The vaccine and public health debate explained
The exterior of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) main campus in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., Aug. 27, 2025.
Alyssa Pointer | Reuters
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is facing a leadership upheaval — and at the center of the shakeup is concern about the agency’s approach to vaccines and U.S. public health.
The White House on Thursday said President Donald Trump had fired CDC Director Susan Monarez after she refused to resign. Lawyers for Monarez said she was “targeted” for “protecting the public over serving a political agenda.”
Meanwhile, four other top health officials at the CDC announced Wednesday they were quitting the agency. That includes Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who said he could no longer serve because of the “weaponizing of public health.”
Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, former National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Demetre Daskalakis, and former National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Director Daniel Jernigan hold flowers and react after they appeared during a protest, a day after the White House fired CDC director Susan Monarez and several top officials resigned, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., Aug. 28, 2025.
Alyssa Pointer | Reuters
The loss of those respected leaders and efforts to oust Monarez follow a string of measures by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – a prominent vaccine skeptic – to overhaul federal health agencies and change immunization policy in the U.S. That includes mass firings, gutting a key government vaccine panel, canceling studies on mRNA shot technology and hiring those with like-minded views.
Kennedy has a long track record of making misleading and false statements about the safety of vaccine shots, but in his current role, he wields enormous power over the agencies that regulate the immunizations and determine both who can get them and which ones insurance plans should cover.
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said the leadership overhaul at the CDC represents Kennedy’s “failed leadership and reckless mismanagement,” adding that he has a “blatant disregard for science and evidence-based public health.”
The agency is also reeling from funding cuts and an Aug. 8 attack by a gunman at its headquarters in Atlanta.
Some health policy experts said the leadership exodus could further erode the public’s trust in an agency that is responsible for detecting disease outbreaks and guiding state and local health departments when needed.
“This has to be seen on top of a raft of ways that CDC has been weakened and undermined, maybe irreversibly,” Lawrence Gostin, professor of public health law at Georgetown University, told CNBC.
“Throughout all of those years, CDC has been independent and the jewel in the crown of American science. That’s literally all crumbling as we speak,” he said. “This is almost the definition of politics undermining science.”
Top official highlights vaccine concerns
Daskalakis was among the officials to explicitly highlight concerns with the views held by Kennedy and his staff, which he said challenged his ability to continue in his role at the agency.
“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,” Daskalakis said in his resignation letter, which was posted on X.
He said the CDC’s recent changes to the adult and children’s immunization schedule “threaten the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant people.”
High-ranking members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), dressed in uniform, salute former CDC Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, former National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Demetre Daskalakis, and former National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Director Daniel Jernigan, a day after the White House fired CDC Director Susan Monarez and several top officials resigned, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., Aug. 28, 2025.
Alyssa Pointer | Reuters
In May, Kennedy said the CDC removed Covid vaccines from the list of shots recommended for healthy pregnant women and children. An updated guidance days later said shots “may” be given to those groups.
Daskalakis said the data analyses that supported the change have “never been shared with the CDC despite my respectful requests to HHS and other leadership.” He also said HHS circulated a “frequently asked questions” document written to support Kennedy’s decision without input from CDC subject matter experts, and that it cited studies…