Image: Critical Resistance
The safety net is gone. When the next pandemic hits, there will be no federal response -- just chaos. Here’s what’s coming and how to prepare.
Mar 02, 2025
I can’t offer you comfort -- only clarity.
But clarity is power. As long as we are reactive, we are predictable. As long as we are predictable, they have the power. That’s the game. But seeing this -- naming it, refusing to look away -- is already an act of defiance.
They rely on silence. They rely on people looking away. They rely on fear turning into paralysis. Refusing to let that happen is resistance.
When a government dismantles public health, it doesn’t call it an attack. It calls it "reform," "efficiency," or "returning power to the states."
But make no mistake: the deliberate stripping of public health protections, combined with rising disease outbreaks, is setting the stage for a disaster we won’t be able to contain.
We’ve seen this playbook before. During COVID, denial and delays cost lives -- but at least there was still a federal response. This time, even that is being dismantled.
There will be no CDC guidance, no FEMA mobilization, no international coordination. The next crisis will come, and this time, we are on our own.
Public health in the U.S. is no longer governed by science -- it is controlled by ideologues who are dismantling it piece by piece. At the helm is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a conspiracy theorist with a long history of spreading vaccine misinformation. In his first weeks as Secretary of Health and Human Services, he eliminated public input on healthcare policy, ensuring that decisions about Medicare, Medicaid, vaccines, and disease response will now be made without oversight. Meanwhile, mass firings and politically motivated hires across federal agencies are crippling public health infrastructure.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is being systematically dismantled:
1,300 public health officers have been laid off, including entire teams of disease detectives and lab researchers.
The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) faced an unprecedented disruption and is now omitting critical disease surveillance, including the ongoing H5N1 bird flu outbreak.
Doctors, hospitals, and state health departments now have no centralized guidance when outbreaks occur.
This isn’t just defunding public health -- it’s the strategic dismantling of America’s disease response system. Mass firings at the CDC, censorship of key reports, and the elimination of oversight ensure that the next outbreak will be met with confusion, delays, and inaction. With no centralized response, hospitals will be on their own, forced to make life-or-death decisions without federal coordination.
At the USDA, the administration has also placed new political appointees with no public health or veterinary expertise in key roles overseeing the nation's animal disease response:
Kailee Tkacz Buller, Chief of Staff, previously worked in the edible oil industry and has no public health background.
Preston Parry, Deputy Chief of Staff, formerly worked for the America First Policy Institute, with no experience in animal or public health.
Jennifer Tiller, Chief of Staff to the Deputy Secretary, was a legislative staffer in agricultural policy, not disease prevention.
Project 2025 is privatizing public health, putting corporations in charge of who gets care -- and at what price. Instead of elected officials leading pandemic response, pharmaceutical companies and insurers will dictate care access.
What to Watch For: Further layoffs at the CDC and other federal health agencies, weakening disease surveillance and response. Key public health reports, like the MMWR, continuing to be delayed, censored, or eliminated. Lawsuits challenging the firings and restructuring, and whether they gain traction or are ignored. Increased privatization of public health functions, shifting control to corporations with profit motives.
In a move with catastrophic consequences for pandemic response, the U.S. has initiated withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), a process that takes 12 months to finalize. However, Trump ordered an immediate halt to all communications with the WHO, cutting off federal health agencies from global disease monitoring systems overnight.
The U.S. has historically been the largest financial contributor to the WHO, and its withdrawal further destabilizes an already financially strained organization.
This means:
The U.S. will no longer have real-time access to global outbreak alerts, meaning critical weeks -- or even months -- could be lost before new threats are recognized.
Vaccine distribution networks that were once coordinated through the WHO will now operate without U.S. participation -- cutting Americans off from critical supply chains.
Future pandemic responses will be isolated and slower, increasing the risk of unchecked spread before vaccines or treatments can be developed.
The WHO, already struggling with funding, will be weakened further, impacting global health initiatives beyond pandemic response, including disease eradication and emergency medical aid.
The U.S. is flying blind. Without global coordination, we won’t see the next pandemic coming until it’s already here. When vaccines and treatments are needed, Americans will be last in line.
What to Watch For: More severed ties between the U.S. and global health organizations beyond the WHO. Disruptions in vaccine distribution networks, particularly for pandemics and emerging diseases. Delays in outbreak detection due to loss of global disease surveillance. Other countries forming independent coalitions to replace U.S. involvement in health initiatives.
The attack on public health isn’t just about defunding agencies -- it’s about eliminating access to life-saving information. Under new policies:
Public health websites containing information on HIV prevention, STIs, and LGBTQ+ health have been scrubbed.
Scientific research using terms like "gender," "climate change," or "vaccine safety" is being halted or retracted.
Doctors, parents, and the public are now being denied the ability to access information that could protect them from preventable disease outbreaks. The systematic scrubbing of medical guidelines from public databases will ensure that when the next crisis hits, even those seeking to protect themselves will be left without reliable sources.
When the next crisis hits, the information needed to respond will already be erased. This isn’t incompetence -- it’s intentional. A censored public is a defenseless public. When disease spreads, people will search for guidance only to find the facts are gone, rewritten, or buried under propaganda.
What to Watch For: Public health websites continuing to disappear or be altered without explanation. Key medical research being retracted, censored, or rewritten to fit political narratives. Increased misinformation campaigns targeting vaccines, disease prevention, and scientific research. Greater restrictions on academic institutions, preventing independent public health studies.
As the public health infrastructure collapses, so does access to healthcare itself. The House GOP’s proposed budget slashes $880 billion from Medicaid over the next decade -- the largest rollback of public healthcare in U.S. history. These cuts will result in millions of low-income Americans losing coverage, disproportionately affecting children, the elderly, and people with disabilities.
At the same time, Project 2025 calls for federal Medicaid rollbacks, stricter eligibility requirements, and lifetime benefit limits -- measures that would permanently entrench a healthcare caste system, where access to life-saving care depends entirely on wealth. States are now rejecting Medicaid expansion, further exacerbating healthcare disparities. Even states that have expanded Medicaid are now facing devastating cuts due to frozen federal funds. In Illinois alone, nearly 770,000 residents could lose coverage, with potential funding losses reaching $1.9 billion. More states are expected to face similar shortfalls.
As states reject Medicaid expansion and federal funding is slashed, healthcare is no longer a right; it’s a privilege only the wealthy can afford. Millions will face medical debt, untreated conditions, and preventable deaths while hospitals in poorer areas shut down for good.
What to Watch For: More states rejecting Medicaid expansion, leading to mass disenrollment. The introduction of lifetime benefit caps and harsher eligibility requirements. Hospital closures in rural and low-income areas due to loss of Medicaid reimbursements. Accelerated privatization of Medicaid, increasing corporate control over public health.
States like Texas, Idaho, and Indiana have already moved to ban mask mandates in schools, hospitals, and government buildings, ensuring that even the most vulnerable -- including immunocompromised individuals, the elderly, and children -- will be unable to rely on basic protections during future outbreaks.
Project 2025 explicitly calls for dismantling pandemic-era public health measures, particularly mask mandates, and encourages states to prevent any future enforcement. This ensures that when the next airborne crisis hits, the virus will spread unchecked, with no government intervention to slow its impact.
This isn’t just about mandates -- it’s about criminalizing masks themselves. Multiple states have introduced or expanded laws that prohibit masks in public, creating legal loopholes that allow law enforcement to target and penalize those who wear them.
While framed as measures against crime or civil unrest, these policies will have devastating consequences when the next airborne virus emerges. They are removing the ability to fight back. The next airborne pandemic won’t just spread -- it will spread by design, while legal threats keep people from protecting themselves.
What to Watch For: More states passing laws banning mask mandates in schools, hospitals, and workplaces. Laws expanding to criminalize wearing masks in public under the guise of “anti-crime” measures. Targeted harassment or arrests of people wearing masks for health reasons. Further attacks on other public health measures, including restrictions on vaccines and quarantine protocols.
At a time when public health protections are needed more than ever, FEMA’s role in disaster response is being systematically dismantled. Grants that fund hospitals, disease response teams, and public health infrastructure are being frozen or revoked. This means that even before FEMA is officially gutted, lifesaving resources are already being pulled away from communities that rely on them in emergencies.
At the same time, Trump has signed an executive order to review the agency -- while publicly suggesting that disaster response should be handed over to the states. This aligns directly with Project 2025’s calls to strip FEMA of its ability to coordinate national emergency aid. Under this vision, future public health disasters -- whether pandemics, bioterror attacks, or extreme weather-driven outbreaks -- will be left entirely to state governments, many of which have already deprioritized public health in favor of political ideology.
The consequences will be catastrophic. States with well-funded public health systems may be able to manage on their own, but others -- particularly red states that have cut healthcare funding and banned public health measures -- will become epicenters of preventable crises. There will be no federal safety net. If hospitals overflow, if vaccines run out, if disease spreads -- that is the plan.
What to Watch For: Additional FEMA layoffs and further defunding of disaster relief programs. More frozen or revoked funding for hospitals and emergency response teams. States struggling to manage disaster response without federal coordination. Misinformation campaigns framing the dismantling of FEMA as “efficiency” or “reducing government waste.” Increased reliance on privatized emergency response, benefiting only those who can afford it.
If you were waiting for a federal emergency response to step in when the next disaster hits, stop waiting. FEMA is being dismantled in real time. When hospitals are overwhelmed, vaccine supply chains collapse, and cities face public health disasters, the federal government will not be coming to help. That is the plan.
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