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One of the biggest achievements of the first Trump administration was a vaccine to slow the spread of COVID. Operation Warp Speed was responsible for the rapid development of vaccines against the novel coronavirus. The vaccines are credited with saving nearly 20 million lives globally, and allowed people to more fully resume their lives.
It was a reminder that vaccines have long been proven to save lives — not only for those who are immunized, but for those around them, a concept known as herd immunity.
Yet, in move that appears to put ideology ahead of scientific consensus, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Trump administration’s head of the Department of Health and Human Services, announced in early August that he was terminated $500 million in federal funding for and ending research into nearly two dozen mRNA vaccines, like those used against COVID and flu, suggesting that there isn’t evidence that they are effective.
This follows a Kennedy directive to stop recommending fluoride in drinking water, which has been shown, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to reduce cavities, and Kennedy touting Coca-Cola’s switch from high fructose corn syrup to cane sugar as a win for health.
Doctors immediately criticized the vaccine decision, noting that the “review” touted by Kennedy, who has long been skeptical of vaccines and spreading conspiracy theories about them, was essentially a list of anti-vax articles.
Last week, several top officials left the agency over vaccine policy changes and the director of the CDC, Susan Monarez, was fired by the administration after less than a month on the job. The CDC sets vaccination schedules, provides public guidance on immunizations and monitors vaccine safety.
Monarez was fired because she was not “aligned with” President Donald Trump’s agenda, a White House spokesperson said, according to The Associated Press.
That agenda apparently includes making it harder for Americans to get vaccinations, which will put the health and lives of many at risk.
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins said she was “very concerned and alarmed” by Monarez’s removal.
We all should be.
“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,” her attorneys wrote in a statement, the AP reported.
“This is not about one official. It is about the systematic dismantling of public health institutions, the silencing of experts, and the dangerous politicization of science,” they added. “The attack on Dr. Monarez is a warning to every American: our evidence-based systems are being undermined from within.”
Read that again: Our evidence-based systems are being undermined from within. In other words, scientific evidence — reality — is being replaced by information — real, verified or not — that fits with a political agenda.
The resignation letter from Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who until last month was the CDC’s director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, was similarly chilling.
“Public health is not merely about the health of the individual, but it is about the health of the community, the nation, the world. The nation’s health security is at risk and is in the hands of people focusing on ideological self-interest,” he said in the lengthy resignation letter, which he posted on his X account.
“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 wrote elsewhere in the letter. “The recent change in the adult and children’s immunization schedule threaten the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant people.”
When a doctor warns that policies and leaders threaten the lives of Americans, we must pay attention.
For those who think Daskalakis, who was appointed during the Biden administration, is a leftish shill, consider this warning from Dr. Jerome Adams:
“I’ve tried to be objective & non-alarmist in response to current HHS actions — but quite frankly this move is going to cost lives. mRNA technology has uses that go far beyond vaccines … and the vaccine they helped develop in record time is credited with saving millions,” he posted on X last month.
Adams, for those who have forgotten, served as U.S. surgeon general during Trump’s first term as president. Now, he’s warning that what the Trump administration is doing at the CDC is going to cost lives.
It’s hard to know how to combat this (especially since the Republican-controlled Congress does little to rein in Trump and the Supreme Court gives him broad deference). But New England states, including Maine, are making the right move to consider their own vaccine protocols.
We understand that vaccines are not universally popular, and that some do have side effects. But decades of science, and our own recent experience with COVID, show that they are very safe and effective at reducing the spread of diseases and saving lives. Replacing that reality with political loyalty and blind allegiance to faulty ideology is indeed reason for alarm.
