Government shutdown prevents many CDC experts from participating in crucial meeting

ATLANTA — CDC researchers are being forced to skip a crucial infectious disease conference this week because of the government shutdown, missing high-level discussions shortly after measles and whooping cough surged in the United States.

IDWeek, the nation’s largest annual meeting of infectious disease experts, is the premier venue for experts to exchange information on the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of threats such as avian flu, superbugs and HIV, among other topics.

The CDC typically sends dozens of researchers and investigators to outbreaks. But among the hundreds of speakers listed in the printed program for the four-day conference, about 10 were identified as CDC scientists. And even that small number didn’t show up.

The main reason is the government shutdown which began on October 1st. Federal scientists are not paid, and conferences are postponed unless they are funded outside of annual government budgets.

Problems were apparent long before closure

The Infectious Disease Society of America and its conference partners chose Atlanta, where the CDC is based, as their host more than a year ago.

Organizers were excited to hold the meeting “at the heart of public health” and CDC officials agreed to be heavily involved in the planning, said Dr. Yohei Doi, a University of Pittsburgh researcher who helped organize the meeting.

But shortly after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, CDC communications and attendance at medical meetings were immediately frozen, albeit temporarily. This was followed by layoffs and cuts in research funding.

“As things started to evolve, they said they wouldn’t be able to attend anymore,” Doi said of the CDC responders.

Disease threats loom

The CDC’s absence comes as infectious disease specialists are expected to be in high demand, in part because the worst pandemic in a century struck only a few years ago. Measles and whooping cough are on the rise. And new threats are constantly emerging.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he wants the CDC to focus primarily on infectious diseases, although he was a leading voice in the anti-vaccine movement before Trump named him to head the federal government’s health agencies.

The CDC has already lost a quarter of its workforce due to layoffs, buyouts, resignations and other actions. And the Trump administration is trying to fire hundreds more, an effort temporarily blocked by a federal judge.

“It’s the most painful irony of all” to see these administration actions in the midst of serious threats, said Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease researcher at the University of Minnesota.

Osterholm, who spoke at the conference Sunday, said he was working with others to take on the work the CDC had scaled back.

He announced a new open-access publication called Public Health Alerts, intended to publish the type of reports that formed the basis of the CDC’s weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report.

Separately, a collaboration involving dozens of foundations would pool resources to fund some disease research that the government has stopped doing, Osterholm said.

“It’s no longer business as usual, but that doesn’t mean we have to sit idly by,” Osterholm said.

HHS has discouraged federal collaborations with some medical organizations, including IDSA, and that likely had a chilling effect, said Dr. Debra Houry, who was CDC’s chief medical officer until she resigned in August to protest agency changes.

An HHS spokeswoman, Emily Hilliard, said the administration believes federal scientists should share their research and expertise with their peers and the public, and that conferences are monitored “to ensure compliance with ethics rules and responsible use of taxpayer funds.”

Dr. Anna Yousaf, an infectious disease physician at the CDC, told The Associated Press that she was asked to present findings on the long-term outcomes of children infected with COVID-19 who develop a rare inflammatory disease. She was not allowed to attend this week’s conference, even though a collaborator from another organization planned to share the research, she said.

Other CDC scientists were in similar situations, she said, and it’s unclear how many of them could find such a workaround. This potentially means that some research results will not be shared with researchers and doctors who might use the information.

Yousaf is currently on leave due to the government shutdown and said she is not speaking in an official capacity.

“It seems to me that the goal of HHS is to prevent the dissemination of scientific information,” she said. “It’s crazy.”

—Mike Stobbe