This week, thousands of National Institutes of Health (NIH) employees were fired. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is based in Atlanta. It is only a few miles from my home. It was also included in the layoffs. It’s one of 27 institutes and centers of the NIH.

The Journal of Nature described the NIH mass firings as one of the darkest days.” The article quoted Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota. He said, “This will go down as one of the darkest days in modern scientific history in my 50 years in the business. These are going to be huge losses to the research community.”

So far, 20,000 NIH employees have been fired. This group includes the directors of four institutes of NIH. These are NIAID (Allergy & Infectious Disease), NICHD (Child Health), NIMHD (Minority Health), and NINR (Nursing Research)..