Letters: Refocus public health priorities on current threats like food safety, measles

August 12, 2026 - 10:28

The endless arguments about Dr. Anthony Fauci and the handling of COVID-19 have consumed far too much of our national attention. While accountability for pandemic leadership is a fair topic, it has pulled our eyes away from the fires burning right in front of us. We are ignoring the immediate, tangible threats that are quietly making people sick every single day.

Look at the recent headlines. We are seeing major outbreaks of measles in under-vaccinated communities, a disease we practically eliminated two decades ago. At the same time, the Food and Drug Administration is scrambling to recall contaminated produce and ground beef linked to E. coli and salmonella. These are not hypothetical scenarios. These are real, preventable illnesses affecting children and families in real time.

The problem is that our public health infrastructure has become obsessed with the theoretical and the political. We spend billions on modeling future viral variants, yet local health departments are so underfunded that they cannot track a listeria outbreak back to a specific processing plant. We have lost the plot. The core mission of public health is not to win a culture war; it is to ensure the water is clean, the food is safe, and the shots are given.

We need to refocus. Stop chasing the ghosts of the last pandemic and start fixing the broken systems that allow a simple case of measles to become a cluster, or a bad batch of lettuce to end up in a hospital ward. That is the real work. That is where the priorities belong.