The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is on an epic run: making people soil themselves at national parks, getting people eaten by bears, and ruining spring itself. Now, according to CBS News, DOGE will also make you catch Ebola.
Watch as the CBS Evening News stakes this position out:
MAURICE DuBOIS: The African nation of Uganda is in the middle of a deadly Ebola outbreak.
JOHN DICKERSON: The United States was providing on the ground humanitarian assistance until President Trump pulled the plug on USAID.
DuBOIS: The loss of that help raises the risk not only for Uganda, but for the rest of the world, as well, including the U.S. Debora Patta reports from Entebbe.
DEBORA PATTA: As soon as we stepped off the plane in Uganda, we noticed a lack of health screening.
There seems to be one person possibly monitoring temperatures. It was unclear.
There should be at least two, but it has been scaled back due to funding cuts. Right in the middle of Uganda's eighth Ebola outbreak. The first case was reported nine days after President Trump took office.
AID WORKER: So what is Ebola?
PATTA: USAID was leading the emergency response when all of its 37 staff here were fired. We spoke to one of them, a senior USAID official, and voiced over her words to protect her identity. She told us Uganda's health system has been crippled by the cuts. How does the crippling of the health system in Uganda impact Americans right now?
FORMER USAID WORKER: Someone with Ebola could board a plane and end up in the United States.
PATTA: Is America a little less safe?
FORMER USAID WORKER Absolutely. It makes our ability to detect and respond to disease much weaker, and that makes us less safe.
The State Department has been crystal clear that some form of legitimate soft-power food and medical assistance programs formerly under USAID purview will remain in place. Nonsense like Colombian transgender opera will not. They are not the same, no matter how much the media tries to make you believe they are.
It’s also worth noting that, for all the hubbub about budget cuts, no one is asking what other countries might be doing to assist Uganda. And no one is saying anything about educating the local populace on perhaps reducing some of the behaviors that help spread disease, such as the consumption of bushmeat.
The entire report is an exercise in rehashed USAID fearmongering, boring and derivative. At the least the “eaten by bears” stuff was original.
Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on CBS Evening News on Thursday, April 10th, 2025:
MAURICE DuBOIS: The African nation of Uganda is in the middle of a deadly Ebola outbreak.
JOHN DICKERSON: The United States was providing on the ground humanitarian assistance until President Trump pulled the plug on USAID.
DuBOIS: The loss of that help raises the risk not only for Uganda, but for the rest of the world, as well, including the U.S. Debora Patta reports from Entebbe.
DEBORA PATTA: As soon as we stepped off the plane in Uganda, we noticed a lack of health screening.
There seems to be one person possibly monitoring temperatures. It was unclear.
There should be at least two, but it has been scaled back due to funding cuts. Right in the middle of Uganda's eighth Ebola outbreak. The first case was reported nine days after President Trump took office.
AID WORKER: So what is Ebola?
PATTA: USAID was leading the emergency response when all of its 37 staff here were fired. We spoke to one of them, a senior USAID official, and voiced over her words to protect her identity. She told us Uganda's health system has been crippled by the cuts. How does the crippling of the health system in Uganda impact Americans right now?
FORMER USAID WORKER: Someone with Ebola could board a plane and end up in the United States.
PATTA: Is America a little less safe?
FORMER USAID WORKER Absolutely. It makes our ability to detect and respond to disease much weaker, and that makes us less safe.
PATTA: We reported from Liberia during the deadly 2014 West African Ebola epidemic, which claimed more than 11,000 lines and cost the U.S. over $2 billion to contain. But it still spread to America, killing two people. Since then, USAID has been at the forefront of combating the disease. All the doctors we've spoken to here tell us they are very worried, that the fight against infectious diseases, including Ebola, could quickly get out of hand without American funding. USAID helped pay the salaries of 35,000 health workers. They've all lost their jobs. And this U.S.-funded clinic is already battling shortages where doctors check for the initial symptoms of the virus, fever. In their labs, these $200 test kits can diagnose Ebola in less than an hour. They all come from Salt Lake City. There are only 300 left. Clinic Dr. Kenneth Khobba said they are running out of time.
KENNETH KHOBBA: For these kinds of diseases, you cannot afford even a day of waiting.
DICKERSON: Deb, in 2014 after the outbreak, U.S. policy was to stop Ebola there, before it came to the United States. What's the status of that now?
PATTA: Well, John, in Uganda it is called a preemptive strike, but the cuts also mean that frontline workers who hunt for new infections have been axed in 146 districts, and without them, there could be undetected cases spreading.
DuBOIS: And Deb, for Americans to wonder, we can't be the world's doctors, is anybody else stepping up to fill the void?
PATTA: The World Health Organization has stepped into the gap, Maurice, but for how long? Their funding has also been cut. And as the USAID official told us, this was a good investment. Uganda's two flights away from the U.S. American doctors are not trained to detect Ebola. Frankly, I’d rather be treated for it here.
DuBOIS: Okay, Deb Patta tonight in Uganda. Thank you.
