Announcements of draconian cuts to the federal workforce, accompanied by the elimination of entire federal agencies, offices and programs, are being issued so repeatedly from the Trump administration that they threaten to become “routine” for citizens who don’t feel personally affected. Complacency as these haphazard and damaging eliminations of federal funding and services continue, however, would be a grave mistake — because all Americans’ access to health and welfare services long taken for granted are now gravely at risk.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is one of the latest organizations targeted. On Thursday, DHHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called for terminating 10,000 workers, targeting the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for budget cuts, and closing regional offices. This was in addition to another 10,000 DHHS employees already gone as a result of the administration’s cut of probationary employees and “invitations” to quit sent to federal workers nationwide. And on Friday, Peter Marks, the FDA’s top vaccine regulator who helped launch Operation Warp Speed, resigned; reports claim he was forced out.

This elimination of services, funding and manpower supporting health initiatives in Hawaii will leave islanders more vulnerable to illness and less able to access care. Among the efforts threatened, with direct effects on people here: Research and containment of bird flu and measles, and efforts to quell drug abuse.

It’s blatantly irresponsible to carry out such cuts without sufficient attention to the effects they have on communities.

The administration’s previously disclosed intent to slash funding for research supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), administered by DHHS, further threatens scientific research that allows physicians to better prevent, treat and cure illnesses. As Dr. Shetal Shah wrote in these pages in a March 20 “Island Voices” column, NIH research funding totals $68.7 million in Hawaii, boosting the economy as it benefits islanders’ health.

About $16.5 million of that funding goes to the University of Hawaii. Research at Hawaii’s medical school and throughout the university system emphasizes benefits to islanders, and cuts could devastate research programs and decimate opportunities for graduate- level research in this state.

“The negative impact on communities in Hawaii and elsewhere that already experience the highest rates of chronic disease, more severe health conditions and shortened life expectancies will be severe,” said UH Vice President for Research and Innovation Vassilis Syrmos.

Also alarming, and indicative of other mortal dangers presented by federal actions: the hiring of antivaccine activist David Geier as a “senior data analyst” for DHHS, tasked with analyzing the data for links between vaccines and autism — at the direction of Kennedy, who has forged a lucrative career out of questioning vaccine safety.

This misuse of taxpayer dollars to hire Geier — described as a “long-discredited researcher and vaccine skeptic” by The Washington Post — is now being touted within the fact-resistant, anti-vax network as evidence that vaccines and autism are indeed linked, provoking an immediate outcry from reputed health care providers and researchers.

“It seems the goal of this administration is to prove that vaccines cause autism, even though they don’t,” Autism Science Foundation President Alison Singer told Esquire.

Claims of a connection between vaccines and autism — some of them made in now-discredited papers published by Geier — have been almost universally debunked by scientists and public health officials. But Kennedy has long used Geier’s sham research to back his own gospel of vaccine skepticism — a position that has lamentably become more common in recent years, accelerating further in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

If funding for vaccine research and outreach programs is withdrawn, it will further erode quality of care. Vaccine acceptance could also be further eroded. And the consequences can be severe, as seen from sprawling outbreaks centered in Texas that have killed at least two and have spread to at least 20 mainland states.

Hawaii, too, is at risk because of this misinformation. Vaccination rates have dropped among the islands’ schoolchildren, to the point that only 90% of islanders are vaccinated against measles — below the 95% necessary to prevent the highly contagious and sometimes fatal disease from spreading here. As immunization rates drop, the probability rises for outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease.

Prospective reductions in support for food-safety monitoring, tobacco control, maternal health initiatives and sexually transmitted disease prevention also threaten Hawaii. With our congressional representatives, voters in this state must demand that the federal government reverse the “move fast and break things” strategy it’s been applying — and instead conduct accurate reviews of departmental priorities and productivity, then act to truly improve government for the good of the people, rather than hobble it.