Directives by the new administration of President Donald Trump pausing most external communications, meetings and travel for federal health agencies as the new leaders take stock and review their priorities have hit home in Georgia. Agencies employ tens of thousands of workers in the state both at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and through research they help fund at universities and related organizations working in the health sciences.
The pause contains exceptions, and some scientists urged calm until more detail comes out.
The concern remains, however, perhaps less about the specific impact of two weeks’ pause than about whether the way it was implemented showed a lack of concern for science.
“I think people at (the) CDC are kind of freaked out and upset,” said Dr. Carlos del Rio, a professor at the Emory University School of Medicine and co-director of the Emory Center for AIDS Research, who concentrates on translating HIV research into prevention
“It’s a little bit leading in the darkness,” del Rio said. “I don’t think there’s any specific thing that I can point and say has been impacted” — a disease outbreak that could have been prevented, for example. “Lack of information … could be deadly, right?”
Last week the Trump administration ordered a pause until Feb. 1 on communication from federal health offices to the outside world, and canceled travel for meetings and education.
The federal order said exceptions would be made for communications that “affect critical health, safety, environmental, financial or national security functions.”
Where that line is drawn is unclear.
Meanwhile, as the regular federal flow of CDC communications on bird flu and other viruses are paused, an Atlanta convention on poultry and meat this week sponsored by the American Feed Industry Association, the Meat Institute and U.S. Poultry & Egg Association is set to host tens of thousands of people from across the globe.
It’s not clear whether the CDC provided advice on holding the convention. The convention will not allow livestock or poultry to be present and was approved by the Georgia Department of Agriculture. At least one influenza expert said in an interview that even if 30,000 people come as did last year, the convention does not pose an unusual risk if no animals are present.
Rather, said the expert, it’s just one more instance where knowing the CDC has drawn back is unsettling.
Some scientists pointed out that it’s not unusual when a new administration comes in for people and processes to change and for work and approvals to get slowed down as the new leaders get their footing. Others said this one was unusual in how much was paused.
Atlanta, a health sciences hub
One of the biggest jolts to some scientists was that the pause affected the National Institutes of Health and its meetings where scientists gather to evaluate and rank applications for grants.
The NIH distributes more than $40 billion a year to U.S. laboratories for scientific research, more than $700 million of that in metro Atlanta, according to the commercial real estate investment firm CBRE. CBRE’s report was released in 2023.
“This institutional funding, coupled with growing venture capital activity, has produced some of the fastest life sciences industry employment growth of any U.S. metro area,” the firm wrote of Atlanta.
Emory University takes in by far the majority of that money, at more than $485 million last year. Spokesperson Brian Katzowitz said it was unclear as of yet whether the research would be affected.
“There is a lot of internal discussion right now with our Research Administration office,” Katzowitz said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to provide more insight soon.”
A major meeting of two industries
One of the jobs of public health is to protect workers and customers of industries like poultry and meat.
Georgia is the country’s top producer of broiler chickens and the state’s industry that is worth an estimated $6.7 billion, according to a University of Georgia analysis based on 2022 data, the most recent year available.
Georgia agribusiness also includes several hundred thousand cattle. The convention hosted this week at the Georgia World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta brings both together in one place.
The Georgia Department of Public Health said it was not involved in planning the meeting. It was not immediately clear whether the CDC had weighed in.
A spokesperson for the CDC could not answer a reporter’s question about the CDC’s involvement in the convention.
Meeting organizers have asked attendees to avoid contact with their animals in the days leading up to their attendance, and to use hand and shoe sanitizing stations that the convention will provide. If people come from a farm where bird flu was diagnosed, they should consult their state animal health officials or veterinarians for advice before attending, they said.
Georgia DPH spokesperson Nancy Nydam said that in addition, DPH would recommend that to prevent the spread of infectious disease of any cause, no one who is sick should attend public events.
Andrew Pekosz, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said holding the meeting was fine.
“I’m not worried about these kind of meetings at all” when it comes to bird flu spread, Pekosz said.
However, he said, from his perspective, the meeting looks like an important place for public health and industry officials to share best practices and questions around bird flu’s latest developments and its prevention.
“I don’t know if there are any (federal) government scientists who are scheduled to go to this meeting, but if there were, they had to cancel their plans,” Pekosz said.
“With ongoing outbreaks happening in both cows as well as in commercial poultry farms, the executive orders that have limited the ability of scientists at both the USDA and CDC to communicate their science to the general public is concerning,” Pekosz said. “Because this is an outbreak we want to keep our eye on very closely.”
Convention organizers contacted by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution late Monday said they were not aware of any canceled appearances but could not confirm that.
Bird flu sparked concern when it was found to have jumped to cows last March. Unlike birds, cows are mammals, which raises concerns that their virus might more easily transit to humans. Since then, the disease has also been found in some people who were exposed to diseased cows. The big question now is whether or not the virus, called H5N1, will at some point jump from human to human.
CDC has been tracking it closely.
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