CDC Half-Steps RFK Jr.’s New COVID Vaccine Guidance As Top Scientist Resigns
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.
Comments on “CDC Half-Steps RFK Jr.’s New COVID Vaccine Guidance As Top Scientist Resigns”
Anyone who thinks the GOP isn’t a death cult has already joined the death cult. There isn’t any other way to describe their brand of nihilistic behavior besides “the actions of people who don’t give a shit about life”.
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We’re talking about the USA here. Most of their presidents, and their people, openly claim to be part of some death cult.
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Are they trying to collapse our society in a bid to reset civilization? Did they watch too many episodes of Doomsday Prepper to think they’ll be a-ok because they have a drawer full of old coins and a couple cases of MRE’s?
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Yeah, pretty much. Accelerationism combined with the nihilism of conservative Christians who think life is only about getting to the afterlife makes for a shitty combination. Throw in the Rapture freaks who think we need to clear out space in Gaza for the world’s Jews to return “home” so Christ will come back and kickstart the apocalypse, and…yeah, we’ve got a bunch of death cultists running the country.
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It’s also eugenics disguised as “survival of the fittest.” The poor, elderly, disabled and marginalized dying is all part of the plan.
A scuttled ship doesn’t need a rudder.
Interesting that Kennedy told the legislature that people shouldn’t listen to him because he isn’t a doctor and then he went and did stuff opposed by real doctors.
Idiot in the capital streets, brain dead in the buracratic spreadsheets
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Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, I get used to it.
Honestly he was better with the worm still in there. Some people just can’t go solo.
Which pretty much amounts to, “I don’t trust the very clear science, so everybody should just contract vaccine preventable diseases and die of them.” Just sayin’.
As another gop senator said we are all going to die anyway
Let the sTromg survive millions will lose medical insurance under the big beautiful bill what could go wrong
The rich will survive 100 ‘s of hospitals will close but it’s OK
cos the rich will get more tax cuts
Elon.musk woke up and discovered the new bil increases debt by 4 trillion
NAME CHANGE
RFK is to be known as, Tootles. from Peter pan.
As he had lost his marbles.
Be the sand in the gears, not the oil
“More of us should be resigning in protest,” one federal health official told CBS News in response to Panagiotakopoulos’ resignation.
On the contrary, more people should be refusing to follow the pro-plague lunatic’s orders(something he himself suggested when he said no-one should take health advice from him) and continue doing their jobs, forcing him to either sit down and shut up or get his hands dirty and fire those that refuse to put the health and safety of hundreds of millions at risk to appease his demented ego.
Resigning ‘in protest’ just gives RFK Jr. the opportunity to replace someone who might have pushed back against his attempt to Make America Plague-riddled Again and replace them with someone who’s all on board with ignoring all that ‘science’ and ‘reality’ that keeps getting in the way of the pseudo-science quackery.
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Staying on “in protest” often looks like collaboration with extra steps. And yes, they will be replaced with incompetent loyalists. That’s how fascism works. What you’re asking the “gearstoppers” to do is willingly take up that role by being ironically incompentent instead of naturally incompetent. At what point does it stop being an act and start being who they really are? That’s the question people in that position have to ask themselves, and at least one person answered it well enough that quoting her reasoning is entirely relevant: