Donald Trump silence the alerts and communications of health control bodies. And now?

Total blockage of communications concerning health by some of the institutions of the most important sector in the world such as the US Centers for Disease Control and Preventionthe Food and Drug Administration he is National Institutes of Health. Donald Trump decided through one of his many measures and addresses issued in the first days of the presidential mandate. This means that some of the most reliable and followed scientific and health alert systems They will no longer have a voice in the world: we will no longer know, for example, if and how the outbreaks of infectious diseases in the United States are evolving but also in many parts of the world on which CDCs and other federal health bodies traditionally focused their attention. Stop to scientific publications, alerts, notices, explanations and insights that for the scientific community constitute the basis around which first of all to become aware of the potential risks for international public health and then how to deal with them.

In a reminder obtained byAssociated Pressthe interim secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services of the United States, Dorothy FINKindicated to the managers of the staff of the agencies that a “immediate break»Up, among other things, regulations, guidelines, announcements, press releases, social media posts and posts on websites until these communications – as explained by the Washington Post – They hadn’t been approved by some political figure. This comprehensive Black-Out Momentaneous, in force from next February 1st, will also apply to any content intended to be published on the Federal Register, where the executive branch communicates rules and regulations, and on the softity and mortality Weekly Report, a scientific publication of the centers For Disease Control and Prevention.

Agencies subject to the HHS directive include the CDC, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, the front line entities in the contrast to epidemics With alerts, studies and insights, in charge of protecting food supplies, authorizing drugs and carrying out scientific research. In many international areas they have always been the point of reference For the respective sectors of competence, and this is the most worrying figure. A blockage of scientific communication by these organizations means an exponential increase in risks all over the world.

If the block is intended, sooner or later, to melt and according to many experts it is part of the natural presidential rotation, the fact remains that it will open a more or less long vacuum phase in terms of information and scientific alerts, with few exceptions. According to the reminder, they would only concern communications that affect “critical health, security, environment, finance or national security functions” still after a review. On the rest, mouths sewn up to a new order.

On X the Director of The sciences, Mind And National Geographic, Marco Cattaneoprovided a concrete and immediate example of the consequences of this decision in addition to the Annunciation United States exit from the World Health Organization. He did it by removing the complicated situation linked toH5N1 avian influenza epidemic in the United States. There are already 67 cases of transmission to human beings, with a death, even if the virus has not yet made the jump of species. You can only infect yourself from animals. The point is that the infected species are now hundreds, that the virus has spread in almost a thousand cattle farms, in particular in California, and which seems to be just one, further genetic mutation to reach the so -called Spillover. «Now, if such an event, not exactly unlikely, should happen, what would happen If the US health authorities were prevented from communicating it to the international community?“He wondered Cattaneo. Adding how every day from the USA they start “thousands of flights all over the world, and vice versa. Not communicating such a problem would deliberately expose the whole world to a new potential pandemic ».