Nurses on Ebola: Trump’s CDC is too weak to respond to outbreaks, leaving working people everywhere at risk

With a new Ebola outbreak announced in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on May 15 and declared an international public health emergency just two days later, on top of the recent Andes hantavirus cruise ship outbreak, National Nurses United (NNU) - the nation's largest union of registered nurses - is sounding the alarm on the Trump administration's bungled response to emerging infectious diseases. Nurses know stopping outbreaks takes strong public health care systems, global cooperation, and support for frontline health care workers. Trump's attacks on all of these have left our country less prepared to respond in this critical moment.

NNU issued the following statement:

"Nurses understand the life-or-death importance of prevention, and when it comes to infectious diseases, that means having strong infrastructure in place to rapidly detect and respond to new outbreaks before they are out of control. The Trump administration has purposely taken a sledgehammer to that infrastructure over the past year. Instead of funding a robust web of public health experts, they have stolen from our public health resources to fund tax breaks for billionaires, ICE terror, and warfare abroad, threatening the lives of working people everywhere. As a result, we are only just now learning about hundreds of Ebola cases in the DRC, indicating that the virus has already been spreading for weeks or months before it was detected.

Let us be clear: The CDC under Trump is flying blind, and that is by design. Nurses are appalled that over the past year, the Trump administration has destroyed the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and exited the World Health Organization (WHO), dismantling response infrastructure and delaying critical communications and information. Under Trump, cuts to CDC staff have diminished the number of available infectious disease experts and response capacity. In cases like the recent hantavirus outbreak, what little info we have is slow, and often provided by political appointees, given that the actual scientists have been fired or quit. The Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy has never been staffed under the Trump administration, and research into treatments and infectious diseases has been gutted.

Nurses have already lived through one bungled, global health emergency response during the first Trump administration, and we are appalled to know that when it comes to Ebola, hantavirus, or any other infectious disease, the United States under Donald Trump is now even less prepared than in 2020. While the Trump administration has proven again and again that it prioritizes welfare for billionaires, the agency that is supposed to protect working people's health and safety is currently too weakened and sick to function.

Union nurses are public health warriors, who already struck over U.S. hospitals' inadequate 2014 Ebola response, and who saved countless lives with our unrelenting, years-long fight for optimal Covid protections. We will continue monitoring the Ebola outbreak, the recent hantavirus cases, and all infectious disease outbreaks, using what resources we have to keep patients informed. And we will continue fighting for a society that prioritizes people over profit, with Medicare for All and more, because our patients deserve better than to be left in the dark by an administration that values a handful of outrageously wealthy billionaires over the health and safety of everyone we know and love."

National Nurses United is the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses in the United States with more than 225,000 members nationwide. NNU affiliates include California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, DC Nurses Association, Michigan Nurses Association, Minnesota Nurses Association, and New York State Nurses Association.