Brian Laird on WNYC.

So every Tuesday on the show for a few years now, we've been doing a health or climate story of the week.

This began when we saw the climate getting what we thought was too little

attention in the media because the climate doesn't change at the speed of the news cycle, does it?

Then when the Trump administration and RFK Jr. came in with their radical overhaul plans for

public health policy, we expanded it to a health or climate story of the week.

As it turns out, our story in public radio and television intersects with the story in public health in that both have been marked not just by policy change, but by defunding.

For this week's segment, we welcome back Caitlin Jedalina, a recurring guest, and one of my

favorites in this series,

Caitlin writes a newsletter called Your Local Epidemiologist. An epidemiologist is someone who studies

the spread of disease and what seems to cause or prevent it. Caitlin's been writing recently

to explain the hauntavirus outbreak, and now in today's newsletter, the Ebola outbreak, a much bigger deal,

actually, and the risks to people here. But she also had a New York Times op-ed last week

that gets to the structural problem with defunding public health. It's called our public health

agencies have no leaders. What could possibly go wrong? So Caitlin

Jadalina, your local epidemiologist, always good of you to give us some time. Welcome back to WNYC.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for having me. Let's start with your op-ed, and then I'm sure our listeners

will want to hear your take on the Ebola news today that it's spreading faster than first realized.

You begin your op-ed with the resignation of the Food and Drug Administration head, Dr. Marty

Macquarie. He was a Trump and RFK appointee. So what does his departure signify to you?

Well, this is just another departure along a long list.

And I think that a lot of these leaders were very critical of the government in some

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