Well being and Human Providers Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shocked federal well being officers on Tuesday by abruptly asserting that the COVID-19 vaccine would not be advisable for youngsters and wholesome pregnant ladies—a significant coverage reversal reportedly made with out enter from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.
Based on The Washington Submit, company officers had been left scrambling after Kennedy dropped the information, not in a press launch or inner memo, however in a video posted to X. That’s how CDC workers—and the remainder of the nation—came upon.
That is literal life-and-death coverage, but Kennedy is treating it like a social media stunt.
5 hours after the video dropped, CDC officers lastly acquired a one-page “secretarial directive” dated Could 19—almost every week earlier. It was signed by Kennedy however contradicted components of his personal video, deepening the confusion, based on a number of federal well being officers who spoke to the Submit anonymously.
Within the video, Kennedy instructed he had unilaterally reversed CDC steering recommending annual COVID photographs for everybody six months and older, together with wholesome pregnant ladies. CDC officers advised the Submit that they discovered about this “when it was tweeted.”
“People were scrambling to find out what it meant,” one federal well being official stated.
Kennedy additionally claimed the suggestions had already been pulled from the CDC web site after they hadn’t. And the way may they’ve been? High CDC officers stated they had been blindsided, which is galling contemplating it’s the CDC’s job to subject that sort of recommendation within the first place.
As of Thursday, the CDC nonetheless advisable the COVID-19 vaccination for everybody six months and older, together with people who find themselves pregnant, breastfeeding, making an attempt to conceive, or planning to get pregnant.
The directive, in the meantime, shared internally solely after the actual fact, ordered the CDC to take away the COVID-19 vaccines from each the kid and adolescent immunization schedule and the checklist of advisable vaccines throughout being pregnant. However its imprecise wording raised much more questions: Did Kennedy’s directive apply to all kids, or simply “healthy” ones?
“It’s unclear,” one official advised the Submit.
Including to the disconnect, prime officers on the U.S. Meals and Drug Administration had simply printed a bit within the New England Journal of Drugs affirming that being pregnant is a high-risk situation for COVID-19 and a purpose to get vaccinated, instantly contradicting Kennedy’s declare.
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon tried to paper over the inconsistencies, saying the directive merely advises in opposition to recommending the vaccine for “healthy” kids and pregnant ladies. However he didn’t clarify the obvious discrepancies between Kennedy’s video, the directive itself, and the FDA’s public steering.
“Secretary Kennedy is taking urgent action to ensure the public’s safety when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines,” Nixon stated.
That “urgent action” seems much more like sabotage, although. Whereas the FDA nonetheless controls vaccine approvals, it’s the CDC that units nationwide immunization steering. And underneath President Donald Trump, that steering has been steadily gutted. Simply this week, the Trump administration additionally canceled a $600 million contract with Moderna meant to develop a fowl flu vaccine for people—one other blow to public well being preparedness.
There’s no thriller right here. Kennedy is utilizing his submit to undermine vaccine infrastructure. And he’s not being refined about it.
Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Schooling Heart at Youngsters’s Hospital of Philadelphia, advised the Submit that a few of Kennedy’s current strikes are simply the newest escalation in his “continued war against vaccines.”
“They’ve made it much less insurable, and therefore this could make it much less available for people,” Offit stated. “His goal is to make vaccines less available, less affordable, and more feared. That’s his goal, and this is what he’s doing.”
Kennedy displayed this hesitancy earlier this 12 months with a measles outbreak. However Kennedy isn’t simply undermining entry—he’s screwing up the science, too.
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On Thursday, NOTUS reported that his “Make America Healthy Again” report, which he claimed was based mostly on a “gold standard” of science, cited pretend research and drew false conclusions.
In a single instance, epidemiologist Katherine Keyes stated she was falsely credited with coauthoring a research that doesn’t exist. “The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes advised NOTUS. “We’ve certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title.”
Predictably, the Trump administration tried to clarify away the screwups, blaming “formatting issues.” A White Home spokesperson wouldn’t even affirm whether or not synthetic intelligence had been used to put in writing the report.
Crew Trump would possibly attempt to justify Kennedy’s incompetence, however it’s arduous to disregard. We already knew the previous anti-vaccine activist was unqualified. Now it’s clear he’s additionally harmful. And with Trump backing him at each step, the implications for public well being may very well be long-lasting.
