MUSK MALPRACTICE
DOGE Bros Play Doctor
Elon Musk is replacing science at the CDC with artificial intelligence and genuine stupidity.
Elon Musk has fired the scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who investigate disease outbreaks.¹ He’s replaced them with brogrammers² from his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).³ His bros have already leapt into action, traveling to Texas to determine the source of a syphilis⁴ epidemic.
“As usual,” said one of Musk’s coding cowboys, “the first thing we did was demand access to the men’s nether regions. They’ve cooperated — up to a point.
- The guys gave us ‘read’ access to their asses.
- And ‘write’ access to their huevos.
- But they won’t give us ‘delete’ access to their dingalings.”
Disease outbreaks are normally investigated by the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS).⁵ When notified of an outbreak, its “disease detectives” — virologists, bacteriologists, epidemiologists, microbiologists, and pathologists — immediately deploy to the outbreak’s Ground Zero, where they:
- Gather “disease, demographic, geographic, and exposure data;”
- Identify the pathogen and its source;
- Implement “control measures” — say, close a restaurant, recall packaged foods, clean air ducts, isolate patients, and prescribe prophylactic antibiotics; and
- Trigger additional steps if necessary, such as quarantines, border closings, and travel warnings.⁶
EIS officers have been the first responders for outbreaks of anthrax, smallpox, polio, E. Coli, Ebola, and bird flu. Consequently, one might assume the Epidemic Intelligence Service is mission-critical.
Elon Musk doesn’t think it is. Indeed, Musk doesn’t think the CDC is mission-critical: he fired 1,300 employees — 10 percent of the workforce — last Valentine’s Day.⁷
White House officials subsequently forced Musk to un-fire the EIS officers.⁸ They realized it was bad optics to axe the people who investigate bird flu outbreaks when the flu is responsible for raising the average price of a dozen eggs from $2.72 last June to $4.95 in January.⁹
But the EIS officers shouldn’t put their name plates back on their desks just yet. Dr. David Weldon, Trump’s nominee for Director of the CDC, agrees with Musk. He sees no need for the Epidemic Intelligence Service.
That’s consistent with another belief of Dr. Weldon’s: he sees no need for vaccines, including the ones for measles, rubella, and mumps.¹⁰
That said, you could argue that the CDC has no need for Dr. Weldon. Yes, he’s a physician. But he “has no relevant experience in public health, epidemiology, infectious disease, vaccination, or any other science that might qualify him to run an organization like the CDC.”¹⁰
Weldon’s sole qualification is he’s devoted to conspiracy theories. That’s something he has in common with his boss, if he’s confirmed: Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the Secretary of Health and Human Services. They’ve both spread the debunked conspiracy theory that vaccines cause autism. Thus, it’s no surprise that the CDC has launched a study to “research” the connection between vaccines and autism.¹¹ (That’s why some CDC staffers say their organization’s name should be changed:
- From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention;
- To the Cesspool for Dysfunction, Confusion and Poppycock.)
To prove the Epidemic Intelligence Service is unnecessary, Musk, at Dr. Weldon’s request, established a DOGE High-Performance Team (HPT) to investigate disease outbreaks.
An HPT is a “group of goal-focused individuals with specialized expertise and complementary skills who collaborate and innovate to produce consistently superior results.” HPTs emphasize “open communication, clear role expectations and group operating rules, early conflict resolution, and a strong sense of accountability and trust among its members.”¹² A prime example of an HPT is air traffic control tower crews.
That’s not Musk’s idea of a high-performance team. To him, an HPT is a collection of homosocial¹³ brogrammers. Thus, Musk’s team of disease detectives consists of a:
- Help Desk hipster;
- Cyber security stoner;
- Web design wanker;
- Data entry dude;
- JavaScript junkie;
- PowerPoint preppie;
- CAPTCHA checkbox designer;
- GIF rewinder;
- Ad-blocker un-blocker; and a
- Keyboard cleaner and laptop hinge-tightener.
DOGE teams don’t care about role expectations, collaboration and accountability. They’re bros.
- They’re cocky, insolent, hypermasculine, and hyper-competitive.
- They have inflated views of bro expertise, and disdain for whatever anyone else brings to the table.
- They don’t consider themselves bound by laws, regulations, traditions, customs, and social conventions.
The only rules DOGE brogrammers abide by are the Ten Bromandments.
- Don’t look at a bro when he’s eating a banana.¹⁵
- Never wear a Speedo© in front of another bro.¹⁵
- Leave an unoccupied urinal between yours and another bro’s.¹⁵
- Likewise, leave a buffer stall between you and a bro.¹⁶
- If a bro inadvertently grazes another bro below the waist, they pretend it never happened.¹⁵
- Bros never share desserts, tickle each other, or touch each other’s hair.¹⁵
- Bros never sulk and give each other the silent treatment.¹⁵
- The bro who rides shotgun controls the radio.¹⁴
- When a bro makes a beer or grub run, he gets to keep the change.¹⁵
- Most important of all, bros before chicks.¹⁴
Another difference between Corporateworld and DOGE HPTs: business teams bond by performing team-building exercises; DOGE bros bond over more important things.
They binge-watch bro movies like Wayne’s World, The Hangover, Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, Fight Club, Starship Troopers, and Jackass: The Movie.
They perform pranks. Thanks to their unfettered access to federal facilities, DOGE brogrammers have:
- Saran™-wrapped the toilet seats in Senate restrooms;
- Placed whoopee cushions in the Supreme Court Chamber on the Justices’ chairs;
- Replaced the gavels in the House and Senate chambers with giant squeaky hammer toys;
- Applied Vaseline® to restroom toilet seats in the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building;
- Filched packs of fresh five dollar bills from the U. S. Mint’s Bureau of Printing and Engraving, and glued individual bills to the tops of urinals in House of Representatives restrooms; and
- Listed the Capitol and the Supreme Court Building on Craigslist™ as “For Sale By Owner.”
Finally, bros share the desperate hope, remote though the chances are, that someday they’ll become members of the Touchaboobie Tribe.
Though Musk assembled his team of disease detectives only last week, they’ve already tackled their first crisis: a syphilis outbreak in Pecos County, Texas.
The county is located in a remote, arid patch of west Texas. At 4,776 square miles,¹⁷ it’s the state’s second-largest county. But it’s sparsely populated: 14,623 souls,¹⁸ which works out to 3 per square mile. And out on the range, few of ’em are female.
When the DOGE bros touched down in the county, here’s what they discovered.
- Ground Zero for the syphilis outbreak was a cluster of sheep ranches.
- The people afflicted with the loathsome disease were sheep ranchers, though only the men.
- The ranchers had been holed up on their spreads for months on account of the demanding nature of their work. They’d made occasional supply runs to nearby towns. But never long enough to so much as say “Howdy-do” to a woman, let alone have relations with her.
As a result, the DOGE bros were faced with a mystery: since the sheep ranchers hadn’t caught syphilis from women, where’d they get it?
A front-end developer was the first to form a hypothesis. He’d noticed that the sheep ranchers’ hands smelled of lanolin. “Obviously,” he concluded, “the ranchers contracted syphilis from the baby shampoo they use to clean their dry, brittle hair!” The news was flashed to Secretary Kennedy Jr. in Washington, DC. He immediately issued a nationwide ban of sales of baby shampoo.
But some victims didn’t use baby shampoo. Fortunately, a Javascript developer observed that victims had wool fibers under their fingernails. “Clearly,” he said, “the ranchers got syphilis from the ragg wool gloves they wear.” The DOGE bros quickly held a Zoom meeting with RFK Jr., who responded by banning sales of ragg gloves by Amazon, Orvis, and L. L. Bean.
To their credit, the DOGE bros didn’t stop there. They kept investigating to ensure they’d identified every source of syphilis.
Sure enough, a database administrator found another: sheep ranchers reported feeling romantic when they wore fleece-lined house slippers. RFK Jr. was impressed. During his Senate confirmation hearings he’d promised to “follow the science.”¹⁹ He applauded the DOGE bros for doing the same. He promptly banned sales throughout the nation of fleece-lined slip-on, slide, shearling, and fuzzy house slippers.
The DOGE bros discovered one more likely source of syphilis. From interviews with infected ranchers, a software engineer learned they got hard-ons whenever they wore woolen undies. RFK Jr. instantly banned the sales of wool tighty-whities, briefs, boxers, jock straps, G-strings, buttraisers, bumrounders, and pouch thongs.
The DOGE disease detectives have returned to the CDC Headquarters in Washington DC. (They occupy a warren of offices in the basement; they call it “The Müskbünker.”) Pecos County still has a syphilis problem. But Musk laughed it off. “We can’t bat a thousand all the time,”²⁰ he chortled. “After all, I’m the most brilliant man in the world. I’ve looked at the documents and photos my DOGE bros brought back. And even I can’t figure out how those sheep ranchers are catching syphilis.”
[1]: “CDC ‘disease detectors’ among hundreds of fired workers in Trump-Musk purge”, yahoo!news, https://www.yahoo.com/news/cdc-disease-detectors-among-hundreds-145554761.html
[2]: “Brogrammer”, Urban Dictionary, https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brogrammer
[3]: “Analyzing DOGE actions one month into Trump’s second administration”, Harvard Kennedy School, https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/democracy-governance/analyzing-doge-actions-one-month-trumps-second
[4]: “Syphilis”, Mayo Clinic, https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/syphilis/symptoms-causes/syc-20351756
[5]: “About the Epidemic Intelligence Service”, Epidemic Intelligence Service, CDC, https://www.cdc.gov/eis/php/about/index.html
[6]: “Investigating A Disease Outbreak”, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7169535/
[7]: “Layoffs accelerate at federal agencies with more cuts to come”, NPR, https://www.npr.org/2025/02/14/nx-s1-5298144/federal-layoffs-usda-hud-defense-trump
[8]: “CDC layoffs strike deeply at its ability to respond to health emergencies”, Arkansas Advocate, https://arkansasadvocate.com/2025/02/23/cdc-layoffs-strike-deeply-at-its-ability-to-respond-to-health-emergencies/
[9]: “Egg Prices Soar to New Record Amid Ongoing Bird Flu Crisis”, nerdwallet, https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/why-are-eggs-so-expensive
[10]: “Antivaxxers, grifters, and quacks: RFK Jr.’s MAHA takes over federal health agencies”, Science-Based Medicine, https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/antivaxxers-grifters-and-quacks-rfk-jr-s-maha-takes-over-federal-health-agencies/
[11]: “RFK Jr.’s CDC Launches Study on Vaccines and Autism Conspiracy”, The New Republic, https://newrepublic.com/post/192488/rfk-jr-cdc-study-vaccines-autism
[12]: “Developing and Sustaining High-Performance Work Teams”, Society for Human Resource Management, https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/tools/toolkits/developing-sustaining-high-performance-work-teams
[13]: “What is Homosociality?”, University of Notre Dame, https://sites.nd.edu/jamesbaldwin/2021/03/11/what-is-homosociality/
[14]: “The Art of a Bromance”, The Cub, https://www.ludlowcub.com/feature/2011/05/05/the-art-of-a-bromance-2/
[15]: “72 Bromandments: The Bro Code Rules Every Guy Must Know & Follow”, LovePanky, https://www.lovepanky.com/men/guy-talk/bro-code-rules
[16]: “What Is Bro Code? 40 Unwritten Rules of Male Friendships”, Adventures From Scratch by Let’s Roam, https://www.adventurebook.com/connect/bro-code/
[17]: “Pecos County”, Texas Almanac, https://www.texasalmanac.com/places/pecos-county
[18]: “Texas Counties by Population (2025)”, Texas Demographics, https://www.texas-demographics.com/counties_by_population
[19]: “Behind Kennedy’s Vow to ‘Follow the Science’ on Vaccines”, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/us/politics/rfk-science-vaccines.html
[20]: “Musk to House Republicans: DOGE can’t bat a thousand all the time”, Politico, https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/03/05/congress/musk-defends-doge-house-republicans-00215271
