The vaccine and public health debate explained

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is facing a leadership upheaval — and at the middle of the shakeup is concern concerning the agency’s approach to vaccines and U.S. public health.

The White House on Thursday said President Donald Trump had fired CDC Director Susan Monarez after she refused to resign. Lawyers for Monarez said she was “targeted” for “protecting the general public over serving a political agenda.”

Meanwhile, 4 other top health officials on the CDC announced Wednesday they were quitting the agency. That features Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who said he could now not serve due to the “weaponizing of public health.”

The lack of those respected leaders and efforts to oust Monarez follow a string of measures by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – a outstanding vaccine skeptic – to overhaul federal health agencies and alter immunization policy within the U.S. That features mass firings, gutting a key government vaccine panel, canceling studies on mRNA shot technology and hiring those with like-minded views.

Kennedy has an extended track record of creating misleading and false statements concerning the safety of vaccine shots, but in his current role, he wields enormous power over the agencies that regulate the immunizations and determine each who can get them and which of them insurance policy should cover.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said the leadership overhaul on the CDC represents Kennedy’s “failed leadership and reckless mismanagement,” adding that he has a “blatant disregard for science and evidence-based public health.” 

The agency can also be reeling from funding cuts and an Aug. 8 attack by a gunman at its headquarters in Atlanta.

Some health policy experts said the leadership exodus could further erode the general public’s trust in an agency that’s answerable for detecting disease outbreaks and guiding state and native health departments when needed.

“This must be seen on top of a raft of the way that CDC has been weakened and undermined, perhaps irreversibly,” Lawrence Gostin, professor of public health law at Georgetown University, told CNBC. 

“Throughout all of those years, CDC has been independent and the jewel within the crown of American science. That is literally all crumbling as we speak,” he said. “This is nearly the definition of politics undermining science.”

Daskalakis was among the many officials to explicitly highlight concerns with the views held by Kennedy and his staff, which he said challenged his ability to proceed in his role on the agency.

“I’m unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that don’t reflect scientific reality and are designed to harm moderately than to enhance the general public’s health,” Daskalakis said in his resignation letter, which was posted on X.

He said the CDC’s recent changes to the adult and youngsters’s immunization schedule “threaten the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant people.”

In May, Kennedy said the CDC removed Covid vaccines from the list of shots really helpful for healthy pregnant women and youngsters. An updated guidance days later said shots “may” be given to those groups.

But a few of Kennedy’s recent efforts appear to reflect his vaccine-critical views. For instance, Kennedy in August argued that mRNA vaccines – the technology utilized in Covid shots – are ineffective and advocated for the event of other jabs that use other “safer” platforms.

Years of research support the effectiveness of mRNA Covid vaccines, and the technology is now approved to be used in shots against respiratory syncytial virus.