Breaking News: RIFs in reverse. Some CDC workers have been brought back, in latest whiplash.
This is breaking news. We are in solidarity with CDC and other dedicated HHS federal employees affected by these terminations, professionals who work hard to keep us all safe. Thanks for reading, sharing, and supporting this work.
After thousands of CDC employees received Friday night notifications that they would be placed on administrative leave as part of the latest round of reductions in force (RIFs), at the hands of the Trump administration, at least some have had those notices rescinded, Inside Medicine has learned from multiple sources within or closely associated with the agency.
It is unclear what percentage of the hundreds or possibly thousands of individuals who were initially slated for termination have now had their fates reversed. But in at least one case, a division within the CDC that was facing near obliteration has been almost entirely recalled.
The reason for the sudden change in course is unclear, but there are multiple explanations in play. One source told me that some of the reversals came after the Trump administration realized that they had accidentally terminated critically important staffers working on current measles and Ebola outbreaks.
A former CDC official was told that HHS communications officials were not happy with the media coverage of the RIFs, and may have felt that the move reflected badly on the administration — as outrage and accusations that the administration was using the government shutdown as a pretense to accomplish other political goals seemed to be sticking. Meanwhile, the administration acknowledged that some CDC workers had been mistakenly terminated due to coding errors, as reported by ABC News.
I was also told that RIF’d editors of the CDC’s flagship scientific journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report have all been recalled, as well as leaders and staffers in several other centers and divisions. Recalled CDC staffers include scientists and other workers in the Global Health Center, as well as others who work on suicide and other injury prevention.
This is a developing story.
If you have information about any of the unfolding stories we are following, please email me or find me on Signal at InsideMedicine.88.
This is government by bungling amateurs, not leaders. They fire people essential to containing measles and Ebola, then scramble to undo their own disaster once the consequences become clear. It is not governance, it is malpractice on a national scale. The chaos, the cover-ups, and the catastrophic mistakes all flow from the same source: ideological zeal, contempt for science, and a complete unfitness to lead.
Band of buffoons.