from the rudderless-ship dept
It’s time for yet another reminder that HHS Secretary RFK Jr. is an incapable leader at odds with the scientists who actually know what they’re talking about. At the CDC specifically, we recently discussed the government’s decision to do away with the team that was helping to identify, track, and remediate elevated levels of lead appearing in the blood of children throughout the country. While Kennedy appeared to lie directly about his agency’s response to at least one instance of elevated BLLs in Milwaukee, along with how he was going to retain staff at HHS generally, he also recently and seemingly unilaterally altered the guidance for COVID vaccines. More specifically, he revoked the guidance that healthy children and pregnant women should get vaccinated and boosted. It appears that the CDC itself was completely unaware this change in policy was coming.
The health agency’s immunization schedules were not, in fact, updated at the time of the announcement, though. The Washington Post subsequently reported that the CDC was blindsided by the announcement. Five hours went by after the video was posted before CDC officials said they received a one-page “secretarial directive” about the changes, which was signed by Kennedy and puzzlingly dated May 19, according to the Post.
The reversal for vaccination during pregnancy was received particularly poorly by the medical community, given that a COVID infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic to the mother, who’s immune system is weakened during pregnancy, and for the pregnancy itself. On the CDC site itself there are still pages recommending COVID vaccination for children as young as six months old to prevent things like long COVID or related longer term illnesses. Perhaps that explains why the CDC didn’t exactly do as Kennedy directed.
Late Thursday, the CDC updated the immunization schedules. Contradicting what Kennedy said in the video, the CDC did not remove its recommendation for COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children in the child and adolescent immunization schedule. Instead, it added a stipulation that if a child’s doctor agrees with the vaccination and parents “desire for their child to be vaccinated,” healthy children can get vaccinated.
In practice, it is unclear how this change will affect access to the vaccines. Health insurers are required to cover vaccines on the CDC schedules. But, it’s yet to be seen if children will only be able to get vaccinated at their doctor’s office (rather than a pharmacy or vaccine clinic) or if additional consent forms would be required, etc. Uncertainty about the changes and requirements alone may lead to fewer children getting vaccinated.
Which appears to be all that Kennedy is after here. A longtime vaccine opponent, Kennedy appears to be applying his own viewpoints, rather than those of scientists or medical professionals, to American healthcare policy. And, as a result, the CDC recently lost its top expert on COVID vaccinations.
The resignation, first reported by The Associated Press and confirmed by CBS News, comes just a week after health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unilaterally revoked and altered some of the CDC’s recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines, restricting access to children and pregnant people. The resignation also comes three weeks before CDC’s experts and advisors are scheduled to meet to publicly evaluate data and discuss the recommendations for this season—a long-established process that was disrupted by Kennedy’s announcement.
The departing CDC official, Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, a pediatric infectious disease expert, was a co-leader of a working group on COVID-19 vaccines who advised experts on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). She informed her ACIP colleagues of her resignation in an email on Tuesday.
“My career in public health and vaccinology started with a deep-seated desire to help the most vulnerable members of our population, and that is not something I am able to continue doing in this role,” Panagiotakopoulos wrote.
With Kennedy at the helm, this tracks with what we’ve written about before. Vulnerable populations, in Kennedy’s documented views, are not victims. They, or their genetics, are the cause of their own suffering or vulnerability, and can be more or less dismissed from concern.
But an exodus of scientists and medical professionals from the CDC should be viewed as a sort of cry for help from those communities. The man running HHS is implementing healthcare policy at odds with healthcare professionals and scientists. And based on what? A report on American health that is built upon an AI fever-dream?
“More of us should be resigning in protest,” one federal health official told CBS News in response to Panagiotakopoulos’ resignation.
If they’re not allowed to actually do their work, then I guess that’s probably true. But draining the brainpower from HHS such that all that remains is whatever the brain worm left in Kennedy’s head can takeover is not going to produce better healthcare outcomes for Americans.
Filed Under: cdc, covid, covid guidance, covid vaccines, hhs, rfk jr.
