The War on Public Health: Norovirus and Cyclospora are warning signs

Norovirus is sweeping through cruise ships. Cyclospora is spreading through the nation’s food supply.

At the very moment these diseases are making headlines, the federal government weakened several of the public-health programs created to detect, investigate and contain exactly these kinds of outbreaks.

I know how important those systems are because I’ve built one.

Before I became known as the Florida COVID-19 whistleblower, I was the scientist who built and managed Florida’s public-facing COVID-19 dashboard and data surveillance systems. My job wasn’t simply to publish numbers. It was to provide an accurate, real-time picture of an evolving outbreak so physicians, researchers, local governments, and families could make informed decisions.

That experience taught me lessons I’ll never forget, including: You cannot control an outbreak you refuse to accurately monitor.

Disease surveillance isn’t bureaucracy. It’s infrastructure. It tells us what pathogens are circulating, where they’re spread…