Four weeks ago, Susan Monarez — Trump’s nominee to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — was confirmed to the Senate on party lines, with all Republicans voting for and all Democrats voting against.
On Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked Monarez to step down, which she initially agreed to do and then refused, on the grounds that, because she was confirmed by the Senate and not appointed, only the President could fire her. On Thursday, Trump did officially fire her and named Peter Thiel pal Jim O’Neill, the deputy secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, as interim head of the CDC. O’Neill is fully expected to toe the line and say whatever it is that Trump and Kennedy Jr. want him to say, regardless of the consequences.
O’Neill, like Monarez, is not a physician. Unlike Monarez, who is actually a scientist with a background in infectious diseases, O’Neill is more of a guy who considers himself a “longevity enthusiast” who invests in a lot of companies that promise “anti-aging medicine.”
If your first thought was “Oh, he’s probably pals with that obnoxious Bryan Johnson guy who is trying to live forever and uses his own son as a blood bag?!” — you would be correct.
Monarez, whose time at the CDC was marred by chaos, including a mass shooting, reportedly had an issue with Kennedy Jr.’s insane, unscientific new COVID vaccine policy. You know, the one where it’s only recommended for people 65 and older and everyone else is shit out of luck? That one. He brought her in and ordered her to fire career staff and accept all his wacky vaccine panel’s science-free recommendations; she said no; and that was that.
It’s not hard to imagine why someone with a background in infectious diseases might not go along with such a plan.
After the first attempted firing, several of her colleagues at the CDC also stepped down, both in solidarity with Monarez and disgust over the way the White House and HHS had handled the CDC shooting and their disdain for vaccines, including “Dr. Debra Houry, the chief medical officer; Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; Dr. Daniel Jernigan, the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; and Dr. Jen Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance and Technology.”
Dr. Daskalakis dropped a real banger of a resignation letter before peacing out:
I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health. The recent change in the adult and children’s immunization schedule threaten the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant people. The data analyses that supported this decision have never been shared with CDC despite my respectful requests to HHS and other leadership. This lack of meaningful engagement was further compounded by a “frequently asked questions” document written to support the Secretary’s directive that was circulated by HHS without input from CDC subject matter experts and that cited studies that did not support the conclusions that were attributed to these authors. Having worked in local and national public health for years, I have never experienced such radical non-transparency, nor have I seen such unskilled manipulation of data to achieve a political end rather than the good of the American people. […]
Having to retrofit analyses and policy actions to match inadequately thought-out announcements in poorly scripted videos or page long X posts should not be how organizations responsible for the health of people should function. […]
The intentional eroding of trust in low-risk vaccines favoring natural infection and unproven remedies will bring us to a pre-vaccine era where only the strong will survive and many if not all will suffer. I believe in nutrition and exercise. I believe in making our food supply healthier, and I also believe in using vaccines to prevent death and disability. Eugenics plays prominently in the rhetoric being generated and is derivative of a legacy that good medicine and science should continue to shun.
The recent shooting at CDC is not why I am resigning. My grandfather, who I am named after, stood up to fascist forces in Greece and lost his life doing so. I am resigning to make him and his legacy proud. I am resigning because of the cowardice of a leader that cannot admit that HIS and his minions’ words over decades created an environment where violence like this can occur. I reject his and his colleagues’ thoughts and prayers, and advise they direct those to people that they have not actively harmed.
For decades, I have been a trusted voice for the LGBTQ community when it comes to critical health topics. I must also cite the recklessness of the administration in their efforts to erase transgender populations, cease critical domestic and international HIV programming, and terminate key research to support equity as part of my decision.
Go read the whole thing, if you have a minute. Unfortunately it’s on Xitter, so most of the replies are of the “TLDR— Just skipped to the pronouns after the signature and confirmed it's not worth my time” variety, but it’s still worth it.
After the resignations and the official firing, workers at the CDC staged a walkout, at which several of the ousted gave speeches.
The White House stated that “As her attorney's statement makes abundantly clear, Susan Monarez is not aligned with the president's agenda.” And it is abundantly clear! Here’s what her attorneys Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell said: “When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted.”
Why even have scientists at the CDC if all they want is for people to go along with an agenda? Why even have a CDC in the first place? Clearly, no one in the Trump administration, no one in their little MAGA movement, requires anything beyond their own gut instinct to decide what is “true” with regards to health and infectious diseases. Do they think they’re going to fool the rest of us when they are so open about the fact that they don’t actually care what any scientists or experts think? Do they even care to bother to do that?
I mean, if RFK Jr. is going to be making all of the decisions anyway, without consulting the actual scientists, what is the point?
In fact, they may as well just make the new rule that the vaccine is recommended for everyone but Republicans, since they’re clearly the only ones who are experiencing these terrible side effects. The rest of us have been doing just fine.
Is that rooted in any kind of science? It is not! But it’s hardly as though that matters to this administration.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
They want an epidemic
It's amazing how granular Putin's policies are in how to destroy America. And how thorough the Rethuglicans are enacting them.