The Ballad Of Fired CDC Head Dr. Susan Monarez And The Rip-Sh*t Crazy Senate Republicans
Will CDC's anti-vax panel cancel your child's polio shot today? Guess we'll see!
Dr. Susan Monarez, the former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), testified Wednesday before the Senate Health (and education, labor, and pensions, or HELP) Committee about the demolition job that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been doing at the nation’s premier public health agency. Not surprisingly, Monarez didn’t confirm the insane story Kennedy told the Senate Finance Committee two weeks ago, when he said he had to fire her after he asked her if she was trustworthy and she supposedly said no, she is not trustworthy. That is of course a thing untrustworthy human beings say all the time, because that’s the only time they are honest. It might be like how cops have to tell you they’re a cop if you ask, which also is not true, and it’s pretty funny that all the explainers on that myth are from law firms.
In fact, Senator Elizabeth Warren was right as usual, and Kennedy fired Monarez just 29 days after the Senate confirmed her, because she wouldn’t agree in advance to support changes to the CDC’s recommendations for vaccinating children. Monarez said that Kennedy made two demands she couldn’t agree to. The first was to pre-approve all vaccine recommendations coming out of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the panel that makes recommendations on vaccines, even after Kennedy fired all its members and replaced them with anti-vaxxer loons. Monarez said Kennedy wanted her to commit to approving whatever the new panelists recommended, “regardless of the scientific evidence.” Kennedy also ordered her to “dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy, without cause.”
“He said if I was unwilling to do both, I should resign,” she said. “I responded that I could not pre-approve recommendations without reviewing the evidence, and I had no basis to fire scientific experts.
“He told me he had already spoken with the White House several times about having me removed,” she added.
Rather than RFK Jr. asking her if she was trustworthy, she said, he had told her he couldn’t trust her, and she “told the secretary that if he believed he could not trust me, he could fire me.”
While committee chair Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) was polite, Kennedy had plenty of supporters among committee Republicans, and they went to almost cartoonish lengths to try to undermine Monarez and the other witness, Dr. Debra Houry, who had been the CDC’s chief medical officer until she resigned right after Monarez was fired. Houry had her own story of being sidelined by Kennedy, noting that she only found out from Twitter that Kennedy had withdrawn the COVID vaccine’s recommendation for children and pregnant women in May. Why would he want to run that by the chief medical officer if she was just gonna object anyway?
Asked by Cassidy if Kennedy had discussed changes to the childhood vaccine schedule with Donald Trump, Monarez said Kennedy said he talked to Trump about that every day, that the schedule would be changing in September, and that she “needed to be on board with it.” After all, science works by decree now. She also said that Kennedy had urged her to talk to Aaron Siri, the nice antivaxxer lawyer who tried to get the polio vaccine withdrawn in 2022.
The clown show started with Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), who are both “doctors” on paper at least, trying to browbeat Monarez with dishonest questions implying that the COVID vaccine is useless for children (Paul) or that the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule “forces” children to get too darn many shots (Marshall), even though the schedule is the result of rigorous studies and evidence. Monarez pointed out that the CDC doesn’t “force” parents to do anything, but both played up familiar rightwing fears of tyrannical government doctors imposing cruel mandates on people, like wearing a mask so you won’t spray sick all over.
When it was Democrats’ turn to speak, they asked questions about RFK Jr.’s behavior as HHS secretary, some of which was nuts. Monarez said Kennedy told her the CDC was “the most corrupt federal agency in the world,” that its employees were “horrible people,” and that “CDC employees were killing children and they don’t care,” which is a perfectly normal thing for the nation’s top health official to say.
Then, when it was Republicans’ turn, they grandstanded and treated Monarez as if she were a traitor to America for not going along with RFK Jr.’s madness. But since he was appointed by Great Leader, it’s duly-elected madness, they reminded her.
The worst of the jerks was Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma) who flat out lied to Monarez and insisted that there was a recording of her conversation with Kennedy proving that RFK Jr. had told the truth about the conversation about her trustworthiness. He accused her of having an “honesty issue.” Here’s the whole painful mess; the lie about the meeting being recorded comes around the 3:50 mark(wayne). Also, extra rudeness credit to Mullin for mispronouncing her name as “menorahs.” Surely just a coincidence.
We like the part where he compared the awful scientist lady to a dishonest child, even though he was the one lying about knowing exactly what was said because there was a recording. Mullin later admitted there wasn’t any recording, and he’d been “mistaken.” Sleazy shitweasel.
Mullin also beat up on the English language pretty badly, asking, “what day was you fired?” and “was you let go in the middle of the night?” The language survived the mauling and is expected to recover.
Other Republicans like Jim Banks of Indiana tried to make an issue of the fact that Monarez and Houry had retained “anti-Trump” attorneys Abbe Lowell and Mark Zaid, who probably shouldn’t even be allowed in the Capitol because they are so evil. Ashley Moody (R-Florida), the hack Ron DeSantis appointed to fill Marco Rubio’s seat, professed to be “shocked” that “anti-Trump lawyers” had somehow infiltrated the hearing, and demanded that Monarez introduce them to the panel. After all, she insisted, normal Senate witnesses bring their families but she brought attorneys instead, so why not tell us who’s handing you notes and whispering in your ear, science lady? It was excruciating, and since I had to watch it, here’s the video, because you have probably sinned too at some time in your life.
We liked (hated) the part where Moody accused Monarez and Houry of being part of some sort of conspiracy to harm Trump. “You have this whole network of people that’s trying to embarrass the president or go after the president, and now you are joining this group,” she said. Moody also wanted to know if Monarez had come up with an elaborate plan to create a “spectacle” by contacting Cassidy — also a Republican and medical doctor, but one who has the temerity to be angry at RFK Jr. about cancelling all the vaccines — and demanding a hearing, all just to make poor innocent Donald Trump look bad. “I would like the record to reflect,” she said dramatically, “that you have called a hearing of two people who have hired anti-Trump lawyers.”
Funny thing how the only person who looked bad was Moody, who sounded a bit deranged. Especially when, immediately after Moody’s time expired, Cassidy pointed out that he welcomed hearing from Monarez, since after all the HELP committee is in charge of oversight of the CDC, okay, Ashley? Ranking member Bernie Sanders jumped in to add, incredulously, “I find it rather astounding that anyone is concerned that government heads of agencies talk to the elected officials of the United States of America. That’s what they are supposed to do.”
So thanks to Sen. Moody, who’ll be up for reelection next year, for bringing bipartisan agreement to the panel.
That was most of the news to come out of the hearing, and now the ACIP vaccine committee will meet today and tomorrow to decide whether to recommend childhood vaccines any more, or simply to tell every parent in America to read the Australian antivaxxer children’s book Melanie’s Marvelous Measles.
Here’s the entire hearing, if you feel the need to see the sane parts too:
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Wanna know a really weird part?
As I recall, all those Republicans voted to confirm her . . . and I think most or all Dems voted against her, with many probably presuming she was just another shitty Trump appointee . . .
As it turns out, she was one of the few appointees who wasn't too bad . . . good thing they fixed that problem 🙄 . . .
While I was vaccinated, I had a few relatives who bore small pox scars until they died. I obtained immunity from chicken pox by getting the disease. When the youngs were young, I occasionally had to explain what the vax and chicken pox scars were from...
I have to believe that the times we are heading towards are exactly what the proverbial Chinese meant when they wished "interesting times" on a person.