This is a dry run for any new or known pathogen with pandemic potential. And today, the people who would be in charge of managing such a pandemic are the worst possible people: from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at Health and Human Services, to Jay Bhattacharya at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to Russell Vought in the White House.

Together, these men have left the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy vacant; have shuttered 10 of the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases meant to study zoonotic pathogens that jump from animals to humans, like hantavirus; gutted the STOP Spillover Project, a USAID-funded network that tracked “menacing animal viruses across seven countries”; put a hold on research at the Integrated Research Facility in Frederick, Maryland, which studies high-risk pathogens; left key posts at CDC with acting directors including the Division of High-Consequence Pathogens; wound down mRNA vaccine research, which is one of the platforms under consideration for a hantavirus vaccine; refocused infectious disease research away from novel pathogens at NIH toward more common infections; proposed cutting funding for state and local preparedness grants to health departments and hospitals around the country; canned the CDC’s full-time cruise ship inspectors and port health workers; and we have left the World Health Organization, leaving us flying solo without a key source of international collaboration and coordinated planning.