As Measles Exploded, Officials in Texas Looked to CDC Scientists. Under Trump, No One Answered:

https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/texas-measles-outbreak-cdc-vaccines-rfk-trump/


“CDC hasn’t reached out to us locally,” Katherine Wells, the public health director in Lubbock, Texas, wrote in a Feb. 5 email exchange with a colleague two weeks after children with measles were hospitalized in Lubbock. “My staff feels like we are out here all alone,” she added.

A child would die before CDC scientists contacted Wells.

“All of us at CDC train for this moment, a massive outbreak,” one CDC researcher told KFF Health News, which agreed not to name CDC officials who fear retaliation for speaking with the press. “All this training and then we weren’t allowed to do anything.”

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Local officials resorted to advice from doctors and researchers outside the government, including those at the Immunization Partnership, a Texas nonprofit.

“The CDC had gone dark,” said Terri Burke, executive director of the partnership. “We had anticipated a measles outbreak, but we didn’t expect the federal government to be in collapse when it hit.”