Tag: budget cuts

Watch Out. The Plague Years Start Now

Published by: The Tyee
Published on: February 19, 2025
By Crawford Kilian

Since the inauguration of Donald Trump on Jan. 20, the greatest health sciences organizations in the world have been first silenced, then frozen or outright destroyed. The scale, speed and stupidity of the destruction have been breathtaking.

The Trump regime is doing this to its own people, especially those in states that voted for Trump, but the shock is being felt around the world.

It is a safe prediction that Trump’s attack on health science will result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. And millions of lives will be diminished.

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kakistocracy

CDC cuts expected to devastate Epidemic Intelligence Service, a ‘crown jewel’ of public health

Published February 14, 2025

Published by: STAT
Published on: February 14, 2025
By Helen Branswell

The Trump administration’s campaign to slash the federal civil service hit one of the crown jewels of global public health on Friday. Members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, a legendary training program run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were warned on Friday morning that they were about to be fired, two people with knowledge of the meeting told STAT.

The 135 members of the two-year program were informed that many would be hearing of their dismissals by late in the day. But by late Friday afternoon, none had yet received a notice of their firing, one of the sources said.

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kakistocracy

Scientists React to RFK, Jr.’s Confirmation as HHS Secretary

Published February 13, 2025

Published by: Scientific American / Nature
Published on: February 13, 2025
By Amanda Heidt, Heidi Ledford

The future of America as a superpower in research appears grim. Even on issues he claims he supports, he does not follow scientific evidence. Picking a person like this to lead is like having the wolf guard the sheep.

— Theodora Hatziioannou, a virologist at the Rockefeller University in New York City

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kakistocracy

Here are all the agencies that Elon Musk and DOGE have been trying to dismantle so far

Published February 11, 2025

Published by: ABC News
Published on: February 11, 2025
By Ivan Pereira, Emily Chang

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency group has made swift work of the billionaire’s goal to scale back or dismantle much of the federal government, end diversity policies and otherwise further President Donald Trump’s agenda.

DOGE employees, many of whom have no government experience, have been going through data systems, shutting down DEI programs and in some cases, whole agencies.

As of Feb. 10, ABC has tracked Musk and his DOGE team gaining access to at least 15 federal agencies.

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kakistocracy

Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump Cuts to Medical Research Funding

Published February 10, 2025

Published by: The New York Times
Published on: February 10, 2025
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Christina Jewett

A coalition of 22 attorneys general sued the federal government, claiming that the $4 billion in cuts would “grind to a halt” studies on cancer, heart disease and other conditions.

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked the National Institutes of Health from cutting research funding in 22 states that filed suit earlier in the day arguing that the plan would eviscerate studies into treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease and a host of other ailments.

The funding cuts, announced late Friday, were to take effect on Monday. But the attorneys general of Massachusetts and 21 other states sued. They argued that the Trump administration’s plan to slash $4 billion in overhead costs — known as “indirect costs” — violated a 79-year-old law that governs how administrative agencies establish and administer regulations.

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kakistocracy

Five Former Treasury Secretaries: Our Democracy Is Under Siege

Published February 10, 2025

Published by: The New York Times
Published on: February 10, 2025
By Robert E. Rubin, Lawrence H. Summers, Timothy F. Geithner, Jacob J. Lew, Janet L. Yellen

When we had the honor of being sworn in as the 70th, 71st, 75th, 76th and 78th secretaries of the Treasury, we took an oath to support and defend the United States Constitution.

Our roles were multifaceted. We sought to develop sound policy to advance the president’s agenda and represent the economic interests of the United States on the world stage. But in doing that, we recognized that our most fundamental responsibility was the faithful execution of the laws and Constitution of the United States.

We were fortunate that during our tenures in office no effort was made to unlawfully undermine the nation’s financial commitments. Regrettably, recent reporting gives substantial cause for concern that such efforts are underway today.

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kakistocracy

NIH cuts billions of dollars in biomedical funding, effective immediately

Published February 8, 2025

Published by: The Washington Post
Published on: February 8, 2025
By Dan Diamond, Carolyn Y. Johnson, Lena H. Sun

The Trump administration is cutting billions of dollars in biomedical research funding, alarming academic leaders who said it would imperil their universities and medical centers and drawing swift rebukes from Democrats who predicted dire consequences for scientific research.

The move, announced Friday night by the National Institutes of Health, drastically cuts NIH’s funding for “indirect” costs related to research. These are the administrative requirements, facilities and other operations that many scientists say are essential but that some Republicans have claimed are superfluous.

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pro-virus policies

America’s Public Health Breakdown Is Just Getting Started

Published December 19, 2024

Published by: The Tyee
Published on: December 19, 2024
By Crawford Kilian

The United States has a health-care system that is terrible and getting worse. It also has a health science system that is the best in the world and about to be dismantled.

The impending return of Donald Trump to the White House seems likely to collapse American health science, with consequences as disastrous for the rest of the world as for the approximately 340 million Americans in the U.S. Canada may be able to soften the impact here, but it will not be easy.

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Ontario: Contact councillors — save Ontario’s wastewater monitoring!

Image with dark blue background, and white and gold text. Text at the top reads: Ottawa, London, Waterloo Region. Save our early warning system for viruses. Below the text, there is a chart with red text reading: no data.

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Ontario: Contact councillors — save Ontario’s wastewater monitoring!

Published September 10, 2024

📣 Let municipal councillors know you want funding for wastewater monitoring to continue

✉️ Send letters to municipal councillors to voice your support for wastewater monitoring. Use our online tool to send emails.

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Ontario

Ontario dropped wastewater testing early, with no plan for feds to step in: documents

Published September 1, 2024

Published by: Ottawa Citizen
Published on: September 1, 2024
By Elizabeth Payne

The Ontario government abruptly ended its wastewater surveillance program earlier than planned this summer, despite having funding in place until the end of September and being warned that the move could leave gaps in crucial information for public health, internal documents indicate.

The government pulled the plug at the end of July on the globally praised program that, at its peak, covered about 75 per cent of the province.

The program, overseen by the Ministry of the Environment, provided an early warning signal to health officials about the spread of COVID-19, influenza, RSV and other infectious diseases, based on wastewater testing.

Documents obtained through access to information by the Ottawa Citizen indicate that the province’s hasty decision last spring to end the program came before Ontario’s Ministry of Health had even begun negotiations with the federal government about taking over wastewater surveillance.

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Ontario

St. Joe’s to shut down Parkwood long-COVID program due to lack of provincial funding

Published August 27, 2024

Published by: CBC News
Published on: August 27, 2024
By Kendra Seguin

A London program that has been credited with helping patients with long COVID get treatment and support is shutting down because the province has not renewed its funding.

The Post-Acute COVID-19 Program at Parkwood will shut down by the end of the year and has stopped taking patients as of this month, St. Joseph’s Health Care London confirmed in a statement.

The shutdown leaves Londoners who have long COVID without a dedicated space to get treatment.

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The Risks of Killing a COVID Early Warning System

Photo of a person wearing an elastomeric respirator, with an outstretched, gloved hand reaching forward towards the viewer. On the light blue glove, the text reads: Stop COVID-19. With a bokeh effect, there is a sharp image of the glove, and the person’s face and respirator are blurred in the background. Photo: fernando zhiminaicela via Pixabay.

Ontario

The Risks of Killing a COVID Early Warning System

Published August 1, 2024

Published by: The Tyee
Published on: August 1, 2024
By Andrew Nikiforuk

COVID-19 is surging in parts of North America and Europe, and even played a role in ending the presidential campaign of 81-year-old Joe Biden, who was infected for the third time last month.

Nevertheless, on Wednesday the Ontario government shut down its early warning system to detect COVID and other emerging diseases.

Doctors, citizens and researchers are calling the decision to kill the province’s wastewater disease surveillance program both wrong-headed and dangerous. Ending the program will make it harder to track and thwart viral outbreaks, they say, and thereby increase the burden on Ontario’s understaffed hospitals, which experienced more than 1,000 emergency room closures last year.

“Pandemics do not end because science has been muzzled,” Dr. Iris Gorfinkel, a well-known Toronto physician and clinical researcher, told the CBC.

In emails to politicians, more than 5,000 citizens have demanded restoration of the program, with little effect.

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Ontario

Ontario has a globally praised system for monitoring diseases through wastewater. So why is the province shutting it down?

Published July 30, 2024

Published by: The Globe and Mail
Published on: July 30, 2024
By Ivan Semeniuk

For the past three years, Alexandra Johnston has started her work day by reaching for the pickaxe in the trunk of her car.

It is her tool of choice for prying open manhole covers – a task she demonstrated with practised ease last week while on a tour of her wastewater sampling regimen in Toronto.

Wearing a surgical mask and gloves, Ms. Johnston dragged the heavy cover aside, then grabbed hold of the fishing line secured underneath. After hauling up a few metres of line, she displayed her catch: a dripping wet tampon she had placed there the day before.

Her teammate, Claire Gibbs, quickly moved in with a prelabelled plastic bag to capture the sewage-laden sample. Using scissors, Ms. Gibbs deftly snipped the line, sealed the bag and stowed it away in the trunk as part of that day’s delivery.

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Waterloo Region

Wastewater testing a ‘huge scientific success’ says UW prof as province terminates network

Published July 17, 2024

Published by: Waterloo Region Record
Published on: July 17, 2024
By Robert Williams

Mark Servos is going back to studying fish.

After more than four years of testing wastewater for traces of COVID-19, the University of Waterloo fisheries biologist and his team that spans 12 universities will take their last samples next week as the country’s largest wastewater network officially disbands.

The Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks has terminated the program as of July 31, removing one of the last reliable trackers of the virus’s spread in communities across Ontario.

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Ontario

Ontario can’t make COVID-19 disappear by pretending it doesn’t exist

Published July 16, 2024

Published by: Toronto Star
Published on: July 16, 2024
By Iris Gorfinkel

Another blow to understanding the spread of COVID-19 is now slated to happen on July 31. That’s when funding ends for Ontario’s extensive wastewater surveillance program. It’s a technology that can detect viral particles up to seven days before people develop symptoms. It costs $15 million annually to check 58 sites throughout Ontario. But the cost of losing this hard-won technology is far greater. No longer having its data means that hospitals, long-term-care facilities, schools and communities will lose critical advanced warning of a potential outbreak. That gives them less time to prepare with masks, air filtration and vaccines.

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Ontario

‘Really unfortunate:’ Public health losing tool that tracks emerging threats in infectious diseases

Published July 2, 2024

Published by: NewmarketToday
Published on: July 2, 2024
By Joseph Quigley

York Region stands to lose reliability in its warning signs for population-wide COVID-19 and influenza cases as provincial wastewater surveillance ends, public health said.

The Ontario government announced it is ending the program, which allowed public health units to track COVID-19 in wastewater sampling sites across the province, on July 31.

York Region associate medical officer of health Dr. Sarah Erdman said the tool was very useful to help inform public health decisions.

“Given tighter testing eligibility for COVID-19 and influenza, wastewater surveillance provided helpful information about the burden of disease and community transmission among the general population,” Erdman said. “It also provided an early warning of surges ahead of an increase in cases and hospitalizations; without wastewater data, York Region will be unable to reliably obtain these estimates moving forward.”

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Ottawa-Gatineau

Ottawa Public Health seeking ways to continue wastewater testing

Published June 21, 2024

Published by: CBC News
Published on: June 21, 2024
By Nathan Fung

Ottawa Public Health wants to collaborate with local partners to look for ways to continue wastewater monitoring after the province cuts funding to the program next month.

At its meeting this week, the city’s board of health passed a motion directing Medical Officer of Health Dr. Vera Etches to write to provincial and federal partners to find ways to continue the wastewater testing work that’s being done at the University of Ottawa.

Earlier this month, Ontario announced that by the end of July, it will scrap the program for sampling wastewater to monitor levels of COVID-19 in the population. The program began in 2020 and is funded through the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks.

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Ontario

OSPN responds to Ontario’s cut of the Wastewater Surveillance Initiative

Published June 20, 2024

Published by: Ottawa Science Policy Network
Published on: June 20, 2024

The Ottawa Science Policy Network (OSPN) is concerned with the decision of the Ontario Government to cancel the Wastewater Surveillance Initiative (WSI) in Ontario. This cut of $15 million per year employs researchers, and offers significant returns for public health and safety.

The Wastewater Surveillance Initiative was adopted in January 2021 which led to a team of groundbreaking and internationally recognized work led by scientists at Ontario universities and research institutes. Ontario is a world leader in this field of wastewater research; tracking the impact of COVID-19 on communities through wastewater has helped shape public policy decisions and informed Ontarians of risks within the population. This funding not only provided the necessary means to track COVID-19 levels within the population but was further expanded to screen for Influenza, RSV, and M-Pox. Elizabeth Payne, a correspondent for Ottawa Citizen notes that wastewater surveillance at the start of seasonal RSV prevented 295 pediatric hospitalizations and 950 medically attended hospital visits, saving Ontario $3.5 million.

As of July 31st 2024 the Ontario government will no longer be investing in the Wastewater Surveillance Initiative, mentioning a key reason being that the Federal government will be expanding their program through the Public Health Agency of Canada. However, this leaves research groups and graduate students who rely on Ontario funding in a precarious position as the future of their funding remains uncertain.

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Tag: budget cuts

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A coalition of 22 attorneys general sued the federal government, claiming that the $4 billion in cuts would “grind to a halt” studies on cancer, heart disease and other conditions.

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📣 Let municipal councillors know you want funding for wastewater monitoring to continue

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