Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday ordered federal health agencies to cease all public-facing communication, The Washington Post reported, a move that will leave Americans in the dark about everything from viral outbreaks to the spread of possible food-borne illnesses.
The directive to halt all communication with the public comes amid a particularly bad virus season, with influenza A, COVID-19, RSV, and norovirus tearing through communities across the country.
It also comes as a bird flu outbreak is causing an egg shortage, leading to spiking egg prices.
Currently, the outbreak is mostly contained to animals like poultry and cows. And humans who have contracted bird flu got it from infected animals, not other humans.
In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—an agency Trump has now essentially placed a gag order on—announced that a human in Louisiana was in critical condition after contracting bird flu from exposure to a backyard flock of infected birds.
This colorized electron microscope image released by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on March 26, 2024, shows avian influenza A H5N1 virus particles (yellow), grown in Madin-Darby Canine Kidney (MDCK) epithelial cells (blue).
“It has been determined that the patient had exposure to sick and dead birds in backyard flocks,” said the CDC. “This is the first case of H5N1 bird flu in the U.S. that has been linked to exposure to a backyard flock. … No person-to-person spread of H5 bird flu has been detected.”
However, scientists are warning that the virus is mutating and could cause yet another public health crisis under Trump’s watch.
According to The Washington Post, the CDC was set to issue three reports this week about the bird flu outbreak but now will not.
People within the public health agencies are reportedly not sure why Trump ordered all communication with the public to cease.
One official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal from the new administration, told The Washington Post they are hopeful this communications pause is just the sign of a badly run transition and not something more nefarious.
“We have tried to assume good intentions here, and that they’re just disorganized,” the official said.
However, it’s worth noting that in 2017, during Trump’s first presidency, he ordered a similar pause in public-facing communication from the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Agriculture, and the Interior Department, ordering them to, as The Washington Post reported at the time, “convey only information that supports the new president’s agenda.”
Trump also has a history of trying to keep public health information from the public.
During his botched response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump wanted people to stop testing themselves for the virus because a high number of cases would make him look bad.
It’s unclear how long Trump’s administration will gag public health agencies or whether the agencies will be able to release factual information when the order is lifted.
Anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Donald Trump has nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Services
Even more troubling is that Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services—which oversees the CDC and its communication on disease outbreaks—is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-science quack who falsely believes vaccines cause autism and drinks raw milk, which can expose humans to bird flu.
Experts are speaking out about the new gag order, saying it endangers public health.
“More cases of H5N1 [bird flu] are occurring in the United States than in any other country. Pausing our health communications at a time when states are scrambling to contain this virus is dangerously misguided,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology at Brown University, wrote in a post on X. “This will make America less healthy and will worsen the virus’s economic tolls.”
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