from the down-with-the-sickness dept
The CDC has plunged into chaos. Dr. Susan Monarez, the newly minted CDC Director, a role she held for a matter of mere weeks, has been fired by the Trump administration. We actually wrote about Monarez previously, as she was engaged with both the CDC team that was the target of an attempted mass shooting in Atlanta, as well as the broader CDC staff, largely over their concerns that HHS Secretary RFK Jr. was both putting them in danger with his bullshit conspiracy theories and that Kennedy’s theories were completely at odds with good science. CDC, along with the broader HHS agencies, have gone through a large number of layoffs, firings, and resignations. I’ve joked before that Kennedy is responsible for more loss of brain matter at our nations health agencies than any worm could hope to achieve.
But this ultimately isn’t a joke. We traditionally staff agencies like CDC with very, very smart people for a reason. Life and death reasons. Pandemic reasons. Child safety reasons. And playing a cavalier game with these people is not smart. Nor is treating them like pawns in someone’s personal political agenda, which is exactly what Kennedy is doing.
Lawyers representing Dr Monarez said her sacking was illegal, and alleged she was targeted by Kennedy because she refused “to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives”.
The New York Times reports that she was at odds with Kennedy, a vaccine sceptic, over vaccine policy.
Other reports suggest that she was given an ultimatum directly from Kennedy: support the things I say about vaccines as well as our updated vaccination schedules, or resign. That’s not someone who is looking for “gold standard science,” a phrase Kennedy loves to use but clearly doesn’t understand. Instead, it’s someone who has a conclusion in mind and simply wants the science to be mocked up to make it look like he’s right.
The White House came pretty damned close to admitting as much in this hilarious back and forth.
On Wednesday, Dr Monarez’s lawyers issued a statement saying that she had chosen “protecting the public over serving a political agenda”.
The White House statement announcing the termination of her post said: “As her attorney’s statement makes abundantly clear, Susan Monarez is not aligned with the president’s agenda.”
Yes, you asshats, she made it clear that she wants to protect the public instead. Your response sure makes it sound like you’re acknowledging that she was asked to serve the political agenda instead of protecting the public.
And she isn’t the only one. Several high-ranking CDC staffers resigned in the wake of her firing in protest. CDC staff who didn’t resign lined the outside of CDC offices and clapped for their former colleagues as they exited the building.
Demetre Daskalakis, who was director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said recent policy changes surrounding the COVID vaccine threatened lives and there had been an “intentional eroding of trust in low-risk vaccines.” Other departing officials include CDC chief medical officer Debra Houry and Daniel Jernigan, director of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases.
This loss of expertise at CDC is alarming. As is the revelation that Daskalakis produced during an interview on CNN on Thursday night.
Daskalakis, responding to a question about what Kennedy should be asked if he were to appear at a Senate hearing, said: “Has he ever been briefed by a CDC expert on anything? Specifically, measles, COVID-19, flu? I think people should ask him that.
“The answer is no. No one from my center has ever briefed him on any of those topics. He’s getting information from somewhere, but that information is not coming from CDC experts, who really are the world’s experts in this area. Perhaps he has alternate experts that he may trust more than the experts at CDC that the rest of the world regards as the best scientists in these areas,” he said.
It’s hard to know how to even respond. We have the worst outbreak of measles in several decades… and Kennedy never sought or received a briefing on it from the CDC? Kennedy is radically altering the vaccine schedules for children and for COVID vaccines… and he never got a readout on the science of either from the CDC? This brain-wormed growl-monster ended half a billion dollars worth of federal funding for mRNA vaccines generally… and didn’t get any input from CDC on that decision?
I half expect this to turn out to be untrue and that briefings of some sort did in fact occur. If not, then holy shit, Congress needs to start firing up some hearings and get to the bottom of what is occurring at HHS, because all of this uninformed chaos is going to result in very real deaths.
Filed Under: cdc, donald trump, expertise, rfk jr., susan monarez
