In a 51–44 vote Wednesday, the US Senate confirmed Erica Schwartz as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, despite failing miserably to convince senators last month that she could stand up to anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The confirmation ends a nearly yearlong vacancy for the position since Kennedy fired the previous CDC director, Susan Monarez, last August. Monarez was ousted after she refused to rubber-stamp vaccine recommendations from a panel of Kennedy's hand-selected advisors, who hold similar anti-vaccine views to his own.

Schwartz is highly qualified for the role, coming to the CDC with a medical degree, a master’s degree in public health, and a law degree. She previously had a long stint as a Navy officer and held leadership roles including chief medical officer for the US Coast Guard and deputy surgeon general in the first Trump administration. Notably, she has been a public advocate for vaccines and outbreak preparedness.

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© Wikipedia | HHS

The Trump administration continues to respond sluggishly to the explosive, nationwide outbreak of Cyclospora—a unicellular parasite spread from human feces that has now sickened nearly 23,000 people in 47 states, killing two and sending over 500 to the hospital.

Michigan health officials reported the two deaths Monday, and The Washington Post first reported Tuesday that federal health officials have expanded a list of states with linked cases from nine to 15. But those updates still have not appeared on public outbreak pages for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Food and Drug Administration, and Americans are struggling to understand the risk of eating fresh fruits and vegetables.

In comments to Ars Technica on Monday, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees CDC and FDA, said the outbreak information will be updated sometime "this week." Sources for The New York Times said that the CDC plans to set up a "formal response team" for the outbreak sometime this week. Cases in the outbreak began in June.

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© Getty | Al Drago

Two people have died amid the ongoing record-breaking outbreak of explosive diarrhea from the foodborne parasite Cyclospora, Michigan health officials announced Monday.

Cyclosporiasis fatalities are extremely rare, and despite the massive size of the outbreak, some experts were still surprised by the deaths. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services on Monday said that medical records of both individuals indicated that they had "significant underlying health conditions that may have been impacted by cyclosporiasis and dehydration."

MDHHS noted that both fell ill with the diarrheal infection before Taylor Farms recalled its shredded iceberg lettuce grown in Mexico, which has been linked to thousands of cases in at least nine states. Cyclospora is a unicellular parasite that spreads in human feces and is often transmitted via contaminated fresh produce, such as lettuces and other fruits and vegetables that have uneven surfaces for the parasite to grip. Past culprits have included fresh herbs, raspberries, green onions, and snow peas.

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© Getty | Benjamin Fanjoy

A 45-year-old construction worker went to the emergency department for his right shoulder, which was extremely swollen and becoming progressively more painful. Doctors took an X-ray to try to see what was causing the problem. But when the images came through, it was what they didn't see that explained the situation: His entire shoulder joint was gone, seemingly blasted apart into small, lingering pieces.

The shoulder joint is a ball-and-socket joint, with the sphere-like head of the upper arm bone (humerus) sitting in the socket of the shoulder blade. According to a case report in the New England Journal of Medicine, the man's X-ray showed that he no longer had a ball at all or an intact socket. His upper arm bone was detached from the joint, and the sphere-like top of his upper arm bone (humeral head) was completely gone. The broken, headless humerus was instead left to float freely in the man's arm, unattached to his upper body.

The man's shoulder, visibly swollen, and his X-ray showing destruction of the humeral head with a free-floating upper arm bone. Credit: New England Journal of Medicine, 2026

Magnetic resonance imaging, meanwhile, found that the man's rotator cuff—the group of muscles and tendons that holds the upper arm firmly in the socket—was also destroyed. Three of the four main tendons (supraspinatus, infraspinatus, and subscapularis tendons) had full-thickness tears.

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