California Don't Need RFK Jr.'s Damn CDC, California Gonna Have ITS OWN DAMN CDC

States, sir, are doin' it for themselves.

Fired CDC Director Susan Monarez testifies to Congress in September, explaining what a mess RFK Jr. and Trump made of the agency.

On Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that California has hired two former leaders of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to lead a new public-health initiative that will “modernize public health infrastructure and maintain trust in science-driven decision-making.” The new “Public Health Network Innovation Exchange” (PHNIX) is aimed at “filling the vacuum left by the Trump administration’s systematic retreat from science and evidence-based public health.”

Good name, too, even if PHNIX sounds like it should be in Arizona, not California. It’s an effort to rebuild confidence in public health experts after the Trump administration more or less burned the CDC to the ground. (Literalists on social media will no doubt complain the metaphor is unfair, because under HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the CDC headquarters in Atlanta was merely shot full of bullet holes by an anti-science loon who killed a cop and then himself.)

The leaders of the new project are former CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez, whom RFK Jr. forced out of her job just 29 days after the Senate confirmed her, and Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC’s former chief medical officer, who resigned after Monarez was fired.

At a presser announcing the initiative, Newsom called the leaders of the new project a “dream team” of public health experts, noting that Drs. Monarez and Houry would also be joined by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, the founder and chief executive of the Your Local Epidemiologist newsletter. She’ll be advising the California Department of Public Health on building confidence in public health, which is kind of desperately needed after years of rightwing attacks on institutions and expertise.

At Monday’s presser, Newsom explained why California has to step up and replace at least some of what Trump and Secretary Brainworm have torn down:

“We’re not just wringing our hands right now — we’re fighting back. This is a substantive response to what is not happening in Washington.”

The new PHNIX initiative follows the creation in September of the “West Coast Health Alliance,” a partnership by California, Oregon, and Washington to make vaccine recommendations for their residents. That alliance came on the heels of Florida’s decision to end all vaccine requirements for children attending public school, as well as the anticipation that RFK Jr.’s hand-picked panel of anti-vaccine cranks would similarly gut national vaccine recommendations.

Monarez and Houry know all too well what the administration has done to America’s public health and science infrastructure, since they themselves were covered with dust and debris from the wrecking ball. As you’ll recall, RFK Jr. told Congress a very convincing story that he had to tell Monarez to resign after he asked her, “‘Are you a trustworthy person?’ and she said no,” because everyone knows that an untrustworthy person will always say “I am not trustworthy” if asked.

Monarez later testified that she was actually fired her because she wouldn’t agree in advance to support changes to the CDC’s vaccine recommendations from his panel of anti-vaccine dipshits. When she said she couldn’t pre-approve recommendations without first reviewing the evidence, he told her she’d have to resign. When she didn’t, Trump fired her. After Monarez was fired, Houry and a bunch of other top CDC officials resigned as well, both in protest of her firing and in disgust over the direction RFK Jr. was taking the agency.

Then earlier this month, RFK’s panel of idiots went ahead and rolled back the CDC recommendation that newborns receive the hepatitis B vaccine, a longtime goal of antivaxxers who imagine that babies can’t get hep B because they aren’t doing drugs or having sex, and aren’t Democrats perverts for wanting them to get a vaccine for that? Instead, the panel recommended the vaccine only be given immediately after birth to babies when their mother tested positive for the infection. With 25 percent of pregnant people not getting any prenatal care at all in their first trimester — which normally includes a test for hepatitis B — the new guideline is almost certain to result in higher newborn infection rates and deaths. But hey, Kennedy and the anti-science crazies insist vaccines are the real danger, and if some babies aren’t able to handle hepatitis B infection because their parents were druggies or whores, that’s a small price to pay for giving the finger to Big Pharma.

In her new role at PHNIX, Dr. Monarez will serve as the program’s “strategic health technology and funding advisor,” meaning she’ll working on partnerships with the private sector — including academic institutions — to do tech stuff that’ll improve disease monitoring and response. Ideally, those innovations might even expand nationally.

Dr. Houry will be PHNIX’s “senior regional and global public health medical advisor,” and will focus on coordinating California’s public health programs with existing nonprofits and health alliances, at least the sane ones, to make up for the loss of federal leadership in public health.

On Monday, Rachel Maddow interviewed Dr. Houry as part of a segment on the dog’s breakfast that Trump and RFK Jr. are making of America’s public health — not just our public health system, but our actual health. The interview itself is at the 4:20 mark (heh), but go ahead and watch the whole thing if you have time.

The idea here is that California has so much public health infrastructure that it can build on as a way of making up some of what has been wrecked. And if building out a regional fix for public health also helps Newsom run for president in a couple years, he probably won’t object.

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The Ballad Of Fired CDC Head Dr. Susan Monarez And The Rip-Sh*t Crazy Senate Republicans

At This Point, Why Even Bother Having A CDC?

Goodbye, Entire CDC Vaccine Advisory Committee!

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[AP / Governor of California / NOTUS / LAT / Joe.My.God.]

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