What A Day - Is The US Ready For A New Global Health Threat?

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

The World Health Organization met on Tuesday in Switzerland to discuss a deadly outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. According to the WHO, the outbreak, which has killed more than 130 people and infected more than 500, could last for months. Those numbers could be much, much higher than what they've been able to report. The Ebola outbreak comes in the midst of another deadly health crisis you've probably heard a lot about: hantavirus. It's part of a family of extremely dangerous viruses that are primarily spread by rats and mice. As all this is going on, you're probably wondering who's running the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention? And who is currently the Surgeon General of the United States? The answer to both? Currently, no one has been confirmed by the Senate. To find out more about what's happening with America's public health system, we spoke with Apoorva Mandavilli. She's a science and global health reporter at the New York Times.And in headlines, President Donald Trump shows off the White House ballroom construction site, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche sits for a Congressional hearing, and guess who's making a lot of money trading stocks? You're not going to like the answer.Show Notes: Check out Apoorva's work – www.nytimes.com/by/apoorva-mandavilli Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Wednesday, May 20th. I'm Jane Koston, and this is what a day. The show celebrating Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy's new career as a big old hater. Since he lost his primary last weekend, Cassidy has said he would vote against funding President Donald Trump's ballroom and voted to support Democrats' resolution to limit Trump's war powers. Hate, hate, hate, hate. On today's show, Shvavna! Oh, sorry, you couldn't follow that? That was me trying to talk over the sound of the White House ballroom construction. And Trump makes an endorsement Republicans did not ask for.

But let's start with America's public health system and what it is and isn't equipped to handle right now. The World Health Organization met on Tuesday in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss a deadly outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. According to the WHO, the outbreak, which has killed more than 130 people and infected more than 500, could last for months, and those numbers could be much, much higher than what officials have been able to determine. Trump is also concerned about Ebola. Well, as concerned as he gets about things that don't involve him personally. Here he is on Monday.

Should America be concerned about Ebola? I'm concerned about everything, but certainly am. I think that, you know, it's been confined right now to Africa, but it's something that has had a breakout. The Ebola outbreak comes in the midst of another outbreak. probably heard a lot about. Hanta virus. It's part of a family of extremely dangerous viruses that are primarily spread by rats and mice. It also infected 11 people on what became one of the worst sightseeing cruises ever. Three people died, and now many of the ship's passengers are in

quarantine. And with all this going on in public health, you might be wondering, hey, who is running the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention? And who is the Surgeon General of the United States? The answer to both, no one who has been confirmed by the Senate. So what is going on with the American public health system right now? To find out, I spoke to Apurva Amanda Vili. She's a science and global health reporter at the New York Times. Apurva, welcome to Waddae. Thanks for having me. Since Trump took office, the U.S. public health apparatus has been decimated. There's a lot of leadership missing in the CDC, including the head of the CDC. We still don't have a surge in general. How is the U.S. public health system operating right now compared to

two years ago? Not very well. They are doing okay in that the CDC does have a lot of staff scientists who've been there a long time, who know what they're doing, and they can still sort of keep the ship moving, but not having a permanent head of the CDC who can lobby for the agency, who can liaise with the White House and with the health secretary Robert of Kennedy Jr. That's a real disservice to the agency, and they also have lost hundreds and hundreds of employees who would be useful in certain situations like an infectious disease outbreaks.

And so they are not doing as well as they could be. So something about the U.S. public health system that is a little different from some other countries. It's decentralized. Can you explain quickly how all of these agencies work together and what happens when there are budget cuts or these big cuts of scientists and just missing officials? What does it look like when it's supposed to work? And what does it look like right now when it's not working well? So I think one thing people don't realize about the CDC is that most of the CDC's budget actually goes immediately out the door to states and local health departments.

The CDC doesn't keep that money. And so when you cut the CDC's budget, you're actually cutting the budget for Americans' public health services all across the country. And in fact, often it's the red states who are really dependent on federal funding that are going to suffer the most. So I've spoken to officials at state health departments in places like Alabama and Mississippi who talk about how much harder it is for them to do their job because they've had to fire a lot of their own people because of the funding cuts that they've experienced. Of course, this is the Trump administration. So more changes to the public health

system are on the way. He recently nominated new candidates for both CDC director and surgeon general. Who are they? Well, so we know very little about them because neither of them seems to have been particularly well known before they were nominated. Nicole Safier, who's the current nominee for Surgeon General, is a Fox News commentator, but she's a radiologist. And when my colleagues reached out to some radiologists to ask about her, they were told that those folks had never heard of her. So she's probably best known in her commentator role. We do know a lot about what she thinks about various things because she's been in this world. and she's said various things about, you know, vaccines, about, you know, Tylenol and autism,

the connection that President Trump had tried to make. We know that, for example, she does seem to support some childhood vaccines and thinks that measles vaccine is important. But she also is a big proponent of the idea of, you know, medical freedom and people being able to choose, at least for some vaccines like hepatitis B, that they should be able to decide. And so she's somewhere in the middle, I would say, it seems. more pro-vaccine and more into the idea of immunization on a broad scale than a lot of people that have been associated with Mr. Kennedy before. Can you tell me a little bit about the potential CDC director?

Yeah. So Erica Schwartz was in the Coast Guard for many years. She was a doctor. Again, in the public health world, no one I know seems to have heard of her. They all think she has great credentials. They're excited about the fact that she's an MD. she has studied, you know, biotechnology. She studied law.

She seems to have a very broad background. She did serve in the first Trump administration. She was in charge of some of the testing during the early in the pandemic. And I've spoken to Trump administration officials from that term who said she was great and that she seemed to really think very, you know, carefully about things. And that when she didn't think something was right, she did seem to speak up. At the same time, some public health experts have talked to point out that, you know, she was in the military overall and that in certain circumstances,

she may just be inclined to carry out orders that come from above because that's what happens in the military in general. And so it's not clear exactly how she would serve. And, you know, she has really been a mystery to me because I know a lot of people in the public health world and to encounter someone that no one seems to have really had much interaction with is pretty rare. We were talking earlier about, you know, what these institutions are supposed. supposed to be doing are supposed to look like when there's an emergency. And we are in the midst of two potential emergencies. Over the weekend, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of the Ebola virus in Central Africa, a global health emergency. It's especially concerning because it's a strain for which there is no treatment, nor is there a vaccine. We've also been hearing a lot

about hauntar virus, which hasn't been a part of the global health conversation. And people are very worried. But as you know, last year, Trump pulled out. of the World Health Organization. How does that decision affect our ability and the world's ability to fight global threats moving forward? It makes it a lot harder, not just for us, but for everybody else.

So when the U.S. we drew from the World Health Organization, and it also rejected something called the International Health Regulations, which is this legal framework that binds countries together and obligates them to report outbreaks. So when the U.S. is not part of those things,

it means that we don't hear about outbreaks when everybody else does. To give you an example, with the Hunter Virus outbreak, there were officials from the World Health Organization, from the European CDC, and from the Dutch Health Ministry, on board the ship investigating what had happened, but nobody from the CDC was there. And we didn't find out about it and did not start our response till almost a month after the first patient had died. And everyone I talked to who has been involved in these kinds of outbreaks before talks about how when the U.S. is in the room, they're the leaders.

They make everybody move faster. They coordinate. They make things happen. And that was not the case this time. And we're also seeing that play out with Ebola. Again, May 5th is when the WHO found out. CDC has said they found out on May 14th. Nine days in an outbreak that moves this quickly is just an eternity. Right. Especially in a disease with a 50% fatality rate.

Let's set aside these global threats, which is hard to do, but we'll do it. How would you rate the preparedness of our current public health system in America? We have lost a lot of. lot of the things we need to be ready for a pandemic. So when there is even a hint of a threat, we used to have several people whose entire job it was to coordinate responses. So we had somebody in the White House that a role that Congress had created. We had an entire office of pandemic preparedness that also Congress had created. Those things are not filled right now. Those are all vacant. We also don't have a lot of the infectious disease experts that the CDC would

normally have. There are fewer people that the CDC has in country offices, you know, all across the world, especially in places like Africa, who would be able to contain an outbreak or at least tell us about it very quickly if it happened. We completely lost USAID, the US Agency for International Development, which funded much of the surveillance that we used to have to detect outbreaks really early. And when there was an outbreak, USAID was what would go in and coordinate and make sure that, you know, people had the right kind of protective gear. They had the right kind of lab equipment. They would help pay for transport of lab samples.

They would train health workers. None of that is happening right now in quite the same way. Some of it is happening because there are other organizations involved, the WHO, the European CDC. They're trying to do their best. And even the U.S. agencies are providing some support. But none of this is happening at the scale or the speed that we would need to really get on top of an outbreak before it becomes a pandemic.

Apurva, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. That was my conversation with Apurva Mandavilli, science and global health reporter at the New York Times. Don't worry, there is news that will not fill you with existential tear coming up, unless you're a big John Cornyn fan. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Some days feel good and others feel overwhelming.

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includes all three. IQ bars are a delicious part of my post-workout routine. And right, now, IQ Bar is offering our special podcast listeners 20% off all IQ Bar products, including the Ultimate Sampler Pack, plus free shipping. To get your 20% off, text Wad to 64,000, text Wad to 64,000. That's Wad to 64,000. Message and data rates may apply. See terms for details. Here's what else we're following today. Head aligns. We have to have a safe country, we have to have a great country. We have to make sure that Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon. All of things that you see me fighting for so hard. Actually, I see you fighting for the construction of that $400 million ballroom you're standing

in front of. Shouting over the sounds of heavy equipment, Trump said he's giving Iran just days to make progress in negotiations to avoid strikes. He said, quote, maybe Friday, Saturday, Sunday, something, maybe early next week, a limited period of time. Sir, you are not scheduling a brunch. Trump covered a lot of ground during that press gaggle. I'm going to be putting out an endorsement in a little while in Texas, the great state.

And that he did. Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ahead of next week's runoff in the Republican Senate primary. Trump's endorsement puts him at odds with his party's establishment, which pushed for incumbent Senator John Cornyn. The Republican nominee will face Democratic State Representative James Telerico. President Trump's handpick candidate Ed Gallerine defeated Kentucky Republican Representative Thomas Massey in Tuesday's primary. Trump sought to unseat Massey after. after the eight-term representative broke with him on issues like the release of the Epstein files. The president, who had waged a social media campaign against Massey,

posted a photo showing him in Gallorin under the words, Ed Gellarine wins, endorsed by President Trump. We'll discuss the other winners and losers in Tuesday's primary on tomorrow's show. More than 3,500 stock trades were made on Trump's behalf in the first quarter, according to government filings. It's unclear how much Trump made, but the Financial Times estimates that he made hundreds of millions. millions of dollars.

Here's what Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen told what a day when asked about the trades. This is by far the most corrupt administration in American history. I mean, Donald Trump has literally turned the White House into a pay-to-play casino. And in this latest example, he is making critical decisions that will have a direct impact on the value of the stocks he's selling. And this is the most blatant example of conflict of interest. That's putting it very mildly.

There's currently bipartisan support in Congress to ban stock trading for members of Congress and the president. We'll see how that goes. Mr. Attorney General, let me ask you this. Are there going to be rules that say that if you've assaulted a Capitol Hill police officer or committed a violent crime, you will not be eligible, why not make that a rule? I expect that, well, because I'm not one of the commissioners setting up the rules. I expect that there will be rules set up up up.

You're appointing four of the five members. Pardon me? He's actually appointing all five members. That was Senator Van Hollen during a Senate appropriations hearing on Tuesday. He asked Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche some fun questions about Trump's $1.776 billion anti-weaponization slush fund. During the hearing, Democrats and Republicans both expressed concerns about the obvious pitfalls of a MAGA slush fund. And it turns out, giving more than a billion dollars to Trump's

backers and allies who claim the Department of Justice has been, quote, weaponized against them, isn't even going over while with conservatives. Both the Wall Street Journal editorial board and the National Review came out against the fund on Tuesday. A judge has ruled that federal agents can no longer make arrests in and around three Manhattan buildings where immigration proceedings occur. The decision on Monday brings an abrupt halt to a Trump administration practice that enabled agents to take into custody people who follow requirements to appear before immigration judges. And that's the news. Before we go, AI is evolving faster than most of us can keep up with, raising big questions about work, power, creativity, and what the future might actually look like.

In assembly required, Stacey Abrams talks with Katie Drummond from Wired and Tim Net Gabrew from the Distributed AI Research Institute for a candid conversation about the fears and possibilities surrounding AI. Listen to this episode and future episodes of Assembly Required on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for today. If you like the show,

make sure to subscribe, leave a review. Listen to these University of Central Florida students booing their commencement speaker after she praised AI and tell your friends to listen. The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution. And if you're into reading, and not just about how a number of universities have had commencement speakers who bring up AI and AI technologies get heavily booed by graduates like me.

Whataday is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston. And when you're talking to young people, you've been telling for the last five or so years that AI would destroy their jobs. Are you really surprised when they don't like that? Weird. What Today is a production of Crooked Media. Our show was produced by Caitlin Plummer, Emily 4, Erica Morrison, and Adrian Hill.

Our team includes Haley Jones, Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Joseph Dutra, Johanna Case, and Desmond Taylor. Our music is by Kyle Murdoch and Jordan Cantor. We had helped today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized for the Writers Guild of America East.