Is the US prepared to deal with another pandemic or widespread health crisis?

Based on current evidence through late 2025–2026, the picture is decidedly mixed-to-concerning. Here's a balanced assessment:

Signs of Weakened Preparedness

Federal infrastructure has been significantly scaled back. CDC lost approximately one quarter of its civilian workforce between fiscal years 2024 and 2026, with reductions spanning global health, health promotion, scientific research, and communications. Proposed budgets have reinforced this trend: the President's proposed FY 2026 budget for the CDC amounts to a 53 percent reduction in funding as compared to FY 2024, with CDC's Public Health Emergency Preparedness program—the primary source of federal funding for state and local emergency preparedness—facing a 52 percent funding reduction.

Key coordinating bodies have been hollowed out. The White House office specifically created to manage pandemic response lost its leadership entirely — in 2025, Gerald Parker resigned as head of the office, leaving the office with no employees.

International surveillance ties have been severed. In 2026, the U.S. announced its withdrawal from the WHO after almost 78 years of membership, which it said was in response to "the WHO's failures during the COVID-19 pandemic." A multi-perspective analysis concluded that the withdrawal of the United States from WHO introduces a structural discontinuity in surveillance and financing that no complementary arrangement yet remedies.

Real-world consequences are already visible. The U.S. entered 2026 managing its most severe influenza season in nearly a decade, the highest measles case count since 1991, and sustained avian influenza surveillance—all while the federal public health infrastructure underpinning hospital and clinical emergency response was being significantly dismantled. During a 2026 cyclospora outbreak, cuts to funding for lab equipment and for CDC staff with expertise in parasitic infections—including 9 out of 11 staff members at the lab responsible for identifying parasitic outbreaks in 2025—contributed to the largest reporting delay in outbreak cases at the CDC in 15 years.

Research pipelines have also been cut. Reports flag the cancellation of nearly $500 million in contracts funding mRNA vaccine research and development in August 2025.

State-Level Variation

Preparedness isn't uniform across the country. The 2026 "Ready or Not" report places states and the District of Columbia into three performance tiers: 20 states in the high-performance tier, 17 states and the District of Columbia in the middle-performance tier, and 13 states in the low-performance tier. The same report notes the broader context: in 2025, the country faced the most severe flu season in nearly a decade, rising measles outbreaks, continued H5N1 avian influenza activity, and a growing number of extreme weather events—all while the federal systems built over decades to help states prepare for and respond to emergencies came under significant strain.

Some Counterpoints

Not everything points downward. Some funding lines have actually increased modestly — the FY2026 ASPR operating plan shows planned increases for programs like Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) funding and the Strategic National Stockpile. The administration has also framed its approach around a domestic-first strategy, releasing the "America First Global Health Strategy," which included the stated goals of enabling early detection and containment of outbreaks. However, independent analysts were skeptical of the net effect — the Center for Global Development called broader cuts to U.S. global health programming "devastating news."

Bottom Line

The weight of evidence from public health experts, state auditors, and independent trackers suggests the U.S. is less prepared than it was a few years ago, not more. One backgrounder bluntly concluded that the United States has weakened its public health infrastructure even as the likelihood of a new pandemic is high. Combined workforce losses, grant terminations, the WHO withdrawal, and the leaderless state of the dedicated pandemic-response office paint a picture of a system with reduced surge capacity and surveillance reach at precisely the moment multiple overlapping health threats (flu, measles, H5N1, emerging outbreaks) are testing it. Whether the U.S. could still mount an effective ad hoc response in a severe crisis remains untested, but the formal infrastructure designed for sustained, coordinated readiness has clearly been diminished.