The C.D.C. was hit even harder. It has shed roughly a quarter of its workforce, including scores of people from the agency’s Epidemic Intelligence Service, which trains and deploys “disease detectives” to trace and respond to outbreaks and other public-health challenges. “The people who are still at C.D.C. are working under incredibly constrained circumstances,” Arthur Reingold, a professor emeritus of epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former disease detective at the C.D.C., told me. “We have a markedly reduced capacity to do the kinds of studies that underpin a lot of our prevention-and-control strategies, and there has been a huge exodus of highly qualified people.”
The decimation of the national public-health apparatus has had a direct impact amid the cyclosporiasis crisis. The C.D.C.’s parasite-surveillance team, which was instrumental in tracing the origin of the 2013 cyclospora outbreak, had eleven scientists before DOGE, and now it has three. Until last year, the FoodNet program, a joint project of the C.D.C., F.D.A., and U.S.D.A., mandated proactive surveillance of eight pathogens in ten states, including cyclospora; that list of pathogens has been cut to two, and it no longer includes our diarrhea parasite. “That leaves states more and more on their own,” Eisenberg said.
There are still scores of infections and conditions—including cyclosporiasis—that health-care providers are mandated to report to their state health departments; if a state observes a spike in cases, it will provide the relevant data to the C.D.C., which may decide to intervene. In the aftermath of DOGE, “that system still exists, but it’s been hindered by mass public-health layoffs,” Alexander Sundermann, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, told me. In tracing back the source of an outbreak, an especially time-intensive task for state epidemiologists is conducting interviews with afflicted patients. “It can take two to three hours to go through a questionnaire, and that’s for every single case,” Sundermann said. “We have a lot fewer people to do that work, and so it’s going to be much slower than it used to be.” The longer it takes for researchers to pinpoint a pathogen, the more people may get sick.
It is entirely possible that hundreds or thousands of Americans could have avoided spending much of the early summer on the toilet if the federal Food Traceability Rule, which was finalized in 2022, had taken effect in January, as originally planned. The rule, once in place, would put far more investigatory onus on companies, requiring them to track and record data on most F.D.A.-regulated foods—including fruits and vegetables, fish, and dairy products—and to provide that data to the government within twenty-four hours of a request. But, in March, 2025, following intense Big Ag lobbying, Congress pushed back implementation of the rule to 2028, reflecting the deregulatory spirit of Trump II. (The attorney and public-health advocate Matthew Cortland recently dug up Federal Election Commission forms showing that Taylor Fresh Foods made a million-dollar donation to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, also in March of last year.)
After the Food Traceability Rule was delayed, the C.E.O. of the Food Industry Association, a trade group, expressed relief, saying that the rule would impose “unnecessary complexity that would burden the supply chain and increase food costs to consumers.” Perhaps the cyclospora outbreak provides an image of an unburdened supply chain, and what it costs.
By July 13th, Michigan had logged two thousand six hundred and forty cases of cyclosporiasis. (The C.D.C.’s national count of confirmed cases still trailed behind, at eight hundred and forty-three.) That same day, Michigan flagged a breakthrough in the investigation, announcing that lettuce was the likely villain of the outbreak. Across social media, speculation about Taylor Farms escalated. Kennedy, who still had not made a public statement about cyclospora, remained mum on the subject. He posted a brief video urging his followers to reverse America’s “chronic-disease burden” through the power of personal responsibility: “It begins with you taking back your own health,” he says. Then Rob Schneider, the anti-vaxxer and star of “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo,” steps into the frame. “You can do it!” he exclaims. “Get active! Eat real food!”
