Amid coronavirus outbreak, Trump proposes slashing CDC budget

Authored by arstechnica.com and submitted by ngt_
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Amid an explosive outbreak of a novel coronavirus in China that has killed over 1,000 and sickened over 43,000 worldwide, US President Donald Trump proposed a nearly 19 percent budget cut to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—the agency primarily tasked with preparing for and responding to such outbreaks and other serious health threats.

In the president’s proposed 2021 federal budget released Monday, the administration says that the changes to the CDC’s funding are intended to “re-focus CDC’s core mission on preventing and controlling infectious diseases and other emerging public health issues, such as opioids.”

The proposal reduces and consolidates CDC funding for programs under the “chronic disease prevention and health promotion” category. That includes programs addressing heart disease, cancer, diabetes, tobacco use, stroke, nutrition, physical activity, and arthritis.

Heart disease, cancer, and diabetes are the leading causes of death and disability in the United States. Trump proposes cutting roughly $427 million in funding for the chronic disease category—a roughly 34.5 percent drop from enacted 2020 spending.

The budget also cuts funding for infectious-disease responses, including a 13 percent cut to programs under the category of “emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases.” (Zoonotic infectious diseases are those that spread from animals to people, of which the novel coronavirus is one.) This category includes cuts to programs addressing antibiotic-resistant infections, food safety, and healthcare-associated infections.

Additionally, Trump proposes a 10 percent cut to “public health scientific services,” which includes funding for health statistics, surveillance, epidemiology, and informatics activities. There’s also a 3 percent cut to “public health preparedness and response” programs and a nearly 7 percent cut to global health programs.

Areas of the CDC’s budget that Trump proposed increasing included programs for influenza planning and response, tick-borne diseases, HIV/AIDS, and the opioid epidemic.

But overall, the CDC’s 2021 discretionary budget authority under Trump’s proposal would be roughly $5.56 billion, down $1.27 billion (or 18.6 percent) from enacted 2020 funding.

The proposal lands as public health experts scramble to get ahead of the rapidly escalating outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). While the risk to the US is still considered low for now, the CDC and other health officials in the US are working to prepare state and local hospitals and health care facilities for the event of an outbreak. A common refrain among health responders at all levels is the need for dedicated and sustained funding for such prevention and preparedness activities.

Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement that “the Trump Budget does not see a problem in this country it cannot somehow make worse.”

tPTBNL on February 12nd, 2020 at 00:21 UTC »

”Health care is vital to all of us some of the time, but public health is vital to all of us all of the time.”—Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop

MauiKehaulani on February 11st, 2020 at 23:01 UTC »

I mean, why fund science when we can just fight viruses with Warm April Weather??!!

The president continued to suggest the Coronavirus outbreak, which has claimed 1,000 lives as of Monday, will be gone by April. He told the crowd that “in theory" once the weather warms up Coronavirus, which he referred to as "the virus," will "miraculously" go away. Trump did not offer any scientific explanation to back up his claim.

Like Hurricane Dorian and Sharpiegate or the California Wildfires and Raking, the anti-Scientific nonsense coming from the highest office in the land is outright dangerous...especially when considering that his strongest supporters believe what comes out of his mouth over reputable news sources.

According to a recent CBS News/YouGov Poll just 11 percent of strong Trump supporters trust the mainstream media—while 91 percent turn to the president for “accurate information”

Edit: Added Link

tewnewt on February 11st, 2020 at 22:03 UTC »

Death, Famine, War, and Conquest. None were as efficient as Indifference.