Editorial: CDC merry-go-round is dizzying

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may have slipped from the headlines, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still be concerned about the damage caused to the agency by President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Recently, the CDC was in the Trump administration’s crosshairs again last month, when there was a “Friday night massacre” in which hundreds of scientists were laid off. A day later, however, most of them received notices stating that they weren’t being let go after all – another example of the utter incompetence of this administration and a “substantial procedural lapse,” as the New York Times put it.

“Among those wrongly dismissed were the top two leaders of the federal measles response team, those working to contain Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, and the team that assembles the CDC’s vaunted scientific journal, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,” the Times reported. The news about the MMWR team hit particularly close to home. Older readers will recall it was that publication that first reported on what later became known as AIDS back in 1981. MMRW published its report of five cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) among previously healthy young men in Los Angeles. They were gay men and two had already died. Thankfully, the team that puts together the MMWR has been brought back, along with most of the other workers.

But not all of them. The Times noted that the CDC’s entire Washington, D.C. office has been laid off and will not be rehired. “Nor will employees of the office of the director of the center for injury prevention, or those at the division of violence prevention policy,” reported the paper.

So, the tumult at the CDC continues. We noted in September that Kennedy fired the agency’s new director, Dr. Susan Monarez, just a month after she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate. That led to the resignations of several top officials, including Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a gay leatherman who played a key role in the U.S. response to the mpox outbreak in 2022, serving as the deputy coordinator for the White House National Mpox Response. The recent firings and later rehirings only contribute to an atmosphere of confusion at the CDC, where researchers, doctors, and others should be allowed to focus on preventing diseases and preparing for future outbreaks rather than worry about getting an ominous email message that they’ve been dismissed.

And therein lies the rub. Kennedy likely would be happy if the CDC didn’t exist at all; his actions around staff and the agency’s leadership certainly point to that. Yet, there are apparently those in the administration that aren’t willing to go that far. Trump, who brags about everything except how he got federal health officials to work with pharmaceutical companies to quickly develop the first COVID vaccines as part of Operation Warp Speed during his first term, said during last year’s campaign that he would allow Kennedy to “pretty much do what he wants.” That’s exactly what’s happened, especially regarding vaccines and autism. After a highly publicized news conference in September where Kennedy said that pregnant women should not take Tylenol because of its link to autism in children, he reversed course. Last week, Kennedy said, “The causative association between Tylenol given in pregnancy and the perinatal periods is not sufficient to say it definitely causes autism. But it’s very suggestive.” His new comments echo what the Food and Drug Administration has stated, that is “a causal relationship has not been established and there are contrary studies in the scientific literature.”

While Kennedy may not believe in the effectiveness of vaccines, his boss apparently does. Trump himself got the latest COVID booster and a flu shot during his recent second check-up of the year at Walter Reed Medical Center, directly contradicting his own health secretary.

All of this comes at a time when mpox is again in the news. We recently reported that the California Department of Public Health announced three new cases of the more severe form, clade I, in Southern California. What’s noteworthy is that the cases, which all required hospitalization, were unrelated and did not involve international travel, according to CDPH. Previously, the few clade I cases that were reported resulted from travel outside the U.S.

Trump and his cabinet secretaries quickly pivot from one issue to the next, leaving a trail of misinformation, confusion, and lies for people to sort through. The CDC may not be in the headlines today, but rest assured the agency continues to stumble along without experienced leadership and with those employees who remain walking on eggshells. That is no way to run what was once the country’s premier public health agency. And that should concern everyone.