In the wake of a deadly hantavirus breaking out on a Dutch cruise ship and with exposed passengers now in at least five states, you might be wondering how adept is our public health system, headed by the spectacularly unqualified Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to prevent such a thing from happening on a ship under U.S. jurisdiction?
Sadly, the answer is probably not at all.
The man who claims to want to “make American healthy again” has already demonstrated that he and the Trump administration could not care less if vacationers fall or even die on cruise ships.
Last April, I wrote about Kennedy’s purge of the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program. According to CBS News, that move “gutt[ed] the agency’s ability to investigate outbreaks and conduct health inspections on cruise ships.” Even worse, Kennedy decimated the program right in the middle of a record surge of norovirus. Hundreds of people had already been sickened from norovirus outbreaks on cruise ships that year.
Not surprisingly, the CDC is trying to cover up its (mis)deeds. It recently told PEOPLE that its VSP is “fully staffed.” But, as Futurism pointed out, that does not indicate whether the program has been re-staffed or is "fully staffed" post-purge. The CDC’s vagueness strongly suggests the latter.
Regardless, Futurism also pointed out that even if the program was restaffed, it’s unlikely that it has fully recovered. “The CBS reporting notes it takes six months to train new cruise ship inspectors, a job that few are lining up for,” Futurism also reported. “That the public health service officers who remained could pick up the slack was also dubious, given the amount of training required. On top of that, the program was already short-staffed to begin with, according to anonymous CDC officials who spoke to CBS.”
In case you think that getting rid of cruise ship inspectors was part of some tough belt-tightening decision, CBS News also reported that the VSP is paid for by cruise ship companies.
In short, Kennedy and the Trump administration gave a gift to their corporate cronies at the expense of Americans’ health and well-being. As for Kennedy, he has already displayed his sick zeal for preventable diseases infecting Americans because only the weak will die.
