“What the hell is going on?
by Katelyn Jetelina in Your Local Epidemiologist Feb 04, 2025
It’s February 4. That matters because, as of February 1, the communications freeze at federal agencies, including CDC, FDA, and NIH, was supposed to be lifted. It wasn’t.
Over the weekend, national health data vanished from CDC websites, triggering panic among researchers and public health professionals who rely on this information to track outbreaks, identify health gaps, and protect the American public. Most data have been restored, but not all.
What the hell is going on? This is a great question. Only a handful of people truly know.
But one thing is clear: public health data and communication aren’t just information—they’re a vital resource, as valuable as gold, for protecting American lives. Their power lies in their purity: reliability, accuracy, and accessibility. The longer this instability and information drip-feed continues, the greater the biosecurity risk.
Here’s what’s happening, what I’m looking for very closely, and what this means for you and your community.
Complying with executive orders is complicated
At the heart of this mess is the collision between sweeping executive orders (EOs) and slow-moving federal agencies forced into rapid compliance.
Two EOs require removing so-called “woke” language from all communications and datasets. HHS agencies, like the CDC, had to comply with these orders by Friday at 5 p.m. ET, which is why warning messages popped up all over its website.
Implementing such a massive directive in two days is a draconian task. Federal agencies can’t just “Control+F” their websites and swap out words like “pregnant person” for “pregnant woman” in thousands of documents. Similarly, changing data variables from “gender” to “sex” isn’t always a simple fix. It takes time and can be a logistical nightmare. Researchers depend on clean, unaltered datasets to improve Americans’ health meaningfully instead of throwing spaghetti at a wall. A great example of this happening is the Youth Risk Behavior Survey: (continued)