I read about how epidemics spread. Not "disaster porn" but b/c I'm interested in the development and spread and infectious diseases. I've watched this scale-back of the CDC with dismay but not surprise. I hope that funding will be restored.
I am not at all surprised, in fact expected it. This move is premature, yet I think in the future we will see much more around the world. Charity begins at home will become the norm. Even now, overseas aid is only a token gesture, disease control overseas is only so it isn't brought home. (Why does everybody call me cynical?) We currently produce sufficient food to feed the world, we don't share. When disasters hit at home, we leave 3rd world countries to fend for themselves. I don't agree any of it is right, it is just how I perceive it.
The world produces enough food to feed everyone. For the world as a whole, per capita food availability has risen from about 2220 kcal/person/day in the early 1960s to 2790 kcal/person/day in 2006-08, while developing countries even recorded a leap from 1850 kcal/person/day to over 2640 kcal/person/day. This growth in food availability in conjunction with improved access to food helped reduce the percentage of chronically undernourished people in developing countries from 34 percent in the mid 1970s to just 15 percent three decades later. (FAO 2012, p. 4) A principal problem is that many people in the world still do not have sufficient income to purchase (or land to grow) enough food or access to nutritious food.
I don't think CDC funding will be restored under the current "administration". Especially considering that 45's pick to be the director just resigned due to the fact that she had investments which were conflicts of interest. While she did divest some of them, she didn't divest all of them. Second 45 pick from Georgia who has had to resign.
So much for picking "all the best people". The CDC, EPA, and a host of other agencies are all suffering under the rule of this "president". It's enough to make one start considering any number of conspiracy theories.