The U.S. response to the bird flu and measles outbreaks are worrying signs that our pandemic preparedness has eroded.

I’ve been covering bird flu for a while now. It wasn’t great under Biden. There was never enough testing to understand where outbreaks are happening and how they are spreading. Health leaders chose not to deploy H5N1 vaccines to protect those most at risk. While officials were communicating with experts and journalists about what was happening, their overwhelming message was that everything was under control, even when it clearly wasn’t.

But under Trump, the situation rapidly deteriorated.

The last bird flu case in a person was listed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on February 23.

At that point, at least 830 people in the US had been tested after contact with sick animals. This kind of testing – monitoring the health of people who regularly work with H5N1-infected animals – is how the vast majority of cases (64 out of 70) have been found in this outbreak.

But then, several CDC officials overseeing the bird flu response were fired on April 1.

Since February, only about 50 people in the US have been tested after exposure to sick animals – and no positive cases have been announced.

There have been no press calls about H5N1, and media inquiries go unanswered. We are largely flying blind.

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The subpar response to the ongoing bird flu outbreak signals a larger issue: America is not ready for whatever pathogen will sweep through next, I reported for the Guardian recently.

“We still just don’t have a good picture of the scope and scale of this outbreak – we never really have. And until we have that, we’re not going to be able to contain it,” said Angela Rasmussen, an American virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.

“It’s extremely bad,” she continued. “We don’t have any information about what’s happening right now. The next pandemic could be starting, and we just don’t know where that’s happening, and we don’t have any ability to find out.”

Pandemic preparedness ‘dramatically eroding’ under Trump, experts say, The Guardian

Information is perhaps the biggest issue during a health crisis. It’s not just about gaps in information, as with H5N1. Another, perhaps greater challenge is bad information.

In the ongoing outbreaks of measles, for example, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the secretary of health and human services, has downplayed the severity of the disease, spread misinformation about the highly effective vaccine to prevent measles, and pushed unproven treatments.

“The communications on measles gives me deep worries about what would happen in a pandemic,” said said Jennifer Nuzzo, professor of epidemiology and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health.

“If a pandemic were to occur today, the only thing we would have to protect ourselves on day one would be information… Communication is our most important public health intervention. People, in order to be able to know how to protect themselves, need to have access to facts, and they need to believe in the messengers. And the communication around the measles outbreaks are deeply eroding our standing with the American people.”

Pandemic preparedness ‘dramatically eroding’ under Trump, experts say, The Guardian

I know it seems like there are multiple concurrent fires in this country, and it’s hard to know what to focus on. ICE crackdowns, protests met with violence and arrests by police and the military, war with Iran, and so much more.

It feels strange to be shouting about, for instance, pandemic preparedness in this moment, when there are many urgent threats. But preparing for the next big crisis is urgent even when it doesn’t seem so.

And Nuzzo’s point has stayed with me: The best way to protect ourselves is with information. Staying informed, even when the news isn’t great, even when it seems like there’s too much to keep track, helps keep us safe. Information kills fascism.

Got tips or ideas for what I should cover next? Get in touch via email (melodyaschreiber@gmail.com) or Signal (melodyschreiber.06).

Top image: Jen Zajac