#cdc-leadership

#cdc-leadership

The success of Operation Warp Speed (OWS) and U.S. development of mRNA vaccines is a profound public health achievement. Under President Trump's leadership, American innovation led the world, helping prevent economic collapse and saving more than 14 million lives globally. Operation Warp Speed restored consumer confidence, saved over $1 trillion in health care costs due to reductions in serious illness and avoidance of hospitalizations, and rapidly scaled up domestic production.

Eleven people every day die while waiting for a kidney that could save their life. And there are plenty of healthy spare kidneys walking around, unused.

In the past week, however, the efforts escalated: Kennedy, who rose to fame in part owing to his conspiracy theories about vaccinations, pushed to fire Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is part of H.H.S. This came after Monarez refused to follow the lead of Kennedy's advisers, who have tried to restrict vaccine access.

What we're seeing now is an ideological decision about what the answer should be and then a backfill of individuals on the advisory committee and working groups, and so forth, to get to that decision about what we want the answer to be, on a question of vaccine safety, and then let's manipulate the data to get there,

It's been a tumultuous week for US health agencies, with the departure of several top officials, uncertainty around new Covid vaccine restrictions, and even more experts calling for the removal of top health official Robert F Kennedy Jr. The director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Susan Monarez, was fired by the Trump White House after some controversy, and four other top officials also resigned.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention leadership was in stunning disarray Wednesday evening after the Trump administration fired the agency's director hours after she refused to resign under pressure. The director, Susan Monarez, said she was resisting being ousted by the nation's top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for political reasons after about a month in office.

She had been in the position for just a month. In the wake of her apparent ouster, several other CDC leaders have resigned. Named acting CDC director in January, Monarez was officially confirmed to the position by the Senate on July 29 and sworn in two days later. During her brief tenure, the CDC's main campus in Atlanta was attacked by a gunman who blamed the Covid-19 vaccine for making him sick and depressed.