Imagine the nation’s top health agency accidentally firing over 1,000 of its best minds during a raging disease outbreak—welcome to the latest government fiasco.
According to the Daily Mail, on Friday, October 10, 2025, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) unleashed pandemonium by sending layoff notices to more than 1,000 employees, only to scramble the next day to undo some of those “erroneous” terminations amidst critical measles and Ebola crises.
This shocking move came as part of a broader federal cutback ordered by President Donald Trump, targeting over 4,000 positions across various departments during a government shutdown.
The termination emails hit without any prior notice, slashing through vital CDC sectors like infectious-disease monitoring, outbreak response teams, vaccine policy experts, and workplace safety units.
Whole divisions, including the Global Health Center, immunization leadership, and the elite Epidemic Intelligence Service—those “disease detectives” who tackle global threats—were briefly torn apart.
Among the affected were seasoned experts, like a senior official with nearly 30 years battling Ebola and other deadly viruses in Africa, and recent trainees preparing for an Ebola mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Even the leadership of the Global Health Center, from the director’s office to six international branches, got the axe before some reversals were announced.
By Saturday afternoon, October 11, 2025, a top health official admitted the mistake, promising to reinstate staff tied to measles, Ebola, and global outbreak efforts, though details on numbers and timing remained murky.
While the White House budget office claimed these cuts aimed to curb “wasteful” spending and streamline operations, one has to wonder if slashing health defenses during a crisis is the kind of efficiency we need.
Debra Houry, who stepped down as CDC chief medical officer in August 2025, revealed that around 1,250 staff, many crucial to national health security, received these notices.
“Some of the best-trained epidemiologists in the world were told they no longer had a job,” said Houry, painting a grim picture of expertise cast aside.
With all due respect to cost-cutting zeal, sidelining top scientists while measles cases soar past 1,500—the worst in 33 years—across under-vaccinated areas in Texas, New Mexico, and the Arizona-Utah border, seems like a gamble with American lives.
Officials warn that dismissing epidemiologists mid-outbreak could derail containment, and even with some rehires, whispers inside the agency suggest selections might favor political loyalty over merit. “This was an act of chaos disguised as cost-cutting,” remarked a senior health policy adviser, hitting the nail on the head about the reckless timing.
Adding to the mess, the CDC’s flagship data publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, took a hit due to a “miscoding” error, leaving its editor-in-chief and staff in limbo as of Saturday, October 11, 2025—meanwhile, prior setbacks like the August firing of Director Susan Monarez and a tragic shooting at the Atlanta headquarters by a conspiracy-driven attacker, which claimed a police officer’s life, only deepen the agency’s wounds.