1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

Restore the CDC to at least its 2024 funding and staffing levels. Dismantling public health infrastructure is making Americans sick — right now, not hypothetically. A Cyclospora outbreak has already hit 34 states, put 141 people in the hospital, and the contamination source still hasn't been identified. That's what happens when you gut the surveillance systems designed to catch these things early. More than 3,000 CDC workers are gone — roughly a quarter of the workforce — and the administration quietly downgraded FoodNet's active tracking of six pathogens, including Cyclospora, with no public announcement. People are missing work. Hospitals are absorbing cases that a functioning outbreak response would have prevented. The measles deaths this year were a warning. Cyclospora is another one. The next pathogen may be far more lethal, and we will be just as blind to it. What was called "redundancy" was actually the capacity to detect threats before they spread across 34 states unnoticed. Congress needs to fund and rebuild what this administration broke — the teams, the surveillance networks, the state and local infrastructure. Public health isn't overhead. It's the reason outbreaks end.