Oh who cares about infectious disease outbreaks?

When Republicans were talking about reopening the government piece by piece, certain very visible or emotionally charged programs rose to the top. Especially emotional was a discussion about reopening the national parks and memorials. Many conservatives, who came out in full force this last weekend, felt the metal barricades were dishonoring to the dead. Similarly, the week before, there were cries to refund the National Institutes of Health to ensure children cancer patients were put on experimental treatments.

What was left out of the discussions was the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"To me the CDC and infectious disease monitoring is to the military is what a hostile enemy threat is," Gregory Poland, an infectious disease expert at the Mayo Clinic, explains. "We don't furlough our military and say 'well we won't just have any national security until the congress gets its act together.' But why aren't we willing to save something that could cost just as many lives?"
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We're talking in dramatic terms. Is any of this overstated?

GP: Let me take you back to February 2009. Out of nowhere, a few unusual respiratory illnesses in a rural part of Mexico, and then a few of those cases in Texas, and then a bunch of those cases in the Northeast states. Within a couple of weeks, CDC investigates, sequences the viruses and pushes the button. Nation, we've got a novel pandemic virus. What would happen if that happened now? There would be delayed recognition, thousands more would get ill, would die. we would be flying blind. It would be delayed development of a vaccine to cover it, we wouldn't know what antivirals to use.

The other thing could happen too. The season just kind of pedals along—no new viruses no surprises, no new viruses or infectious disease threats anywhere in the world. And the shutdown resolves and we're a little behind on next year's vaccines. We're somewhere in that spectrum.