Alex Adrianson addresses that question for the Heritage Foundation’s “Insider Online.”

Why was Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan sent home from a hospital in Dallas, despite informing the hospital he had recently arrived from Liberia? Why were his family members left in a contaminated apartment for days? The problem might be, says Glenn Harlan Reynolds, that CDC doesn’t have just one job:

[T]he CDC has multiple jobs, having involved itself in everything from playground safety to smoking in subsidized housing.

In 2014, the CDC received (together with the Public Health Service and related programs) $6.8 billion. But not all of that money went to infectious diseases. In addition to the CDC’s supposed raison d’etre, there were programs for:

• Chronic disease prevention (obesity, heart disease, etc): fiscal 2014 budget approximately $1 billion, or just under 15% of the total budget.
• Birth defects: $132 million, or just about 2% of the total budget.
• Environmental health (asthma, safe water, etc): $179 million, 2.6% of total.
• Injury prevention (domestic violence, brain injury, etc): $150 million, 2.2% of total.
• Public health services (statistics, surveillance, etc): $482 million, 7% of total.
• Occupational safety (mostly research): $332 million, 5% of total.

And, of course, the various busy-body looks at playgrounds, smoking in subsidized housing, and the like. As The Federalist’s David Harsanyi writes: “The CDC, an agency whose primary mission was to prevent malaria and then other dangerous communicable diseases, is now spending a lot of time, energy and money worrying about how much salt you put on your steaks, how close you stand to second-hand smoke and how often you do calisthenics.” …

… And speaking of priorities: “The World Health Organization (WHO) will meet behind closed doors in Moscow later this month to discuss adopting new measures to regulate and curb the use of tobacco products, including e-cigarettes.”