It sucks to be a loser. And that’s exactly what the U.S. is right now. Big, fat losers. Among industrialized nations, we lose at maternal health. We lose at universal health care. We lose at life expectancy. We lose at cost of living. And, right now, we’re losing at managing deadly infectious diseases which is frankly infuriating to us at Women in America having invested so much time and resources into completing an advanced public health degree only to be upstaged by a bunch of MAGA idiots who don’t believe in evolution. Let’s dive in.
There is an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) right now. By the time you read this, the official numbers will be higher than the ones I give you here, but as of this writing it is more than 600 cases and 139 deaths.
The U.S. did not find out about the outbreak until nine days after the World Health Organization, and nearly a month after the first person died because Trump destroyed the systems we had to track diseases when he 1) dismantled USAID last year and 2) defunded the CDC. It’s embarrassing.
The U.S. used to be good at this. We are not anymore. And it’s Trump’s fault.
One thing public health experts understand globally is that infectious diseases do not give a flying fuck about national borders. Because of that, while I hate to admit it, the U.S.’s previous investments in global health have always been selfish. We invest in global health to protect ourselves: a dollar spent finding a virus over there saves us hundreds in money and American lives when an infectious disease lands here. Two agencies ran these investments: USAID paid for the clinics and labs. The CDC sent the disease experts who trained local staff, conducted contact tracing, and tested samples.
The U.S. used to be good at this. We are not anymore. And it’s Trump’s fault.
Then, in 2025, Trump dismantled USAID and gutted the CDC, reducing public health and humanitarian investments by nearly 80%. That 80% is most of the answer for why we found out about Ebola dead last and are currently public health losers.
What should make you furious though is that this is so fixable.
When a clinic in a remote part of the DRC sees a patient who might have Ebola, it cannot confirm it on the spot. The blood has to travel to a lab that can test it. In this outbreak, samples had to go more than 600 miles to reach that lab. A vial of blood does not cross 600 miles on its own. Someone has to pay for the plane. For years, that someone was USAID; they used to charter planes to get samples out of remote areas.
Since the money is gone, it’s harder to move samples to the lab. And while those samples waited for a flight, Ebola kept spreading. For nine whole fucking days. All we needed was to pay for shipping for the samples.
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