything that he doesn't like. So they will have a huge chilling effect."
Currently, the United States is in the midst of an avian flu outbreak, which has resulted in poultry farms having to cull entire flocks of chickens who have the virus. This has caused the price of eggs to skyrocket to an all-time high, despite Trump's promises that he would lower the prices of grocery staples like eggs under his administration. Dr. Feigl-Ding called on his fellow scientists to take a stand against the politicization of their research and embrace being "public advocates" for their work.
"The scientific community can't stand back while misinformation, disinformation and the muzzling of science is ongoing," he said. "I think this second Trump administration is truly the time when scientists will hopefully stand up and realize that they can't just rely on doing the science."
Watch the video of Dr. Feigl-Ding's full segment below, or by clicking this link.
Trump Orders Federal Health Agencies to Suspend Advisories, Scientific Reports
"Officials in sane and scientific states must band together to report data on their own," said one journalist.
Two people wear face masks in New York City on December 30, 2024, as public health officials warned that respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cases had jumped in the city and advised people to wear masks in crowded indoor places.
(Photo: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Julia Conley
Jan 22, 2025
COMMON DREAMS
"The censorship begins," said one public health expert as the Trump administration directed federal health agencies to suspend all external communications, like those that have updated people across the U.S. in recent weeks amid outbreaks of Covid-19, influenza, and norovirus.
The Washington Postreported Tuesday evening that administration officials delivered the directive to staff members at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The agencies operate under the Health and Human Services Department (HHS), which President Donald Trump has nominated vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead. Kennedy has signaled that if confirmed he would purge the ranks of the FDA and change federal vaccine guidelines, including potentially limiting or eliminating the CDC's program that provides free immunizations to uninsured and underinsured children.
The pause on external communications will be in place for an indeterminate amount of time, according to the Post, and applies to the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) compiled by the CDC. The epidemiological record includes "timely, reliable, authoritative, accurate, objective, and useful public health information and recommendations" for healthcare professionals and the public.
During the last year of Trump's first term, as the coronavirus pandemic spread across the country, HHS officials denounced the MMWR as "hit pieces on the administration" and pushed to delay and prevent the CDC from releasing new information about the pandemic that didn't align with the White House's views.
While changes to the operations and communications of federal health agencies after a new administration enters the White House are "not unprecedented," said epidemiologist Ali Khan, the MMWR "should never go dark."
The health agencies were instructed to halt communications about public health as the news media reported on a so-called "quad-demic" of four viruses that have been circulating for several weeks across the country.
CDC data shows that the spread of influenza A, Covid-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is "high" or "very high," and norovirus cases have been rising in recent weeks.
The country is also facing an "ongoing multi-state outbreak" of the H5N1 avian flu among dairy cattle, with 67 total human cases also reported during the current outbreak.
The CDC had been scheduled to publish three MMWR updates this week on H5N1 when the new directive was announced.
The Post reported that it was unclear whether the ban on external communications would apply to reports of new avian flu cases or foodborne illness outbreaks.
Journalist Jeff Jarvis said Trump's new policy will give way to "forced ignorance on health data" and called on officials "in sane and scientific states" to continue reporting public health information on their own.
The suspension of external communications will apply to website updates and social media posts, advisories that the CDC sends to clinicians about public health incidents, and data releases from the National Center for Health Statistics, according to the Post.
"Asking health agencies to pause all external communications is NOT typical protocol for administration changes," said Lucky Tran, director of science communication at Columbia University. "Generally website updates, disease case counts, and other typical day-to-day work continues."
Tran noted that during his first term, Trump officials halted external communications for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department.
"In their second term," he said, "they appear to be targeting health agencies too."
"Officials in sane and scientific states must band together to report data on their own," said one journalist.
Two people wear face masks in New York City on December 30, 2024, as public health officials warned that respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cases had jumped in the city and advised people to wear masks in crowded indoor places.
(Photo: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Julia Conley
Jan 22, 2025
COMMON DREAMS
"The censorship begins," said one public health expert as the Trump administration directed federal health agencies to suspend all external communications, like those that have updated people across the U.S. in recent weeks amid outbreaks of Covid-19, influenza, and norovirus.
The Washington Postreported Tuesday evening that administration officials delivered the directive to staff members at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The agencies operate under the Health and Human Services Department (HHS), which President Donald Trump has nominated vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead. Kennedy has signaled that if confirmed he would purge the ranks of the FDA and change federal vaccine guidelines, including potentially limiting or eliminating the CDC's program that provides free immunizations to uninsured and underinsured children.
The pause on external communications will be in place for an indeterminate amount of time, according to the Post, and applies to the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) compiled by the CDC. The epidemiological record includes "timely, reliable, authoritative, accurate, objective, and useful public health information and recommendations" for healthcare professionals and the public.
During the last year of Trump's first term, as the coronavirus pandemic spread across the country, HHS officials denounced the MMWR as "hit pieces on the administration" and pushed to delay and prevent the CDC from releasing new information about the pandemic that didn't align with the White House's views.
While changes to the operations and communications of federal health agencies after a new administration enters the White House are "not unprecedented," said epidemiologist Ali Khan, the MMWR "should never go dark."
The health agencies were instructed to halt communications about public health as the news media reported on a so-called "quad-demic" of four viruses that have been circulating for several weeks across the country.
CDC data shows that the spread of influenza A, Covid-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is "high" or "very high," and norovirus cases have been rising in recent weeks.
The country is also facing an "ongoing multi-state outbreak" of the H5N1 avian flu among dairy cattle, with 67 total human cases also reported during the current outbreak.
The CDC had been scheduled to publish three MMWR updates this week on H5N1 when the new directive was announced.
The Post reported that it was unclear whether the ban on external communications would apply to reports of new avian flu cases or foodborne illness outbreaks.
Journalist Jeff Jarvis said Trump's new policy will give way to "forced ignorance on health data" and called on officials "in sane and scientific states" to continue reporting public health information on their own.
The suspension of external communications will apply to website updates and social media posts, advisories that the CDC sends to clinicians about public health incidents, and data releases from the National Center for Health Statistics, according to the Post.
"Asking health agencies to pause all external communications is NOT typical protocol for administration changes," said Lucky Tran, director of science communication at Columbia University. "Generally website updates, disease case counts, and other typical day-to-day work continues."
Tran noted that during his first term, Trump officials halted external communications for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department.
"In their second term," he said, "they appear to be targeting health agencies too."
America’s love affair with confident stupidity has reached awful new heights
REUTERS/Mike Blake
Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a rally, in Henderson, Nevada, U.S. October 31, 2024.
Five years ago, I wrote about how the politics of stupidity and crankery in America was degrading us as a society and human beings.
That was January 2020.
Within months, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. It’s only gotten so much worse.
For the remainder of 2020, we dealt with 385,676 deaths from the disease while then-President Trump lived in denial and misled the American people every day. He lied about its danger, how long it would last, treatments and prevention. He would bring in medical experts to speak during White House press conferences and then make stuff up himself out of nowhere and undermine everything that they said.
It was horrifying. People were dying and losing loved ones and the president was spewing an endless stream of strange nonsense, drivel, and dangerous misinformation. Many millions of people believed everything he said without question.
Then Trump lost the 2020 Election. He began lying about that too. Millions believed him again. Coward politicians rolled over for him. His lies exploded in the historic Jan. 6 attack on our nation’s Capitol.
As the COVID-19 vaccine was rolled out to the public at-large in 2021, the anti-vaxxer movement went into overdrive. Currently vaccine hesitancy is near record highs, so the anti-vaxxer movement really made out, a grisly and telling cultural consequence of a pandemic that’s taken 1.2 million American lives.
Regardless, objectively, the covid vaccine was a man-made miracle. Plagues throughout history have lasted up to 20 years or more. We had a vaccine in 11 months thanks to the brilliance of scientific research and modern medicine. It was incredible. It was a tremendous accomplishment of humankind by every historical standard, and people threw the most outrageous temper tantrums over it.
It’s easy to get lost in modern comfort, but I wish more people would just take a few seconds sometimes to recognize that we live in extraordinary times. The fact that we get to take hot showers every day is a monumental luxury compared to the rest of human history.
That we can communicate across the globe instantaneously is anthropologically astounding, if you compare the last 30 years of human history to the 300,000 years before it.
Look around you right now, wherever you are: desks, tables, electronics, electricity, light bulbs, appliances, glassware, furniture, knick-knacks, artwork, paint, carpeting, buildings. All of those things require science, engineering, mathematics, chemistry, physics, logistics, expertise. Experts. Smart people. Smart people gave us all of this.
Intelligence gave us every amazing thing that we see around us and take for granted. The collective education of humankind over millennia has brought us here.
A whole galaxy of humans and human know-how has come together to give us these wild luxuries of daily existence that make the vast majority of us wealthier in health and technology and everyday human comfort than the richest kings and queens and emperors of history.
And yet. We sneer at experts. We spit epithets like “academic elites” at professors dedicating their lives to pursuing discovery that benefits humankind. And we worship flashy internet hucksters selling lifestyle scams.
We mock intelligence and glorify egomania and materialism. We worship spectacle and are voyeurs for anger, confrontation, and violence.
We live in fantasy worlds where what we want to believe is true regardless of whether it is true, because what we want comes first no matter what, certainly no matter any facts, this decadence of mind and body only afforded to us by modernity’s remarkable luxury and technology.
It is in these ways that I regard a very great many adults as simply overgrown children.
Speaking of which, five years later, Donald Trump is president again. He has pardoned the 1,500 rioters who sacked the United States Congress to try to overthrow the last election for him.
Trump also launched a broadside this week against America’s scientific, academic, and medical research efforts, pulling the U.S. out of the World Health Organization and hitting the National Institutes for Health with with “devastating” freezes on meetings, travel, communications.
Trump’s cancellation of NIH grant review panels, as Forbes reports, includes the $7.1 billion annual budget for the National Cancer Institute: “of which more than $3 billion a year is allocated directly towards research for the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of cancer, which causes over 600,000 deaths in the U.S. every year.” The NCI supports 72 different cancer centers.
Freezing national funding for cancer research is sadistic.
It could also be devastating to America’s institutions of higher education.
In Ohio, Republican politicians are piling on. This week they reintroduced a proposal to overhaul education at our colleges and universities.
They seek to install a culture of fear and paranoia over subject matter among Ohio faculty, threatening their livelihoods and banning their ability to strike. They also seek to ban any diversity efforts on campuses as well as any diversity courses.
The bill’s clear intent is to having a chilling effect on freedom of speech and expression in Ohio’s institutions of higher learning, both explicit and implicit, which is an atrocious insult to the entire purpose of education and all of the ideas behind open inquiry in the pursuit of knowledge.
Ohio higher education currently ranks No. 39 in America. Apparently that’s not bad enough for them.
America’s love affair with confident stupidity continues to reach awful new heights. The bill will come due. The piper will need paid. The damage will be extensive.
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.
REUTERS/Mike Blake
Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a rally, in Henderson, Nevada, U.S. October 31, 2024.
January 24, 2025
Five years ago, I wrote about how the politics of stupidity and crankery in America was degrading us as a society and human beings.
That was January 2020.
Within months, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. It’s only gotten so much worse.
For the remainder of 2020, we dealt with 385,676 deaths from the disease while then-President Trump lived in denial and misled the American people every day. He lied about its danger, how long it would last, treatments and prevention. He would bring in medical experts to speak during White House press conferences and then make stuff up himself out of nowhere and undermine everything that they said.
It was horrifying. People were dying and losing loved ones and the president was spewing an endless stream of strange nonsense, drivel, and dangerous misinformation. Many millions of people believed everything he said without question.
Then Trump lost the 2020 Election. He began lying about that too. Millions believed him again. Coward politicians rolled over for him. His lies exploded in the historic Jan. 6 attack on our nation’s Capitol.
As the COVID-19 vaccine was rolled out to the public at-large in 2021, the anti-vaxxer movement went into overdrive. Currently vaccine hesitancy is near record highs, so the anti-vaxxer movement really made out, a grisly and telling cultural consequence of a pandemic that’s taken 1.2 million American lives.
Regardless, objectively, the covid vaccine was a man-made miracle. Plagues throughout history have lasted up to 20 years or more. We had a vaccine in 11 months thanks to the brilliance of scientific research and modern medicine. It was incredible. It was a tremendous accomplishment of humankind by every historical standard, and people threw the most outrageous temper tantrums over it.
It’s easy to get lost in modern comfort, but I wish more people would just take a few seconds sometimes to recognize that we live in extraordinary times. The fact that we get to take hot showers every day is a monumental luxury compared to the rest of human history.
That we can communicate across the globe instantaneously is anthropologically astounding, if you compare the last 30 years of human history to the 300,000 years before it.
Look around you right now, wherever you are: desks, tables, electronics, electricity, light bulbs, appliances, glassware, furniture, knick-knacks, artwork, paint, carpeting, buildings. All of those things require science, engineering, mathematics, chemistry, physics, logistics, expertise. Experts. Smart people. Smart people gave us all of this.
Intelligence gave us every amazing thing that we see around us and take for granted. The collective education of humankind over millennia has brought us here.
A whole galaxy of humans and human know-how has come together to give us these wild luxuries of daily existence that make the vast majority of us wealthier in health and technology and everyday human comfort than the richest kings and queens and emperors of history.
And yet. We sneer at experts. We spit epithets like “academic elites” at professors dedicating their lives to pursuing discovery that benefits humankind. And we worship flashy internet hucksters selling lifestyle scams.
We mock intelligence and glorify egomania and materialism. We worship spectacle and are voyeurs for anger, confrontation, and violence.
We live in fantasy worlds where what we want to believe is true regardless of whether it is true, because what we want comes first no matter what, certainly no matter any facts, this decadence of mind and body only afforded to us by modernity’s remarkable luxury and technology.
It is in these ways that I regard a very great many adults as simply overgrown children.
Speaking of which, five years later, Donald Trump is president again. He has pardoned the 1,500 rioters who sacked the United States Congress to try to overthrow the last election for him.
Trump also launched a broadside this week against America’s scientific, academic, and medical research efforts, pulling the U.S. out of the World Health Organization and hitting the National Institutes for Health with with “devastating” freezes on meetings, travel, communications.
Trump’s cancellation of NIH grant review panels, as Forbes reports, includes the $7.1 billion annual budget for the National Cancer Institute: “of which more than $3 billion a year is allocated directly towards research for the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of cancer, which causes over 600,000 deaths in the U.S. every year.” The NCI supports 72 different cancer centers.
Freezing national funding for cancer research is sadistic.
It could also be devastating to America’s institutions of higher education.
In Ohio, Republican politicians are piling on. This week they reintroduced a proposal to overhaul education at our colleges and universities.
They seek to install a culture of fear and paranoia over subject matter among Ohio faculty, threatening their livelihoods and banning their ability to strike. They also seek to ban any diversity efforts on campuses as well as any diversity courses.
The bill’s clear intent is to having a chilling effect on freedom of speech and expression in Ohio’s institutions of higher learning, both explicit and implicit, which is an atrocious insult to the entire purpose of education and all of the ideas behind open inquiry in the pursuit of knowledge.
Ohio higher education currently ranks No. 39 in America. Apparently that’s not bad enough for them.
America’s love affair with confident stupidity continues to reach awful new heights. The bill will come due. The piper will need paid. The damage will be extensive.
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.
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