Public health officials and experts were braced for challenges. The scale of the new administration’s moves in the first few days, however, has shocked them.

Five years after a novel virus rocked the world, killed millions, and continues to sicken people; amid ongoing outbreaks of bird flu and mpox and tuberculosis, public health and scientific research are being gutted in America—and it’s happening more quickly than even experts thought possible.

In its first days, the Trump administration ordered a communications blackout for all U.S. health agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration. For some departments and agencies, the order amounted to a shutdown. Read more at The New Republic.