Fired CDC workers join legislator to condemn ‘unnecessarily cruel’ cuts

“If there is a desire to streamline government,” she said, calling on the state’s leadership to protest the administration’s tactics, “insist that it is done in a way that is respectful to the critical functions of these agencies and that it treats Georgians with the dignity that they deserve.”

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

Trump and his newly installed Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have said they want to cut waste, fraud and abuse from government agencies. That includes the CDC and global public health grants that were administered by USAID.

Several hundred CDC workers were let go. The exact number is unclear and CDC did not respond to a request for the final number on Friday. Some employees were told they were being fired, but then their terminations were rescinded.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has spoken to multiple fired CDC workers who said their termination letters cited poor performance but who also said their performance reviews were excellent. Draper said some bosses were finding out their employees were fired by sending them an email and finding that it bounced back.

Dr. Katrina Kretsinger, an infectious disease researcher and independent consultant who worked at the CDC, laid out examples of harm from the layoffs and other federal health cuts.

“The reduced ability to detect outbreaks can and will affect Georgia and the United States,” Kretsinger said.

It goes well beyond the CDC’s recent cancellation of its flu vaccine public promotion campaign in the face of still-circulating flu, she said. She cited more than 50 current outbreaks of measles here and across the globe that could easily jump to new U.S. communities; mystery outbreaks that require detectives both on site and with laboratory expertise that has been cut; and bird flu in U.S. and Georgia farms continuing to show evolving activity. All those fights have been affected by the cuts, she said.

“There are 70 confirmed human cases (of avian influenza) through transmission from animals, and the unsettling possibility the virus will change in ways that make it easier to spread to people,” Kretsinger said. “We should be looking harder for this — but we are not. Many of the usual warnings and communications alerts from CDC have gone dark or are delayed.”

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

That and other longer-term projects are the normal work of the CDC, and it usually doesn’t make waves when it’s successful, said John Besser, a former deputy chief at the CDC and expert in foodborne and waterborne diseases.

“Prevention is a quiet activity unless it’s not there,” he said. Besser also rebutted the notion that the work the fired CDC staff do could be replaced by AI.

“I use AI a lot,” Besser said. “And I’m very fond of it. I can’t think of a single job at CDC that would be replaced by AI. I can think of a lot of jobs where it would be a help, but I don’t know of any jobs that can be replaced by it.”

The argument was floated Thursday night by Republican Congressman Rich McCormick, at a town hall meeting in his district. McCormick said he has been in close contact with the CDC and knows researchers there and that “a lot of the work they do is duplicitous with AI,” apparently meaning “duplicative.”

“I happen to be a doctor, I know a few things,” said McCormick, a Marine Corps veteran and emergency room physician.

Other Georgia GOP leaders have also backed Trump’s cuts. Gov. Brian Kemp told a reporter in Munich that “government can stand a little rightsizing.” A spokesperson for Kemp said Friday that he stood by those comments.

Draper criticized Kemp’s and other Georgia Republicans’ stance or what she called their “deafening” silence. She said the Trump administration and Elon Musk were not going to listen to her but Republican leaders like Kemp and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones have relationships with the administration.

“What we are asking them to do is put partisanship aside, put politics aside, and maybe even set their fears aside, and stand up and speak out for the Georgians that need their support right now,” Draper said.

Jones replied in a written statement Friday that “President Trump promised to cut the fat from government and he’s keeping that promise.”

Some laid-off CDC workers who came to the event said their own firing shows the lack of competence in the cutbacks. One, a communications worker, said she took a pay cut to move from working as a consultant to working as an employee because she had seen how she could make the communications operation more efficient and she could save taxpayers money. Now, that efficiency effort was eliminated.

Another, who has risked his life to go to Africa to stop Ebola from spreading to America, said he has worked for the CDC for 10 years and is not on probation, despite a mistaken code in his file from human resources. However, he said, as he tries to get HR to fix it, they’re not responding.

“I mean, it ultimately costs lives,” said the worker, Emaad Hassan. “I mean, if I’m not there and people with my skills are not there at the next crazy outbreak that happens in Africa and any other country (with the) potential of it coming here, you don’t have the staff to staff those things. You don’t have the expertise.”

Hassan said people with his expertise could eventually give up and go to work in private enterprise, but a job in private enterprise wouldn’t prioritize protecting the public.