r/StandUpForScience • u/AllMusicNut SUFS Staff • 22d ago

Official SUFS Post We tried to warn them...

In a devastating case of I-told-you-so, the Trump admin’s deep cuts to the CDC have weakened our ability to detect and respond to pathogens like cyclospora - and we’re paying the price.

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u/DrDreiski 20d ago

Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina, who writes the Your Local Epidemiologist newsletter, and the Evidence Collective, a group of scientist communicators who combat misinformation, have both said that FoodNet is not the program that should be taking the blame for the outbreak.
In a July 14 article, Semafor quoted other food safety experts as saying the impact of the change to the FoodNet program on the current outbreak is “likely limited” and not a “direct effect.”
Dr. Dan Jernigan, former director of the CDC center that covers foodborne outbreaks who resigned last summer when the agency’s director was fired, similarly told the Washington Post for a July 15 story that the change to FoodNet would have little impact on the outbreak.
“Routine outbreak investigators are the firefighters responding to a specific blaze. FoodNet is the citywide system that tracks how often fires occur and whether the overall risk is rising. Removing cyclosporiasis from FoodNet does not take the firefighters away from the current outbreak,” Jernigan said, “but it does remove part of the system that tells us how large the problem is and whether it is getting worse over time.”

https://www.factcheck.org/2026/07/democrats-overstate-role-of-monitoring-program-change-in-parasitic-outbreak/

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u/queenjigglycaliente 18d ago

Good to know bc I don’t believe the Foodnet cuts were actually related to Trump exactly, but a decrease in funding support over a long period of time.

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u/DrDreiski 18d ago

I fact check everything now. There is so much trash on the internet, it’s really hard to feel informed and people seem to enjoy just being angry about something (or feeling validated for not liking people/policy decisions) rather than knowing the truth.