In our last installment in the RFK Jr. Health Recession series, we offered a broad (and fairly lengthy) overview of the ways in which RFK Jr.’s leadership is worsening health outcomes and creating an additional drag on the economy and productivity. Readers can view the entire series here.
Today, we tackle in a more succinct form several timely issues. We will put off a discussion of personnel turnover to a later time.
The Underpowered US Hantavirus Response
First, let’s consider the US response to the deadly hantavirus outbreak aboard the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius. We will not reprise the widely reported details of the outbreak, but readers may review them via this AP report:
“A timeline of the cruise ship hantavirus outbreak and when passengers fell sick” | AP, https://apnews.com/article/hantavirus-cruise-ship-timeline-events-b9eb3985b547758b1e42dbab6ceb3887
Infectious disease experts reassure us that with effective contact tracing and other measures (including quarantine) an outbreak of this Andes hepatitis variant, which can be transmitted from one human to another via aerosolized virus, can and will be contained. Timely intervention is essential because this virus is especially deadly, with a fatality rate of 30%–40%. We are reassured that ANDV is not destined to become our next pandemic and risk to the general public is low. Katelyn Jetelina, of Your Local Epidemiologist, offers an explainer and assessment in her situation report:
“Hantavirus update” | YLE,
https://substack.com/inbox/post/196846111
The International Hantavirus Society has also released a statement regarding the Andes virus, confirming its transmissibility from person to person but suggesting that “transmission through casual contact” is less than efficient, making an Andes hantavirus pandemic unlikely. It is, however, clear that contact tracing and isolation will be vital tools to stop transmission opportunities from materializing into new cases.
Following her reassuring May 8 update, however, Jetelina posed important questions for RFK Jr and the CDC:
I do have some major questions for CDC leadership and the administration. I want to know:
Why haven’t they deployed a team to help with the international response?
Why haven’t physicians been alerted through the Health Alert Network (HAN) as they typically would?
Why is there zero communication with the public or updates to the website? (An updated page was posted on May 8 at the CDC website: https://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/about/andesvirus.html.)
Other infectious disease experts also note that the US, having withdrawn from the WHO, no longer played a key role in assisting with the outbreak and failed to utilize the Health Alert Network. Public communication from the administration about the outbreak has been sluggish, coming more than three weeks after the outbreak alarmed the world.
Seventeen cruise ship passengers residing in six US states are returning from the ship, along with seven who returned earlier. On Friday, May 8, the report was that the cruise passengers would be quarantined and monitored for symptoms that might emerge anywhere from 4 to 42 days after exposure. Yesterday, May 9, a CDC official indicated that the potentially exposed passengers would not be quarantined. Instead, they will be evaluated at at the National Quarantine Unit in Nebraska, where they will remain for a period of time, and transition to isolating at home if they wish, limiting their interaction with others, with daily check-ins from health authorities. A Washington Post report Saturday afternoon delved into the details from the CDC call earlier in the day:
“U.S. outlines plan to monitor Americans returning from hantavirus-hit ship” | Washington Post (gift article),
https://wapo.st/48TVLzj
Time will tell how well the plan works, given a virus with an incubation period that can last up to six weeks and a fatality rate of around 30%.
Anais Legand, a technical officer working with the WHO in the area of viral hemorrhagic fevers, affirms that the US has been in daily contact with the WHO about the outbreak. That collaboration is happening behind the scenes, but no team from the CDC was deployed to assist in the response. What coordination there has been has happened behind the scenes.
On X, emergency medicine physician Craig Spencer pointed out on Friday that the CDC is finally getting a move on:
The U.S. is catching up—sending CDC disease detectives to the ship to accompany American passengers home—but we were WAY too flat-footed here. We should’ve been on the ball earlier on. But when we pull down the systems we’ve built over decades to respond to stuff like this—think all the USAID cuts, the CDC cuts, the NIH cuts, and severing the relationship with the WHO—we are gonna be spending a lot of time catching up as opposed to leading the response. That’s a huge shame.
(May 8 tweet, https://x.com/Craig_A_Spencer/status/2052949420740591931?s=20)
His question for RFK Jr. was blunt:
The folks I’m talking to at the CDC—the ‘boots on the ground’ disease detectives and epidemiologists—are doing amazing work. But where the hell is our health leadership right now? RFK Jr, are you going to say anything about what we’re doing to respond?
In short, the CDC under RFK Jr.’s DHS leadership, having suffered a reduction in staff and toiling without proactive leadership, launched an underpowered, sluggish response to an infectious disease outbreak, with a concerning lack of timely communication with healthcare providers and the public. Without clear public health messaging, misinformation often fills the void. (Can you guess which “cures” are now being touted on social media for hantavirus? I bet you can.)
Finally, it is worth noting, as both People and MSN have reported, that CDC’s full-time civilian cruise ship inspectors were all laid off last year, with potential impacts for passenger health and safety for US-originated cruises. Think norovirus, for starters, should cruise lines let their sanitation measures slip.
Communication Essential to Effective Public Health Leadership
The vital importance of communicating evidence-based best practices to the public is highlighted by the incremental rise in the number of parents who refuse a vitamin K shot for their babies. Babies aren’t born with vitamin K passed along from their mothers. Instead, they are born with a vitamin K deficiency, and vitamin K helps to prevent infant deaths caused by bleeding. More babies are dying simply because parents refuse a vitamin shot for their babies. ProPublica reports:
“Babies Are Bleeding to Death as Parents Reject a Vitamin Shot Given at Birth” | ProPublica, https://www.propublica.org/article/more-parents-decline-vitamin-k-shot-newborns
The article notes an exchange in which a physician serving in Congress pointed out to RFK Jr. the problem with inadequate public health messaging that is both clear and evidence-based:
Two weeks ago, at a House subcommittee hearing, Rep. Kim Schrier, D-Wash., pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to reassure parents that the vitamin K shot is safe. He refused and pushed back.
“I’ve never said, literally never said, anything about it,” Kennedy said.
“That’s exactly the point,” responded Schrier, who is a doctor. “You don’t say anything about it, but the doubt you’ve created about all of medicine and science is causing parents to make dangerous decisions.”
Such failure to communicate evidence that can drive optimal public health outcomes is also reflected in the FDA’s blocking the publication of research that found both COVID and shingles vaccines to be safe and to have other important health benefits. RFK Jr. has long sown doubt in vaccines and in the findings of medical science, and now his FDA has suppressed evidence of some vaccines’ safety and effectiveness.
RFK Jr. Takes on SSRIs
Last, we turn to the notion, not data-driven but dear to RFK Jr., that SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) prescribed for depression and anxiety are, in fact, overprescribed, dangerous, and potentially unnecessary. Reuters reports that he considers them so very optional and undesirable that his team explored banning a number of them. When banning them was determined to be overstepping what he could legally do, he softened his approach but set about making plans to curb their use while trying to reassure people who need SSRIs that they will be able to continue to access them. At this point he is advancing an agenda offering more holistic treatment options for depression, etc. (a positive move), paired with educating and incentivizing doctors to help those who can do so wean off SSRIs. That second dimension of his initiative is potentially more concerning. Whether SSRIs are overprescribed is a matter for debate.
Access to mental health care for depression in the US is patchy. An article published in Health Affairs Scholar in 2024 found that
Among individuals who reported symptoms consistent with moderately severe to severe depression, 37.8% did not have a diagnosis for depression (41.0%, 28.1%, 33.6%, and 56.3% with commercial, Medicare, Medicaid, and no insurance), 51.9% did not see a mental health specialist (49.7%, 51.7%, 44.9%, and 91.8%), and 32.4% avoided mental health care due to affordability in the past 12 months (30.2%, 34.0%, 21.1%, and 54.8%). There was substantial unmet need for mental health treatment in all insurance market segments, but especially among individuals without insurance.
If RFK Jr.’s plans to discourage SSRI use or to disparage SSRIs as a treatment alternative lower its usage among those the drugs can successfully treat, the economic burden imposed by unsuccessfully treated depression and other mental health illnesses, already enormous, will rise. Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute (MMHPI) notes the prevalence and cost of depression specifically:
The Cost of Depression
In the United States, one in five adults (20%) will experience a clinically significant form of depression in their lifetime. About 7.5% of the US workforce has depression in any year. The impact of an employee’s depression extends beyond the suffering of the individual to impact family, friends, coworkers, and eventually, the bottom line….
The Business Cost
Depression costs U.S. employers approximately $187.8 billion a year. This includes $134 billion in health care (health and mental health combined), $20.9 billion in absenteeism, and $32.9 billion in lost productivity. Research shows that untreated depression is a significant contributor to workplace disability costs, reduced work performance and “presenteeism,” absenteeism, safety issues, employee turnover, and legal costs.
(“The Cost of Depression” | MMHPI, https://mmhpi.org/topics/educational-resources/the-cost-of-depression/)
Much depends on whether RFK Jr’s leadership results in more effective, holistic treatment for depression or whether his campaign to reduce the use of SSRIs actually raises the numbers of Americans who suffer without effective treatment, driving higher economic and productivity costs.
Sources and Further Reading
The Underpowered US Hantavirus Response
“A timeline of the cruise ship hantavirus outbreak and when passengers fell sick” | AP News,
https://apnews.com/article/hantavirus-cruise-ship-timeline-events-b9eb3985b547758b1e42dbab6ceb3887
“Americans from hantavirus-hit cruise ship to quarantine in Nebraska,” Washington Post,”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/05/08/hantavirus-covid-cruise/
“‘Super-Spreaders’ and Person-to-Person Transmission of Andes Virus in Argentina” | NEJM,
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2009040
“Hantavirus update” | YLE,
https://substack.com/inbox/post/196846111
“Statement from the International Hantavirus Society and members of the international hantavirus research and clinical community regarding Andes virus transmission and the current outbreak investigation” | Zenodo,
https://zenodo.org/records/20095475
“About Andes Virus” | CDC,
https://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/about/andesvirus.html
“Why Experts Are Worried About the U.S. Response to Hantavirus | NOTUS,
https://www.notus.org/health-science/experts-worried-us-response-hantavirus
“Americans from hantavirus-hit cruise ship to quarantine in Nebraska” | Washington Post,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/05/08/hantavirus-covid-cruise/
“No mandatory quarantine for US passengers: CDC official” | ABC News,
https://abcnews.com/International/live-updates/hantavirus-live-updates-mv-hondius-canary-islands?id=132746955&entryId=132812831
“U.S. outlines plan to monitor Americans returning from hantavirus-hit ship” | Washington Post,
https://wapo.st/48TVLzj
“What to know about Nebraska’s National Quarantine Unit as it prepares to bring in hantavirus cruise ship passengers” | ABC News,
https://abcnews.com/Health/nebraskas-national-quarantine-unit-prepares-bring-hantavirus-cruise/story?id=132794162
“Lack of U.S. response to hantavirus outbreak worries public health experts” | NPR,
https://www.npr.org/2026/05/08/nx-s1-5816041/lack-of-u-s-response-to-hantavirus-outbreak-worries-public-health-experts
Craig A. Spencer. Tweet on Hantavirus Response, May 8
“CDC’s Full-Time Cruise Ship Inspectors Were Laid Off One Year Ago amid Record Outbreaks: Report” | People,
https://people.com/cdc-full-time-cruise-ship-inspectors-were-laid-off-one-year-ago-amid-record-outbreaks-report-11969485
“Cruise ship passengers face rising infection risks after Trump administration axed all full-time CDC vessel inspectors” | MSN, https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/cruise-ship-passengers-face-rising-infection-risks-after-trump-administration-axed-all-full-time-cdc-vessel-inspectors/ar-AA22D1QV
Communication Essential to Effective Public Health Leadership
“More parents are refusing vitamin K shots for newborns, doctors say. Here’s why that could be dangerous” | ABC News,
https://abcnews.com/Health/parents-refusing-vitamin-shots-newborns-doctors-dangerous/story?id=129415607
“Babies Are Bleeding to Death as Parents Reject a Vitamin Shot Given at Birth” | ProPublica, https://www.propublica.org/article/more-parents-decline-vitamin-k-shot-newborns
“F.D.A. Blocked Publication of Research Finding Covid and Shingles Vaccines Were Safe” | New York Times,
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/us/politics/fda-covid-vaccine-studies.html?unlocked_article_code=1.g1A.28oa.TNqRPVk4yIGy&smid=url-share
RFK Jr. Takes on SSRIs
“Exclusive: Kennedy’s health officials explored US ban of some widely used antidepressants” | Reuters,
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/kennedys-health-officials-explored-us-ban-some-widely-used-antidepressants-2026-05-08/
RFK Jr. unveils campaign for ‘deprescribing’ antidepressants” | The Hill, https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5863973-kennedy-deprescribing-psychiatric-meds/
“RFK Jr. unveils campaign for ‘deprescribing’ antidepressants” | NPR,
https://www.npr.org/2026/05/07/nx-s1-5814083/rfk-jr-hhs-ssri-antidepressant-psychiatry-therapy-mental-health
“Unmet need for mental health care is common across insurance market segments in the United States” | HealthAffairs Scholar,
https://academic.oup.com/healthaffairsscholar/article/2/3/qxae032/7624289?login=false
“Novel study quantifies immense economic costs of mental illness in the U.S.” | YaleNews, https://news.yale.edu/2024/04/22/novel-study-quantifies-immense-economic-costs-mental-illness-us
“The Cost of Depression” | Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, https://mmhpi.org/topics/educational-resources/the-cost-of-depression/
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