What's the Mood Among Infectious Disease Experts Right Now? We Asked William Schaffner, MD

"All the norms that we thought were out there have been either rocked or taken out from under us. So everybody's out there coping in one way or another..."

Infectious disease and public health expert William Schaffner, MD, sat down with Patient Care^© recently to talk about the disturbing actions taken by Robert F Kennedy, Jr, since being sworn in on February 13, 2025, as the 26th Secretary of Health lth and Human Services of the United States.

From cutting staff at the CDC, FDA, and NIH by 10,000 and replacing the 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice with a largely unvetted group to retracting hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding from academic research and another $500 million from mRNA vaccine development programs, the potential and profound impact on infectious disease readiness has Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine with a primary appointment in the department of health policy and a professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, in Nashville, TN, and his infectious disease colleagues "disturbed, anxious, distressed, puzzled and some...angry."

In this short video, the internationally recognized and revered "elder statesman" of public health advocacy soberly answers the question about the mood in infectious disease circles.

The following transcript has been lightly edited for style and flow.

Patient Care: 2025 National Immunization Awareness Month, which is August, comes in the midst of unprecedented changes in US vaccine policy. How would you describe the mood among your colleagues in the infectious disease community right now?

William Schaffner, MD: Well, here are some descriptors, and I think they apply more or less to everyone concerned: disturbed, anxious, distressed, puzzled and some angry. Clearly, there have been major changes, both in the public health arena as well as in the academic arena, regarding restrictions of funding. And this has just caused a whole lot of puzzlement, concern, distress. All the norms that we thought were out there have been either rocked or taken out from under us. So everybody's out there coping in one way or another, and bracing for more issues that we are afraid are coming down the road.

William Schaffner, MD, is professor of preventive medicine with a primary appointment in the department of health policy and a professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, in Nashville, TN. Schaffner is the current medical director and past president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and has served on the Executive Board for the Infectious Diseases Society of America.