On April 1, the Trump administration began making sweeping changes to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) by firing thousands of staff, some of whom learned of this decision when they arrived at work on Tuesday morning and were not allowed to enter the building. According to HHS, the administration plans to reduce the HHS workforce from 82,000 full-time employees to 62,000. It is also consolidating the current 28 divisions into 15 divisions, and eliminating five of the 10 regional offices in the United States, among other changes.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. framed these changes as part of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, citing recent declines in life expectancy, while neglecting to mention that those declines were largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Trump administration’s stated goals are to streamline HHS, save taxpayer money, focus more on chronic illness, and make HHS more responsive and efficient. It claims it can make these reforms without impacting critical services. In practice, however, the administration has cut essential funding that was helping states and cities prepare for outbreaks; reassigned leaders who were stopping biological threats in other countries from spreading; undermined the United States’ ability to quickly review and approve treatments and vaccines during an emergency; and disrupted essential work to create vaccines, tests, and treatments for dangerous diseases. These approaches do not make America healthy. They make America less safe.

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Egg prices are dropping in the United States, pushing highly pathogenic avian influenza out of the political and economic spotlight. However, the disease won’t likely be cowed by the temporary reprieve, health experts have warned.

“I keep hearing a sort of a hope, a wish, and perhaps a belief ... that this is going to blow over,” Jennifer Nuzzo, the director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health, said at a panel focused on the U.S. experience with H5N1 bird flu. “I’m here to say that it’s not going to blow over somehow, that this is really a long-term situation that we have to deal with.”

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Dallas, Texas – Therissa Grefsrud still remembers the email. The COVID-19 pandemic had been raging for nearly a year, and a woman had reached out to ask about vaccines: Would they cause infertility in her or her future children?

Grefsrud, a nurse specialised in infection prevention, had heard such concerns before. But studies show no link between infertility and vaccination of any kind.

Still, Grefsrud exchanged messages with the woman as she shared her fears. Then she pointed her towards the facts.

“She came to me about a month later and let me know how grateful she was for me making this space without judgement,” Grefsrud said. The woman also shared that she was now vaccinated.

Fast forward four years, and Grefsrud is among the healthcare professionals in Texas confronting a new outbreak: measles.