The United States is experiencing the peak of one of the worst flu seasons in years. COVID-19 infection rates are also elevated in many parts of the country, and officials in Canada and the U.S. are stockpiling a new vaccine to protect farmworkers from bird flu as the outbreak, which caused the price of eggs to skyrocket, intensifies in the dairy and poultry industries.

We have a snapshot of such health threats thanks to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). But the CDC is one of the federal health agencies thrown into chaos by a flurry of mass firings this week as President Donald Trump and his allies attempt to stretch the limits of executive power by gutting the civil service, leaving the future of those reports on health threats uncertain.

Despite troubling headlines about disease outbreaks and pushback from the medical community, Trump and his newly confirmed health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have moved quickly since Friday to terminate thousands of highly trained employees at the CDC and other Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies tasked with protecting public health.

Most job losses are among probationary employees — which can include employees who are newer hires or were recently promoted to different positions, as well as those on two-year assignments — who have fewer protections than tenured federal employees. But the CDC recruits long-term talent through programs whose members fall under those categories, and critics say Trump is essentially wiping out the next generation of leadership in disease control and prevention.

“They are absolutely gambling with the public’s health,” Elizabeth Jacobs, an epidemiologist at the University of Arizona and founder of the grassroots group Defend Public Health, told Truthout. “We’re at the roulette table and hoping that nothing blows up before we can get the infrastructure back in place.”

The threat of mass firing of roughly 5,000 employees across HHS agencies this week appeared sloppy and haphazard, with Kennedy and other Trump officials backpedaling on multiple occasions after it became clear that firing thousands of workers would imperil critical programs such as the Indian Health Service, which provides health care to Native communities across the country.

“We’re at the roulette table and hoping that nothing blows up before we can get the infrastructure back in place.”

At the U.S. Department of Agriculture, hundreds of federal workers on the front lines of the bird flu outbreak received termination letters over the weekend that were rescinded a few days........

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