Just A Bunch Of Nerds Who Want To Help

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Dream — "Just A Bunch Of Nerds Who Want To Help"

Host: Jane Marie (Little Everywhere)
Guest: “Rachel” (pseudonym), CDC microbiologist
Date: October 24, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, The Dream returns in its new format: deeper, more personal interviews exploring the American Dream and the obstacles stacked against it. Jane Marie speaks candidly with “Rachel,” an anonymous microbiologist at the CDC who describes the shifting, at times dangerous landscape for public health professionals in the U.S. They tackle the politicization of science, funding crises, a shocking recent attack on CDC offices, and the corrosive effect of expert distrust on society and the future of American research.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introducing “Rachel” and Her Work

• Rachel is a microbiologist at the CDC, specializing in infectious disease bacteriology and diagnostic research.
• She requests anonymity:
  "I don't feel comfortable doing this under my name or anything. Like it has to be anonymous, which is wild because I'm just a scientist. But now somehow my job is dangerous, which is a crazy thing to say." (02:29)

Diagnostics 101

• Diagnostics includes any test your doctor orders (blood, urine, swabs, etc.), from pregnancy and COVID tests to specialized disease detection.

• Petri dishes: Rachel gives a layperson-friendly breakdown on what they are and their role in growing and identifying bacteria.
  "I wore a lab coat to cut the cake at my wedding. So it's a level." (05:02)

• Rachel was inspired by a high school microbiology unit and fell in love with pathogens, initially dreaming of being a vet but realizing her real calling was disease research.

2. The Frustration of Public Health Work Today

Funding Cuts and Bureaucratic Roadblocks

• Rachel describes severe restrictions on her ability to purchase basic lab supplies due to ongoing funding freezes and administrative hurdles for federal research.
  "In order to just put in a credit card request to do the research I need to do, you jump through hoops." (08:24)
  "We had a patient sample and we could not test it because we couldn't get this reagent in time. It's been incredibly frustrating, to say the least." (09:09)

Morale and Job Insecurity

• With recent government furloughs, Rachel is technically out of work and uncertain if she’ll be paid.
  • She references Project 2025 and political figures actively seeking to harm federal worker morale:
    "We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected when they wake up in the morning. We want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains." — Russell Vogt, quoted by Jane (10:50)

Public Health Can’t Be Privatized

• Rachel asserts: "Public health is expensive and it doesn't give companies money generally." (12:19)
• Explains the broad mandate of public health, from infectious disease to gun violence and environmental hazards.

3. Devaluation and Demonization of Science

The Rise of Anti-Expert Sentiment

• Rachel and Jane lament the new, more personal animosity toward highly educated professionals.
  "My little bubble, a lot of this feels very new... a resentment of experts." (18:21)
• Jane: “There are like experts for things and we don't care about that anymore. And I don't know why it's happening, but I feel like there's some hubris, some mania happening where everything has to be like self-centered or something.” (20:17)

Science Communication and Misinformation

• Rachel notes the challenges of communicating complex, often non-binary scientific truth to a public that craves certainty.
  "It's hard for scientists to give straight, clear, easy-to-understand binary answers... so people get frustrated with us." (20:34)
• Misinformation thrives on simplicity. Rachel cites examples (like manipulations of scientific studies about vaccines and cancer) to illustrate the dangers.

Deep Distrust and Political Weaponization

• The CDC is publicly painted as corrupt or evil, not just by fringe actors but by prominent national politicians.
• Senate hearing testimonies are referenced, showing direct accusations that CDC employees are killers or puppets:
  "He said that CDC employees were bought by the pharmaceutical industry... CDC forced people to wear masks and social distance like a dictatorship." — Dr. Minarez testimony quoted by Rachel (24:13)

4. Violence Against Scientists — The CDC Shooting

Details of the Attack and Aftermath

• August 2025: A shooter fired 500+ rounds into six CDC buildings, striking over 150 windows, narrowly missing employees. Minimal media coverage, little public concern. "Just the idea that somebody hated scientists that much, Like, I like to say that we're just a bunch of nerds that want to help people." (29:04)

• Aftermath included orders to remove HHS decals from cars to avoid being targeted in public.

• The public silence from top officials galvanized further fear and demoralization.

  • Rachel: "Someone fired 500 rounds into your office and your boss doesn't say a word about it." (32:43)

• The shooting spurred the departure of the CDC director and longtime scientific staff, leaving only political appointees in charge.
  "There are no more career people at the office of the director of CDC... They've all been appointed by the administration." (34:13)

5. The Consequences: Future of Public Health, Research, and Talent

Brain Drain and Research Collapse

• With funding cuts, grant cancellations, and mass departures, Rachel fears an imminent brain drain—comparable to what built the U.S. scientific powerhouse in the first place (by attracting expelled European scientists in WWII). "It's becoming this like reverse brain drain... we're all going to have to go somewhere else or do something else." (40:58)

• Jane: "Compound that with anti immigration." (41:02)

• Rachel: "I've worked with so many people that got those visas to come in and work and study and who have been a benefit to science in our country and me as a person, and that's just not gonna happen." (41:02)

The Nightmare Scenario

• If another pandemic hit now, the U.S. would be in even worse shape due to diminished staffing, morale, and capacity at the CDC.

• Ripple effect: The CDC supports state/local health departments, who would lose critical funding, impairing responses everywhere.
  Rachel: "80% of the CDC's budget goes to state and local public health departments... you can look up your state and see what could be impacted there." (43:12)

• Young scientists lose access to education, research opportunities, and stable careers. "There's going to be a whole gap. The kind of damage they've done is going to take a very, very long time to fix." (41:36)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On being a public health scientist today:
  "I just keep thinking about all the NIH grants that got cut. That means people won't get cancer treatment, that they could have saved them." (39:13)

• On the CDC's role and public misunderstanding:
  "We're just a bunch of nerds that want to help people." (29:04)

• On political intimidation:
  "We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected when they wake up in the morning. We want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down." — Quoting Russell Vogt (10:50)

• On systemic defunding:
  "It only helps to keep doing it. I just keep thinking about the brain drain that happened during World War II or that era because people were pushed out. And so that's what built a lot of America's scientific power." (39:46)

• On existential despair:
  "At what point is my work a joke? At what point is no one going to listen to anything that comes out that we do? ... Is working there pointless? Part of the problem? Like, am I co-signing something by working there at some point?" (35:37)

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Memorable Segment Timestamps

• [02:29] — Rachel explains her need for anonymity and feeling of job danger.
• [08:24] — Obstacles in getting supplies due to funding freezes.
• [10:50] — Russell Vogt quote about wanting bureaucrats to feel trauma.
• [21:16] — Rachel on how misinformation flourishes and the danger of oversimplified answers.
• [24:13] — Dr. Minarez's recounting of RFK's attacks on CDC credibility.
• [29:04] — Rachel details the CDC shooting and the emotional toll.
• [34:13] — After the firing of key directors, political appointees take over CDC leadership; experts are being systematically sidelined.
• [39:13] — Rachel laments research cuts and the tangible cost in human lives.
• [43:12] — Practical consequences for state and local health: CDC budget directly impacts community health infrastructure.

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Closing Thoughts

“Just A Bunch Of Nerds Who Want To Help” is both a personal and systemic diagnosis of American public health at a perilous crossroads. The episode paints a vivid picture of dedicated scientists facing not only lost funding and eroding infrastructure, but also public hostility and literal violence. Through Rachel’s perspective, the theme resonates: disenfranchising scientific expertise isn’t an abstract threat—it’s already creating life-and-death consequences for society, and for the people who devote their lives to serving it.

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Transcript

[A]

Hey dream listeners. There's now an ad free version of the Dream that you can subscribe to the Dream Plus@thedream supercast.com Five bucks a month gets you every single episode of this show with zero ads, which you love and I love. And we're hoping that this will help us pay the bills and the main goal being that we can keep making this show. Go to thedream.supercast.com and subscribe to make it Easy. We have put the link in the show description. Just look down underneath this episode. It says thedream.supercast.com and just click on that. Easy peasy. You're gonna get a lot of extra stuff too. We're working on all that. Another thing you need to do. Please subscribe to our Instagram. It's the Dream X the letter X. Jane Marie. See you over there.

[B]

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[C]

Can't I just let it go?

[A]

I wish I would stop thinking so much.

[D]

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[A]

I'm Jane Marie and this is the Dream.

[C]

Hi. I was listening to an in your latest episode and I was thinking about my dream, which from a pretty young age was to be in science and then became that I wanted to work for the cdc. And I did that. I have been doing that for a while now. I feel like voices like mine should probably be heard.

[A]

We got this voicemail on our tip line, 323-248-1488 and the caller bravely agreed to sit down for an interview on one condition.

[C]

I don't feel comfortable doing this under my name or anything. Like it has to be anonymous, which is wild because I'm just a scientist. But now somehow my job is dangerous, which is a crazy thing to say.

[A]

Tell me your fake name and a little bit about who you are.

[C]

My fake name is Rachel and I am A microbiologist. I have a master's in microbiology specializing in infectious disease bacteriology. And I mostly work on diagnostic based research and surveillance.

[A]

Who in the what now? What is diagnostic?

[C]

So when your doctor submits a sample, like a blood sample for a test, to find out if you have something that's a diagnostic. So a type of test, a way that we can figure out what people have essentially.

[A]

Question?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

When I go to the doctor and I pee in a cup, Is that what you're talking like?

[C]

Yeah, yeah, that's one of a. That's a type of diagnostic. So anytime they take your blood and submit it for any number of things, anytime you pee in a cup, anytime, like a COVID test is a diagnostic. So yeah, even like a pregnancy test can be considered a diagnostic that's a type.

[A]

Right. And it's looking. All of them have different things they're looking for, obviously.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. It's a super, super broad term. Like it could be for any number of things and they test for different types and they use different modes of testing. So it's a super broad term.

[A]

Tell me how you got into this work.

[C]

I've always been a big nerd. My teacher in high school did a microbiology unit, which I don't think is super common, and I just fell in love with it. I did a report on tuberculosis and was completely enamored, which.

[A]

Oh, my God. I want to be your best friend in high school. I want to be your best friend in high.

[C]

I think we would have gotten along.

[E]

Yeah.

[A]

Do you have glasses? Do you do the boy even? You know the scientist from the Simpsons who's always like, yeah, yeah.

[C]

I mean, I wore a lab coat to cut the cake at my wedding. So it's a level.

[A]

That'S so adorable.

[C]

In college we had to do a speech class and I wrote one of my speeches on the opening line was something along the lines of when people see Moulin Rouge, they think about, like romance or whatever. And I think about tuberculosis because that's what she died from in the movie. But I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian and realized pretty quickly that I was more interested in the diseases than like treating a whole animal and anatomy and interacting with people all the time, like pet owners. That's very difficult, I think that paper. And also we did something where we got to grow bacteria on plates and see it.

[A]

And I love a petri dish.

[C]

They're so great.

[A]

For listeners that don't know what a petri dish is, what is, is a plate.

[C]

So Round plate with sides that you put a growth media in. So it's kind of like a jello consistency that has nutrients in it that allow a bacteria to grow. So it's usually like sugars, amino acids. Depending on what bacteria you're trying to grow, sometimes it'll have antibiotics in it. They put it in an incubator and each bacteria has a different temperature that they like to grow at. Some of them like more oxygen. Some of them like no oxygen.

[A]

Some of them are beautifully colored.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Why are the different colors?

[C]

There's a lot of reasons for different colors. So what the bacteria is growing on can be made of a lot of different things. Some of it has blood cells in it, there's some dyes. It all depends on the questions you want to answer. And then the way that the bacteria interact with what's present there can cause color changes. But with some of these tests, if you have a plate your bacteria on it may have a chemical reaction with whatever's in there and cause a color change.

[A]

Why does it look like snowflakes?

[C]

Sometimes that's called morphology. So every bacteria grows differently. And that's one way that especially early microbiology, you could kind of tell what you had based on what that morphology or the shape on the plate looked like. They put it in an incubator and each bacteria has a different temperature that they like to grow at. Some of them like more oxygen, Some are stickier than others. Some have that kind of snowflake spread out. Some of them like no oxygen.

[A]

Yeah. So part of your research, I know, has to do with bugs.

[C]

Vector borne diseases. Yeah. So mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, mites, some biting flies are all vectors. It's like the thing that gets you sick.

[A]

They are the worst.

[C]

Yeah. Truly super gross.

[A]

And they'll eat anything and then they'll go eat another thing and give that thing the thing that they got from the last thing.

[C]

Exactly. Yes.

[A]

And we all die.

[E]

Yeah.

[C]

Hopefully not. That's what we're working on.

[A]

Isn't malaria one of the biggest killers on earth?

[C]

Yeah. And they cut. And how are cutting, like all the funding for malaria research and prevention and stuff? There's still a small group, but they cut a lot of it.

[A]

I mean, they like meaning the administration.

[C]

Yeah. At the end of January, they had a funding freeze. And although those freezes have technically been lifted, they have made it very, very difficult for us to spend any money. So in order to just put in a credit card request to do the research I need to do, you jump through hoops that Change. It used to be weekly. Now it's maybe monthly, but still, you may never know what they need to do to put in a credit card order, just to order something simple.

[A]

Are you talking about like a petri dish?

[C]

Yeah. It's become very, very difficult. And especially in the beginning, it was like we had a diagnostic that we had to put on hold because we. We couldn't get what we needed.

[E]

What?

[C]

So, like, we had a patient sample and we could not test it because we couldn't get this reagent in time. It's been incredibly frustrating, to say the least.

[A]

So are you doing what teachers do, which is like, go out of pocket, go to Joanne's and get your own crayons or whatever?

[C]

We can't.

[A]

Why? What?

[C]

Some of this stuff is expensive. I mean, if I want to do a sequencing run, that's $2,000. I'm not going to pay for that out of pocket. Like, I just can't.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Because contrary to what they think, we don't get paid buckets of money. If I was in pharmaceuticals, I could make more. It's. You know, I'm not complaining, but I just think they think we make just a shit ton of money.

[A]

Rachel, I hear a quiver in your voice.

[C]

Yeah, I'm a little nervous.

[A]

Why?

[C]

I don't know. It's weird to think about people hearing about it. And also, I just have a lot of feelings about everything that's happening. It's upsetting.

[A]

I'm sorry. You're out of a job today.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And supposedly we'll be paid back at the end of this, but now they're saying maybe not, so who knows?

[A]

Who's they?

[C]

Well, I think right now it's mostly Russell Vogt, who's saying maybe we don't pay federal employees back after a furlough.

[A]

Who is this?

[C]

He's the person who wrote the project 2025. It's a law that the first Trump administration put in that if there was a furlough, we would get paid back. It didn't used to be automatic. And then now Russell Boat, who is a nightmare creature, is saying, maybe that's not true. Maybe we don't get paid back. So he's also the person who said he wanted federal employees to feel trauma every day.

[A]

We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected when they wake up in the morning. We want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that they have no bandwidth financially to do so we want to put them in trauma. Wishing trauma upon anyone is evil.

[C]

Yeah, well, they see us as evil. They see federal employees as evil. And RFK Jr. Is painting CDC employees as evil.

[A]

So is it just to kill everybody? Because I kind of suspect that is what it is.

[C]

That's how it feels. Either it's complete ignorance, which I think there is some of that. But I do think there are some of these people that are very diabolical.

[A]

That thought first occurred to me during COVID with the anti masker people and the anti vaxxer people where they were thrilled about sending the herd.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, well, they're fat and old, so. Bye.

[C]

Yeah, I think there's a lot of that. I think a lot of these people, you know, I think Musk's thing is privatizing everything. That the government doesn't pay for things. You have private companies pay for things. The problem with that in our situation at least, like public health can't be privatized.

[A]

You just can't say more about that. What do you mean?

[C]

Public health is expensive and it doesn't give companies money generally.

[A]

I think that's the other thing is we don't have our terms defined.

[C]

Yeah. So the crux is to improve the health of communities. I mean, that's the baseline and that encompasses a lot of different things. That can be chronic health, that can be gun violence, that can be infectious disease, it can be environmental situations. I mean, all that stuff can be covered under public health. The whole crux is to make communities healthier and safer in any kind of meaningful way.

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[E]

So public.

[A]

Health encompasses all of these sorts of things and it's being deprioritized?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

When was it prioritized?

[C]

That's a good question. I think there's been stages of it and some people focus on different aspects of. I mean, it wasn't until, I think the Biden administration let the CDC start collecting gun violence data again. That was recent. And then they took that away again. There's usually some event that causes an area of public health to get money, Right. So we had a bump in pandemic preparedness after kind of the bulk of lockdown and stuff. So they'll see some kind of emergency and put money into that. So I think it ebbs and flows, but it's political at the end of the day. Kind of depends on who cares about what.

[A]

Have you listened to the show?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So you've met my aunt and my grandma.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

They have this contempt for people that, like, spent many, many years studying. Does that feel new?

[C]

It feels new to me. And I'm sure it's not new in all places, but my little bubble, a lot of this feels very new of, like, a resentment of experts. And I think about it a lot. I think some of it is that we can't explain things in a way that makes sense. I mean, our healthcare system is not great, obviously, and so people get frustrated and people are sick and don't get answers.

[A]

What do you think about the idea that health care is separate from science? Cause I keep thinking about this, like, the way we manage health care, like the way we manage office visits and like, treatments is one thing. Right. But the science that we base those ideas on is another thing.

[C]

I haven't thought about it in those terms specifically, but it's. It feels impossible to divorce them to me. Because even if you're talking about, you know, some psychology or social sciences about how people react to how care is presented or how options are presented or how Things are communicated. You know, science communication is a big field that I think we need more emphasis in. And I think all that's part of the healthcare process. Right. You have to get your patients to understand what's happening in a way that feels digestible and not overwhelming. You have to be able to communicate what's going to happen to them or what they need to do at home. So I think for me, and this probably just where my brain is all the time, that I don't think they should be separate, but it's just different levels of science or different types of.

[A]

What do you mean? It shouldn't be like the petri dish thing we were just talking about. When I'm in my doctor's office, I pee in a cup. I think I have a UTI or my throat hurts, they swab the back of my throat, they go in the other room. My thinking is whatever happens in the other room is their business.

[C]

Sure.

[A]

I don't want to follow the lab tech back in the office and watch them do the petri dish thing.

[C]

Sure.

[A]

I have a life. There are like experts for things and we don't care about that anymore. And I don't know why it's happening, but I feel like there's some hubris, some mania happening where everything has to be like self centered or something.

[C]

It's so hard. And I think we have a big science communication issue, I think in our country because right now people are debating things that have big complicated answers. And kind of the way that I'm talking, it's hard for scientists to give straight, clear, easy to understand binary answers to things because everything's so complicated. And so people get frustrated with us. And I think sometimes it can sound like we're obfuscating or lying or whatever they say. And then there are people who are willing to give them basic black and white answers. And that sounds more trustworthy. So it's hard.

[A]

That is so interesting. Go on.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I've been thinking about this a lot because there's a lot of health stuff that's very scary and there's a lot of stuff we don't understand. And I can understand where people get desperate for answers and want solutions to things. And it's very hard to provide those a lot of the time. And so if you get a community of people who are willing to make shit up, the Maha movement, I think give you specific answers that sound reasonable, that's comforting. I think people think that they should be able to understand everything that's happening and people could look up scientific publications. That's great. Without knowing context, you could pull something out of that. That is completely not true. This paper shows that measles prevents cancer and they don't want you to know that. Well, the paper was that they were using the measles components in the vaccine to try to target specific types of cancer because it was a product we already had that we know is safe and all these things so that we could target a very specific type of cancer. It is not like if you get measles, that virus is going to prevent cancer. It was an engineered particle situation. So that's the kind of thing where it gets really dangerous of like, well, I saw this publication. You tell me to look at publications and there's just so much information available that it's overwhelming and it's impossible to fully understand.

[A]

I was a nerd and I like science and I liked thinking about thinking as a kid and I respected the fact that there were people who invested decades of their lives into one specific thing.

[C]

I think a lot of it is a deep distrust. They're scared and they don't trust experts. So it's more than not wanting to feel like you don't understand anything. It's about not trusting the people who say they're experts.

[E]

On the morning of August 25th, Secretary Kennedy demanded two things of me that were inconsistent with my oath of office and the ethics required of a public official. He directed me to commit in advance to approving every ACIP recommendation regardless of the scientific evidence. He also directed me to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy without cause. He said if I was unwilling to do both, I should resign. I responded that I could not pre approve recommendations without reviewing the evidence and I had no basis to fire scientific experts. He told me he had already spoken with the White House several times about having me removed.

[C]

I listened to the entire three hour Senate hearing of Dr. Minarez, the ousted CDC director. You know, she said that RFK said to her that CDC kill babies and they don't care.

[E]

He said that CDC employees were bought by the pharmaceutical industry. He said CDC forced people to wear masks and social distance like a dictatorship. And the one I think that hurt me the most was a particularly vivid phrase he said during the COVID outbreak, CDC told hospitals to turn away sick COVID patients until they had blue lips before allowing them to get treatment.

[A]

And it is fair to say in your view, that those statements are not true?

[E]

Those statements are not true.

[C]

They believe that because Covid was scary and confusing for a lot of people. I mean, it was scary and confusing for everybody, right? And that kind of morphed into this. You can't trust the experts. They're out to get you.

[B]

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[C]

Can't I just let it go?

[D]

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[E]

Last week's deadly shooting near CDC headquarters in Atlanta. ABC's IKEA Jaci has more on that.

[A]

According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, they say that White fired over 500 rounds, 200 of which striking over six different CDC buildings.

[C]

Over 150 windows across those six buildings.

[A]

Have been destroyed, bullets even penetrating some blast resistant glass.

[C]

Narrowly missing employees who were sheltering in place in their offices.

[A]

It's gonna take a dark turn. Are you ready?

[C]

That's My life these days.

[A]

Well, I was thinking it must be nice to have these days off during the government shutdown because you're at least not getting shot at.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Can you talk about that incident in August?

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. So I was not there. I do know people who were, and just the feelings that it brought up were sort of unexpected for me. Like what? I was thinking about iterations of the American dream, and I just kept thinking, like, this was my dream, and this is all I wanted to do. You know, once I figured out what micro was, I wanted to work for the cdc. And having this event happen and not seeing it anywhere, you know, or just like a blip and feeling like this was the first attack on a government building since Oklahoma City bombing, and nobody's talking about it and nobody cares about us. And, like, there was a. There's a daycare in the front.

[A]

Can you just walk me through that day?

[C]

So I came home, and I got a text from my friend. It happened at the end of the day on Friday, and I got a text from my friend that said something along the lines. Along the lines of, like, what a fucking day. And I didn't know what was happening yet. And she was stuck in her office, and it took a long time to figure out what was going on because, you know, there's chaos in those moments. But then, even after, there just wasn't a lot of reporting. So we started hearing about it from our leadership. We'd have some meetings, but we know that 500 rounds were shot at the building and there was an officer killed. But just the idea that somebody hated scientists that much, Like, I like to say that we're just a bunch of nerds that want to help people. And as Dr. Howery said in that Senate hearing, and she was the former chief medical officer, like, every one of those bullets was meant for a person. And the fact that I think people like RFK made that person feel like we were evil and we deserved that is so upsetting, to say the least. And they made us take our decals off our cars, like our parking decals.

[A]

What do you mean?

[C]

We used to have little stickers that said HHS so that they could know our car belonged in the parking lot. And they said, take those stickers off so you're not a target out and about.

[A]

Like, I'm guessing that when you got into this career, you never thought that people would want to murder you.

[C]

Never, never. And I thought that if I was gonna talk to somebody about what I did, I'd get to say everything I Did. And not worry about somebody figuring out where I work based on. Or what I do based on what I say.

[A]

Especially given that the focus of your work is to save lives.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. And I'd love to talk about what I do because I think it has saved lives. I know it has. I didn't think I was getting into something dangerous. And I just. I know these people and I know how much we care about people. I mean, I wanted to. I tried to volunteer to help with Ebola. And at the time, I was not a full time employee. I was a contractor. So, like, legally they wouldn't let me do it. But I am fine with that kind of thing. Like, I will put myself in that kind of situation. I want to help with a public health emergency, but that's a risk. I understand. That's not hate based. That's. That's something I could do to. To help.

[A]

What's so confounding about that incident of the CDC getting shot up is like, it feels threefold. Number one, gun control. Right.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

Number two, we don't care about mental health.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And then we give people with mental health issues guns.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And then they try to kill you and your colleagues and then they shoot themselves.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

Didn't he kill himself?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. So clearly, like having a mental break.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

That's not important. Then this hatred of science that's going.

[C]

On and the villainization of federal employees in general. And RFK wouldn't talk about it and the president didn't talk about it, which is not shocking. But it's so weird. It would be shocking any other time.

[A]

Someone fired 500 rounds into your office and your boss doesn't say a word about it.

[C]

Yeah. And I think that's what started the whole thing with the director getting fired. Because it's really clear that she was very affected by the shooting. And like.

[A]

Yeah. If you have a conscience, it would upset you.

[C]

Yeah. And she started pushing to get things fixed and changed and to get things made safer for people. And so she was kind of pushing for the first time and everything has to get approved by hhs and they didn't want to do it.

[A]

And then this man goes out publicly and says she's just a liar.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

Not trustworthy, I mean.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

I don't know why I was so surprised when that came out that she was making public statements about it, but I was so thrilled.

[C]

We were shocked, honestly, because nobody had high hopes. Right. Cause she was chosen. And then she stood up for science.

[A]

And that's because he was so Brazen with his accusations about her that she's lying about vaccine safety. Right.

[C]

Mm.

[A]

The implication being, though, that he had to fire her because she works for an organization that is making up the idea that vaccinations are important.

[C]

Yeah. That's what he wants people to believe. Yeah.

[A]

What does the CDC without someone like that, though?

[C]

Scary. You know, after she was fired and then three people resigned, there are no more career people at the office of the director of cdc. So there are no more scientists or people who have been there for longer than since the end of January in charge. Nobody.

[A]

Everyone who works in the administration at the CDC is new.

[C]

So everyone who works in the office of the director. So, like what she was, who's appointed is in charge of everything. Who stamps off on everything? None of those people were CDC employees or are CDC employees. They've all been appointed by the administration. Deb Howery, for example, was the chief medical officer. She's been at the CDC for a very long time. I don't remember how long, but she was trying to advise people on things and they didn't. I mean, RFK told Menarez not to talk to any career people. So career means like, yeah, you were hired off of merit for the cdc. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Merit based. Hey, imagine that.

[A]

I was just going to say, isn't that the other side of the coin, right? Is that these people believe we live in a meritocracy or they don't believe it, but that's the story they're usually selling. But how come in this industry, why in this industry is merit not important?

[C]

Because the merit based people will not say what they want.

[A]

And what do they want said that vaccines.

[C]

I don't know exactly, but that vaccines are dangerous. They want things changed. And it's unclear what the depths of that are. It's like this is just the beginning. I feel like vaccines were the first target because that's what a lot of people have been the most up in arms about. But I think it's gonna spread to other things. Who knows what that'll result in? But they won't be briefed by any experts from the cdc. They will not take briefings from the directors of different departments or scientists in general. They will not even just get a basic briefing. So at some point it feels like, at what point is my work a joke? At what point is no one going to listen to anything that comes out that we do? Even if what we do is still good because of all of this? At what point is working there pointless? Part of the problem pointless and part of the problem. Like, am I co signing something by working there at some point?

[A]

Do you guys talk about that?

[C]

Not in my group. I feel like we don't. The morale is so bad. We just don't even talk about it much anymore. Like, it's just.

[A]

Do you guys hang out after work anymore? No, not really.

[C]

No. I mean, we did the day that the shutdown happened. We went to lunch, but we hadn't in a while. What is the.

[A]

What's the, like, mood around the office around all this stuff? Is everybody feeling sad or paranoid or what?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, you just look at people's faces, and it's a very different feeling. There's definitely different degrees of it, but I think people are kind of always waiting for the next thing to happen, for the next email to come out, for the next shoe to drop. I. I don't tell people what I do most of the time. I used to be so proud. And most of the time, I don't tell people where I work or what I do. Feels too hard. Yeah, we're. We're not good.

[A]

Oh, I hate hearing you say that. It's scary.

[C]

It is. I'm. I'm scared. What's gonna happen?

[A]

I mean, what do you think's gonna happen?

[C]

I don't know what's gonna happen, but I know that if Covid happened today, we would be so much worse off. Just, period. There's no no ifs, ands, or buts about it. It'd be way worse. Yeah. Everybody's talking about what they're gonna. What they will do if they should try to find another job or what that would look like, or if they go to a different career entirely. I mean, there's a lot of those kinds of conversations about what do we do? Where do we go?

[A]

What are you gonna do, Rachel?

[C]

I don't know. I am very lucky to have a partner who I can get on his insurance if I leave, so. But I don't know what I do next because there's not a lot of options. I mean, a lot of people are talking about moving to different countries. You know, it's not even like, well, I could just go to academia, right. Because so many grants are being cut that there's not a lot of jobs there either. There's not a lot of pharmaceutical options in my area. I'd probably have to move. I don't really want to do that. I mean, I could, but I like public health. I'm here for a reason.

[A]

I feel like our memory is so short anymore. And so these huge epidemics that killed and maimed millions of people. I don't know. We're not going to solve this today, but I want to. So go. You solve it. Go, Rachel, go.

[C]

I wish I could. I wish that people would just let me do my job. And I just keep thinking about all the NIH grants that got cut. That means people won't get cancer treatment, that they could have saved them. I don't know. I mean, it's hard. I don't have answers other than we need the money that we had. And things obviously weren't perfect before, but it's a lot worse now.

[A]

And it's this thing where I feel like the people in power can't hold two truths at the same. Diseases aren't going anywhere.

[C]

No, they're not. And there's so many. I mean, this is the thing. There are so many that we don't know about. And so if we don't know everything that's out there because we're not doing the research, we don't know what to treat people for. So it only helps to keep doing it. I just keep thinking about the brain drain that happened during World War II or that era because people were pushed out. And so that's what built a lot of America's scientific power, was taking those people. And we built programs that people all over the world benefit from. I mean, the US does a lot of basic research that isn't done anywhere else that allows people in other countries and other places to further their research. Because you can't start a pharmaceutical company without a basic, you know, something that finds something you didn't expect and then you can take that somewhere else. But the US does a lot of that basic research work and we're just demolishing that. And so it's becoming this like reverse brain drain where they're just, we're all going to have to go somewhere else or do something else or.

[A]

Well, and then compound that with anti immigration.

[C]

Yeah, I've worked with so many people that got those visas to come in and work and study and who have been a benefit to science in our country and me as a person, and that's just not gonna happen.

[A]

What's gonna happen to the rest of us as a result of these grants going away, of the CDC being demoted in terms of how important we believe it is? What's the nightmare scenario?

[C]

I mean, it makes me sad because I think there's a lot of, you know, there's been so much advancer in just cancer Research alone. So many clinical trials that have just been canceled. And then, you know, the other thing that I think about is all these grants in academia that are canceled so that people can't go to grad school, let alone, you know, stay in grad school or be able to do that research to become young scientists. There aren't jobs for young scientists. And so that's going to be a whole gap. The kind of damage they've done is going to take a very, very long time to fix. So I just think there are a lot of people that may have treatable cancers that can't get them. There's a lot that we could do that we can't.

[A]

And that's going to have a ripple effect.

[C]

It's going to have a ripple effect. It takes a long time for research to be done. There are research studies that have been stopped that, you know, won't get conclusions that could have been game changing for somebody somewhere. I think one of the things that scares me is this issue of young people who want to be researchers who can't find a job somewhere or can't get the education that they want, and then they go somewhere else and we don't get that talent anymore. I think the US Is going to kind of backslide, so we won't know all the things that happen. But there's a lot of options for bad.

[A]

Could you cook up a hypothetical? I can do it. I was just like, what am I talking about?

[C]

I mean, if there's another pandemic, that's what I was gonna say. Yeah, that's the big one. It's like, we're short staffed. There's, let's say, so for Covid. I don't remember what the percentage was, but a very large percentage of CDC employees volunteered to go places to help. We are not required to do so. It's not part of our salary. We volunteered to go do things to help for Covid, and there are just fewer people to do that work. The other thing, what people don't realize is that 80% of the CDC's budget goes to state and local public health departments, which means, you know, your state gets money from us, likely. So they are able to do things that they need to do to support your community, and they're not going to get all that money. There's a really great website called cdcdataproject.org and it talks about where that money goes. And so you can look up your state and see what could be impacted there. And so that's pretty major. Those health departments often aren't well funded depending on the state you live in, and they're often overtaxed and they need the help. During COVID I got to help with our public health department twice and it was one of the best things I've done, but it was hard.

[E]

All right.

[A]

I want to give you a hug. I'm so sorry. This fucking sucks.

[C]

Thank you.

[A]

Thank you, Rachel.

[C]

Sam.

[B]

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Hey dream listeners. It's finally here. The dream plus where you can get every single episode of our show with no ads. It's $5 a month. It's the only tier. No commercials plus bonus content. This helps keep us independent and your contribution will help change the way every listener hears the dream. We'll be able to take out the ads that we don't even know are getting put into this show, which is annoying to both you and us. We're also gonna have an amazing discussion board. The interface has it cataloged under AMA Ask Me Anything, but I don't love rules. So what I did is started a bunch of threads like Ask Dan and I Questions, General Chit Chat, just to make friends and stuff. And every time I've been in charge of a discussion board, I've made a tab called Women Be Shoppin. And it's there. And we're just gonna talk about what we bought, and It'll be fun. That's thedream.s u p e r C-A-S t.com super cast please, please go. Subscribe. It's five bucks. It's less than a latte if you live in Los Angeles. See you.