Swingers beware, as things may be about to get a lot more itchy and painful in the worst possible place. Ever since the inauguration, the Trump administration has been busily taking an axe to the nation’s vital infrastructure: everything from cruise ship sanitation to scientific research to Medicaid is being cut.
Now, one of the most disturbing cuts has been identified. The Department of Health and Human Services, under the control of sewage swimming conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy, has shut down the CDC lab tasked with tracking the spread of STIs across America.
Just catching up about this. Good grief, what a terrible idea.
— 𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 (@CharlesCMann) May 20, 2025
(STIs = sexually transmitted infections; the lab is one of the few that tracks drug-resistant strains of the sort now plaguing us.)
Making gonorrhea great again. (Link in alt-text) pic.twitter.com/0vI9jiAMWZ
All 77 scientists tasked with keeping an eye on America’s sexual health are now unemployed, along with 28 more full-time staff. As per a report in Healio, the freezers containing key STI samples for analysis have been abandoned and may already be disposed of.
Executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors David C. Harvey bluntly said this should be “alarming” to Americans and represents the “critical loss of an essential public health function that the federal government should be providing to protect the health of all Americans.”
More specifically, this lab closure means work on drug-resistant gonorrhea is now on pause, possibly permanently. Harvey continued:
“The lab closure removes one of the critical tools we use to protect people from drug-resistant infections at the same time our ability to prevent STIs has been set back by massive cuts and layoffs. We are urging Secretary Kennedy to reinstate these labs and staff in order to protect the public against the ongoing STI epidemic and other infectious diseases.”
The party’s over
Anyone engaging in casual hookups should use protection at all times in normal circumstances, though things have just gotten a lot more dangerous as there’s now nobody at the helm tracking outbreaks or monitoring which kind of STIs are out there running wild.
If you’re unlucky enough to catch the drug-resistant strain of gonorrhea, you’re in for a bad time. Symptoms include painful urination, discharge, strong pelvic pain, uncomfortable swelling, and bleeding. In both men and women, it can lead to full infertility, sepsis, and hospitalization.
Or, to put it another way, the party is very much over for you, perhaps for good. But maybe while you’re bleeding out of an uncomfortable area, writhing in prolonged pain, and depressed over the reality that you will no longer be able to find a partner, you can take some solace in that the money saved from not monitoring STIs was well spent on Trump’s $40 million birthday parade.
