CDC – Page 3

Who can get a COVID vaccine—and how? It’s complicated.

ACIP, CDC, COVID-19, fda, health, mRNA, pharmacists, robert f kennedy jr, vaccines / Mike M. / September 6, 2025

We’re working with a patchwork system, and there are a lot of gray areas.

Vaccinations were available at CVS in Huntington Park, California, on August 28, 2024. Credit: Getty | Christina House

As fall approaches and COVID cases tick up, you might be thinking about getting this season’s COVID-19 vaccine. The annually updated shots have previously been easily accessible to anyone over 6 months of age. Most people could get them at no cost by simply walking into their neighborhood pharmacy—and that’s what most people did.

However, the situation is much different this year with an ardent anti-vaccine activist, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as the country’s top health official. Since taking the role, Kennedy has worked diligently to dismantle the country’s premier vaccination infrastructure, as well as directly hinder access to lifesaving shots. That includes restricting access to COVID-19 vaccines—something he’s done by brazenly flouting all standard federal processes while providing no evidence-based reasoning for the changes.

How we got here

In late May, Kennedy unilaterally decided that all healthy children and pregnant people should no longer have access to the shots. He announced the unprecedented change not through official federal channels, but via a video posted on Elon Musk’s X platform. Top vaccine and infectious disease officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—which sets federal vaccination recommendations—said they also learned of the change via X.

Medical experts—particularly the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)—immediately slammed the change, noting that data continues to indicate pregnant women and children under age 2 are particularly vulnerable to severe COVID-19. Both medical groups have since released their own vaccination guidance documents that uphold COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for those patient groups. (AAP here, ACOG here)

Nevertheless, in line with Kennedy, officials at the Food and Drug Administration signaled that they would take the unprecedented, unilateral step of changing the labels on the vaccines to limit who could get them—in this case, people 65 and over, and children and adults with health conditions that put them at risk of severe COVID-19. Kennedy’s FDA underlings—FDA Commissioner Martin Makary and top vaccine regulator, Vinay Prasad—laid out the plans alongside a lengthy list of health conditions in a commentary piece published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The list includes pregnancy—which is evidence-based, but odd, since it conflicts with Kennedy.

What was supposed to happen

When there isn’t a zealous anti-vaccine activist personally directing federal vaccine policy, US health agencies have a thorough, transparent protocol for approving and recommending vaccinations. Generally, it starts with the FDA, which has both its own scientists and a panel of outside expert advisors to review safety and efficacy data submitted by a vaccine’s maker. The FDA’s advisory committee—the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC)—then holds a completely public meeting to review, analyze, and discuss the data. They make a recommendation on a potential approval and then the FDA commissioner can decide to sign off, typically in accordance with internal experts.

Resulting FDA approvals or authorizations are usually broad, basically covering people who could safely get the vaccine. The specifics of who should get the vaccine fall to the CDC.

Once the FDA approves or authorizes a vaccine, the CDC has a similar evaluation process. Internal experts review all the data for the vaccine, plus the epidemiological and public health data to assess things like disease burden, populations at risk, resource access, etc. A committee of outsides expert advisors do the same—again in a totally transparent public meeting that is livestreamed with all documents and presentations available on the CDC’s website.

That committee, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), then makes recommendations to the CDC about how the shots should be used. These recommendations can provide nuanced clinical guidance on exactly who should receive a vaccine, when, in what scenarios, and in what time series, etc. The recommendations may also be firm or soft—e.g., some people should get a vaccine, while others may get the vaccine.

The CDC director then decides whether to adopt ACIP’s recommendations (the director usually does) and updates the federal immunization schedules accordingly. Those schedules set clinical standards for immunizations, including routine childhood vaccinations, nationwide. Once a vaccine recommendation makes it to the ACIP-guided federal immunization schedules, private health insurance companies are required to cover those recommended vaccinations at no cost to members. And—a key catch for this year—19 states tie ACIP vaccine recommendations to pharmacists’ ability to independently administer vaccines.

What actually happened

Days after Kennedy’s X announcement of COVID-19 vaccine restrictions in late May, the CDC changed the federal immunization schedules. The recommendation for a COVID-19 shot during pregnancy was removed. But, for healthy children 6 months to 17 years, the CDC diverged from Kennedy slightly. The updated schedule doesn’t revoke access outright; instead, it now says that healthy children can get the shots if there is shared decision-making with the child’s doctor, that is, if the parent/child wants to get the vaccine and the doctor approves. ACIP was not involved in any of these changes.

On August 27, the FDA followed through with its plans to change the labels on COVID-19 vaccines, limiting access to people who are 65 and older and people who have an underlying condition that puts them at high risk of severe COVID-19.

FDA’s advisory committee, VRBPAC, met in late May, just a few days after FDA officials announced their plans to restrict COVID-19 vaccine access. The committee was not allowed to discuss the proposed changes. Instead, it was limited to discussing the SARS-CoV-2 strain selection for the season, and questions about the changes were called “off topic” by an FDA official.

ACIP, meanwhile, has not met to discuss the use of the updated COVID-19 vaccines for the 2025–2026 season. Last year, ACIP met and set the 2024–2025 COVID-19 shot recommendations in June. But, instead, in June of this year, Kennedy fired all 17 members of ACIP, falsely claiming members were rife with conflicts of interest. He quickly repopulated ACIP with anti-vaccine allies who are largely unqualified and some of whom have been paid witnesses in lawsuits against vaccine makers, a clear conflict of interest. While Kennedy is reportedly working to pack more anti-vaccine activists onto ACIP, the committee is scheduled to meet and discuss the COVID-19 vaccine on September 18 and 19. The committee will also discuss other vaccines.

Outside medical and public health experts view ACIP as critically compromised and expect it will further restrict access to vaccines.

With this set of events, COVID-19 vaccine access is in disarray. Here’s what we do and don’t know about access.

Getting a vaccine

FDA vaccine criteria

Prior to Kennedy, COVID-19 vaccines were available to all people ages 6 months and up. But that is no longer the case. The current FDA approvals are as follows:

Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (COMIRNATY) is only available to people:

65 years of age and older, or
5 years through 64 years of age with at least one underlying condition that puts them at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19.

Moderna’s mRNA COVID-10 vaccine (SPIKEVAX) is only available to people:

65 years of age and older, or
6 months through 64 years of age with at least one underlying condition that puts them at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19.

Novavax’s protein subunit COVID-19 vaccine NUVAXOVID is only available to people:

65 years of age and older, or
12 years through 64 years of age with at least one underlying condition that puts them at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19.

Who can get a COVID-19 vaccine and where now depends on a person’s age, underlying conditions, and the state they reside in.

States-based restrictions

The fact that ACIP has not set recommendations for the use of 2025–2026 COVID-19 vaccines means vaccine access is a messy patchwork across the country. As mentioned above, 19 states link pharmacists’ ability to independently provide COVID-19 vaccines to ACIP recommendations. Without those recommendations, pharmacies in those states may not be able to administer the vaccines at all, or only provide them with a doctor’s prescription—even for people who fit into the FDA’s criteria.

Last week, The New York Times reported that CVS and Walgreens, the country’s largest pharmacy chains, were either not providing vaccines or requiring prescriptions in 16 states. And the list of 16 states where CVS had those restrictions was slightly different than where Walgreens had them, likely due to ambiguities in state-specific regulations.

The National Alliance of State Pharmacy Associations (NASPA) and the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) have a state-by-state overview of pharmacist vaccination authority regulations here.

For people meeting the FDA criteria

In the 31 states that allow for broader pharmacist vaccination authority, people meeting FDA’s criteria (65 years and older, and people with underlying conditions), should be able to get the vaccine at a pharmacy like usual. And once ACIP sets recommendations later this month—assuming the committee doesn’t restrict access further—people in those groups should be able to get them at pharmacies in the remaining states, too.

Proving underlying conditions

People under 65 with underlying health conditions who want to get their COVID-19 shot at a pharmacy will likely have to do something to confirm their eligibility.

Brigid Groves, APhA’s vice president of professional affairs and the organization’s expert on vaccine policy, told Ars that the most likely scenario is that people will have to fill out forms prior to vaccination, indicating the conditions they have that make them eligible, a process known as self-attestation. This is not unusual, Groves noted. Other vaccinations require such self-attestation of conditions, and for years, this has been sufficient for pharmacists to administer vaccines and for insurance policies to cover those vaccinations, she said.

“APhA is a strong supporter of that patient self-attestation, recognizing that patients have a very good grasp of their medical conditions,” Groves said.

For people who don’t meet the FDA criteria

There are a lot of reasons why healthy children and adults outside the FDA’s criteria may still want to get vaccinated: Maybe they are under the age of 2, an age that is, in fact, still at high risk of severe COVID-19; maybe they live or work with vulnerable people, such as cancer patients, the elderly, or immunocompromised; or maybe they just want to avoid a crummy respiratory illness that they could potentially pass on to someone else.

For these people, regardless of what state they are in, getting the vaccine would mean a pharmacist or doctor would have to go “off-label” to provide it.

“It’s very gray on how a pharmacist may proceed in that scenario,” Groves told Ars. Going off-label could open pharmacists up to liability concerns, she said. And even if a patient can obtain a prescription for an off-label vaccine, that still may not be enough to allow a pharmacist to administer the vaccine.

“Pharmacists have something called ‘corresponding responsibility,’ Groves explained. “So even if a physician, or a nurse practitioner, or whomever may send a prescription over for that vaccine, that pharmacist still has that responsibility to ensure this is the right medication, for the right patient, at the right time, and that they’re indicated for it,” she said. So, it would still be going outside what they’re technically authorized to do.

Doctors, on the other hand, can administer vaccines off-label, which they might do if they choose to follow guidance from medical organizations like AAP and ACOG, or if they think it’s best for their patient. They can do this without any heightened professional liability, contrary to some suggestions Kennedy has made (doctors prescribe things off-label all the time). But, people may have to schedule an appointment with their doctor and convince them to provide the shot—a situation far less convenient than strolling into a local pharmacy. Also, since pharmacies have provided the vast majority of COVID-19 vaccines so far, some doctors’ offices may not have them on hand.

Pregnancy

It’s unclear if pregnancy still falls under the FDA’s criteria for a high-risk condition. It was included in the list that FDA officials published in May. However, the agency did not make that list official when it changed the vaccine labels last month. Some experts have suggested that, in this case, the qualifying high-risk conditions default to the CDC’s existing list of high-risk conditions, which includes pregnancy. But it’s not entirely clear.

In addition, with Kennedy’s previous unilateral change to the CDC’s immunization schedule—which dropped the COVID-19 vaccine recommendation during pregnancy—pregnant people could still face barriers to getting the vaccine in the 19 states that link pharmacist authorization to ACIP recommendations. That could change if ACIP reverses Kennedy’s restriction when the committee meets later this month, but that may be unlikely.

Insurance coverage

It’s expected that insurance companies will continue to cover the full costs of COVID-19 vaccines for people who meet the FDA criteria. For off-label use, it remains unclear.

Groves noted that in June, AHIP, the trade organization for health insurance providers, put out a statement suggesting that it would continue to cover vaccines at previous levels.

“We are committed to ongoing coverage of vaccines to ensure access and affordability for this respiratory virus season. We encourage all Americans to talk to their health care provider about vaccines,” the statement reads.

However, Groves was cautious about how to interpret that. “At the end of the day, on the claims side, we’ll see how that pans out,” she said.

Rapidly evolving access

While the outcome of the ACIP meeting on September 18 and 19 could alter things, a potentially bigger source of change could be actions by states. Already, there have been rapid responses with states changing their policies to ensure pharmacists can provide vaccines, and states making alliances with other states to provide vaccine recommendations and vaccines themselves.

Beth is Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes.

Who can get a COVID vaccine—and how? It’s complicated. Read More »

RFK Jr. says COVID shots still available to all as cancer patients denied access

CDC, COVID-19 vaccine, health, kennedy, robert f kennedy jr, Senate / Shannon Garcia / September 5, 2025

Here are some key moments from today’s hearing:

Untrustworthy

With the fallout ongoing from the abrupt ouster of CDC Director Susan Monarez last week, many senators focused on what led to her downfall. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published two hours before the hearing, Monarez confirmed media reports that she had been fired by Kennedy for refusing to rubber-stamp changes to CDC vaccine guidance based on recommendations from Kennedy’s hand-selected advisors.

“I was told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric,” Monarez wrote in the op-ed. She said she refused, insisting that the panel’s recommendations be “rigorously and scientifically reviewed before being accepted or rejected.”

In today’s hearing, Senators directly confronted Kennedy with that statement from the op-ed. Kennedy repeatedly said that she is lying and that he never directed her to preapprove vaccine recommendations. Instead, he claims, he told her to resign after he asked her directly if she was a trustworthy person, and she replied, ‘No.”

After several exchanges about this with other senators, Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) picked it apart further, saying:

“Are you telling us that the former head of CDC went to you, you asked her, ‘Are you a trustworthy person?’ And she said, ‘No, I am not a trustworthy person,'” Sanders asked.

“She didn’t say ‘No, I’m not a trustworthy person,'” Kennedy replied. “She said, ‘No.’ I’m giving a quote.”

After that, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who seemed skeptical of Kennedy’s arguments generally, pointed out the absurdity of the claim, quoting Kennedy’s previous praise of Monarez. “I don’t see how you go—over four weeks—from a public health expert with ‘unimpeachable scientific credentials,’ a longtime champion of MAHA values, caring and compassionate and brilliant microbiologists, and four weeks later fire her,” Tillis said. “As somebody who advised executives on hiring strategies, number one, I would suggest in the interview you ask ’em if they’re truthful rather than four weeks after we took the time of the US Senate to confirm the person.”

RFK Jr. says COVID shots still available to all as cancer patients denied access Read More »

CDC spiraled into chaos this week. Here’s where things stand.

CDC, health, rfk jr / 9u50fv / August 30, 2025

CDC is in crisis amid an ouster, resignations, defiance, and outraged lawmakers.

Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), center, embraces a supporter during a clap out outside of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, US, on Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025. Credit: Getty | Dustin Chambers

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention descended into turmoil this week after Health Secretary and zealous anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ousted the agency’s director, Susan Monarez, who had just weeks ago been confirmed by the Senate and earned Kennedy’s praise for her “unimpeachable scientific credentials.”

It appears those scientific chops are what led to her swift downfall. Since the Department of Health and Human Services announced on X late Wednesday that “Susan Monarez is no longer director” of the CDC, media reports have revealed that her forced removal was over her refusal to bend to Kennedy’s anti-vaccine, anti-science agenda.

The ouster appeared to be a breaking point for the agency overall, which has never fully recovered from the public pummeling it received at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In its weakened position, the agency has since endured an onslaught of further criticism, vilification, and misinformation from Kennedy and the Trump administration, which also delivered brutal cuts, significantly slashing CDC’s workforce, shuttering vital health programs, and hamstringing others. Earlier this month, a gunman, warped by vaccine misinformation, opened fire on the CDC’s campus, riddling its buildings with hundreds of bullets, killing a local police officer, and traumatizing agency staff.

Monarez’s expulsion represents the loss of a scientifically qualified leader who could have tried to shield the agency from some ideological attacks. As such, it quickly triggered a cascade of high-profile resignations at the CDC, a mass walkout of its staff, and outrage among lawmakers and health experts. While the fallout of the ouster is ongoing, what is immediately clear is that Kennedy is relentlessly advancing his war against lifesaving vaccines from within the CDC and is forcing his ideological agenda on CDC experts.

Some of those very CDC experts now warn that the CDC can no longer be trusted and the country is less safe.

Here’s what we know so far about the CDC’s downturn:

The ouster

Late Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that, for days prior to her ouster, Monarez had stood firm against Kennedy’s demands that she, and by extension the CDC, blindly support and adopt vaccine restrictions put forward by the agency’s vaccine advisory panel—a panel that Kennedy has utterly compromised. After firing all of its highly qualified, extensively vetted members in June, Kennedy hastily installed hand-selected allies on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), who are painfully unqualified but share Kennedy’s hostility toward lifesaving shots. Already, Kennedy’s panel has made recommendations that contradict scientific evidence and public health.

It is widely expected that they will further undo the agency’s evidence-based vaccine recommendations, particularly for COVID-19 and childhood shots. Experts fear that such changes would undermine public confidence in both vaccines and federal guidance, and make vaccines more difficult, if not impossible, for Americans to obtain. Kennedy has already restricted access to COVID-19 vaccines, prompting medical associations to produce divergent recommendations, which raises a slew of unanswered questions about access to the vaccines.

Amid the standoff over rolling back vaccine policy, Kennedy urged Monarez to resign. She refused, and instead called key senators for help, including Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who cast a critical vote in favor of Kennedy’s confirmation in exchange for concessions that Kennedy would not upend CDC’s vaccine recommendations.

Cassidy then called Kennedy, which angered the anti-vaccine advocate, who then chastised Monarez. The beleaguered director was then presented with the choice to resign or be fired. She continued to refuse to resign. On Wednesday evening, HHS wrote of her termination on X. But Monarez, speaking through her lawyers, reiterated that she would not resign and had not been notified of her termination. Late Wednesday night, her lawyers confirmed that White House officials had sent notification of termination, but she still refused to vacate the role.

“As a presidential appointee, senate confirmed officer, only the president himself can fire her,” her lawyers, Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell said in a statement emailed to Ars Technica. “For this reason, we reject the notification Dr. Monarez has received as legally deficient and she remains as CDC Director. We have notified the White House Counsel of our position.”

On Thursday, the Post reported that the White House had already named a replacement. Jim O’Neill, currently the deputy secretary of HHS, is to be the interim leader of the CDC. O’Neill was previously a Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur who became a close ally of Peter Thiel. He also worked as a federal official in the George W. Bush administration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he was a frequent critic of the CDC, but at his Senate confirmation hearing in May, he called himself “very strongly pro-vaccine.”

Kennedy, meanwhile, went on Fox News’ Fox and Friends program Thursday and said the CDC is “in trouble” and that “we’re fixing it. And it may be that some people should not be working there anymore.”

Kennedy’s ACIP is now scheduled to meet September 18–19 to discuss COVID-19 shots, among other vaccines.

Response at the CDC

Soon after news broke of Monarez’s removal, three high-ranking CDC officials resigned together: Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; Debra Houry, chief medical officer; and Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

Their resignation letters spoke to the dangers of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine, anti-science agenda.

“For the good of the nation and the world, the science at CDC should never be censored or subject to political pauses or interpretations,” Houry wrote in her resignation letter. “Vaccines save lives—this is an indisputable, well-established, scientific fact. … It is, of course, important to question, analyze, and review research and surveillance, but this must be done by experts with the right skills and experience, without bias, and considering the full weight of scientific evidence. Recently, the overstating of risks and the rise of misinformation have cost lives, as demonstrated by the highest number of US measles cases in 30 years and the violent attack on our agency.”

In his resignation letter, Daskalakis slammed Kennedy for his lack of transparency, communication, and interest in evidence-based policy. He accused the anti-vaccine advocate of using the 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.” He also blasted ACIP’s COVID work group members as having “dubious intent and more dubious scientific rigor.”

“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,” Daskalakis wrote. “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.”

In a conversation with The New York Times published Friday, Daskalakis revealed that Kennedy has never accepted a briefing from his center’s experts and said the resignations should indicate that “there’s something extremely wrong [at CDC].

“And also I think it’s important for the American public to know that they really need to be cautious about the recommendations that they’re hearing coming out of ACIP,” he added.

As the three leaders were escorted out of the CDC on Thursday, the staff held a boisterous rally to show support for them and their agency. On his way out, Jernigan, who worked at CDC for more than 30 years, praised his colleagues.

“What makes us great at CDC is following the science, so let’s get the politics out of public health,” he said to cheers. “Let’s get back to the objectivity and let the science lead us, because that’s how we get to the best decisions for public health.”

While those three resignations made news on Wednesday and Thursday, they are part of a steady stream of exits from the agency since Kennedy became secretary. Earlier on Wednesday, Politico reported that Jennifer Layden, director of the agency’s Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology, had also resigned.

Response outside the CDC

Lawmakers have expressed concern and even outrage over Monarez’s firing and what’s going on at the CDC.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) quickly demanded a bipartisan investigation into Monarez’s firing, calling Kennedy’s actions “reckless” and “dangerous.”

He went on to blast Kennedy’s work as health secretary. “In just six months, Secretary Kennedy has completely upended the process for reviewing and recommending vaccines for the public,” Sanders said. “He has unilaterally narrowed eligibility for COVID vaccines approved by the FDA, despite an ongoing surge in cases. He has spread misinformation about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines during the largest measles outbreak in over 30 years. He continues to spread misinformation about COVID vaccines. Now he is pushing out scientific leaders who refuse to act as a rubber stamp for his dangerous conspiracy theories and manipulate science.”

Sanders called on Cassidy, chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, to immediately convene a public hearing with Kennedy and Monarez.

Cassidy called for the upcoming ACIP meeting to be postponed.

“Serious allegations have been made about the meeting agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process being followed for the now announced September ACIP meeting,” Cassidy said in a statement. “These decisions directly impact children’s health and the meeting should not occur until significant oversight has been conducted. If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership.”

Outside health organizations also expressed alarm about the situation at the CDC.

The American Medical Association said it was “deeply troubled” by the agency’s turmoil and called Monarez’s ouster and the other resignations “highly alarming at a challenging moment for public health.”

In a joint press conference on Thursday of the Infectious Disease Society of America and the American Public Health Association, leaders for the groups spoke of the ripple effects in the public health community and the American public more broadly.

“When leadership decisions weaken the CDC, every American becomes more vulnerable to outbreaks, pandemics, and bioterror threats,” Wendy Armstrong, vice president of the Infectious Disease Society of America said in the briefing. “We’re speaking out because protecting public health is our responsibility as physicians and scientists. It’s imperative that the White House and Congress take action to ensure a functioning CDC as the current HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy has failed.”

Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, echoed the call, saying, “We’ve had enough.”

CDC spiraled into chaos this week. Here’s where things stand. Read More »

CDC director has been ousted just weeks after Senate confirmation

CDC, health, Monarez, robert f kennedy jr / Beth Washington / August 28, 2025

Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told the outlet that Monarez “values science, is a solid researcher, and has a history of being a good manager. We’re looking forward to working with her.”

A low point for the agency

The reported ouster comes at what feels like a nadir for the CDC. The agency has lost hundreds of staff from layoffs and buyouts. Vital health programs have been shuttered or hampered. Dangerous rhetoric and health misinformation from Kennedy and other health officials in the Trump administration have made once-respected CDC experts feel vilified by the public and like targets of hate. Kennedy himself has falsely called the COVID-19 shots the “deadliest vaccine ever made” and the CDC a “cesspool of corruption,” for example.

On August 8, a gunman warped by vaccine disinformation opened fire on the CDC campus. Of nearly 500 shots fired, about 200 struck six CDC buildings as terrified staff dove for safety. One local police officer was killed in the incident. The gunman had specifically targeted the CDC for the shooting and blamed COVID-19 vaccines for his health problems.

Additional exits reported

After news broke of Monarez’s removal, Stat News reported that a wave of CDC leadership has resigned. The high-ranking resignations include: Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; Deb Houry, Chief Medical Officer; and Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

“I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponization of public health,” Daskalakis said in a message to staff seen by Stat.

“I am committed to protecting the public’s health, but the ongoing changes prevent me from continuing in my job as a leader of the agency,” Houry wrote in a message to staff. Houry added that science should “never be censored or subject to political interpretations.”

Earlier today, Politico reported that Jennifer Layden, director of the agency’s Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology, has also resigned.

8/27/2025 8: 15 pm ET: This post has been updated to include the social media post from HHS, reporting from the Washington Post on the circumstances around Monarez’s exit, additional resignations reported by Stat and Politico, and the statement from Monarez’s lawyers.

CDC director has been ousted just weeks after Senate confirmation Read More »

CDC slashed food safety surveillance, now tracks only 2 of 8 top infections

CDC, food safety, foodborne, foodnet, health, infections / Shannon Garcia / August 28, 2025

In July, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dramatically, but quietly, scaled back a food safety surveillance system, cutting active tracking from eight top foodborne infections down to just two, according to a report by NBC News.

The Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet)—a network of surveillance sites that spans 10 states and covers about 54 million Americans (16 percent of the US population)—previously included active monitoring for eight infections from pathogens. Those include Campylobacter, Cyclospora, Listeria, Salmonella, Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC), Shigella, Vibrio, and Yersinia.

Now the network is only monitoring for STEC and Salmonella.

A list of talking points the CDC sent the Connecticut health department (which is part of FoodNet) suggested that a lack of funding is behind the scaleback. “Funding has not kept pace with the resources required to maintain the continuation of FoodNet surveillance for all eight pathogens,” the CDC document said, according to NBC. The Trump administration has made brutal cuts to federal agencies, including the CDC, which has lost hundreds of employees this year.

A CDC spokesperson told the outlet that “Although FoodNet will narrow its focus to Salmonella and STEC, it will maintain both its infrastructure and the quality it has come to represent. Narrowing FoodNet’s reporting requirements and associated activities will allow FoodNet staff to prioritize core activities.”

CDC slashed food safety surveillance, now tracks only 2 of 8 top infections Read More »

Two men fell gravely ill last year; their infections link to deaths in the ’80s

CDC, Georgia, health, hurricane helene, Infectious disease, melioidosis, soil bacterium / DJ Henderson / August 23, 2025

Doctors soon discovered they were infected with the rare soil bacterium, which causes a disease called melioidosis.

Dangerous infection

Generally, melioidosis can be difficult to diagnose and tricky to treat, as it is naturally resistant to some antibiotics. It can infect people if they breathe it in or get it into open cuts. Sometimes the infection can stay localized, like a lung infection or a skin ulcer. But it can also get into the blood and become a systemic infection, spreading to various organs, including the brain. Fatality rates can be as high as 90 percent in people who are not treated but fall to less than 40 percent in people who receive prompt, proper care.

Both men in 2024 were quickly hospitalized and diagnosed with sepsis. Both were treated with heavy antibiotic regimens and recovered, though patient 2 relapsed in November, requiring another hospital stay. He ultimately recovered again.

According to the CDC, about a dozen melioidosis cases are identified each year in the US on average, but most occur in people who have traveled to areas known to harbor the bacterium. Neither of the men infected last year had recently traveled to any such places. So the researchers turned to genetic sequencing, which revealed the link to two cases in the 1980s.

In those cases, both men died from the infection. The man dubbed Patient 3 died in October of 1989. He was a veteran who fought in Vietnam—where the bacterium is endemic—two decades prior to his infection. The researchers note that such a long latency period for a B. pseudomallei infection is not entirely out of the question, but it would be rare to have such a large gap between an exposure and an infection. More suspiciously, the researchers note that in the month prior to Patient 3’s death, Hurricane Hugo made landfall in Georgia as a Category 4 storm, dumping three to five inches of rain.

Two men fell gravely ill last year; their infections link to deaths in the ’80s Read More »

Top pediatricians buck RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine meddling on COVID shot guidance

aap, american academy of pediatrics, anti-vaccine, CDC, childhood vaccines, COVID-19, COVID-19 vaccines, health, kennedy, robert f kennedy jr, vaccines / Shannon Garcia / August 20, 2025

“It’s clear that we’re in a different place in the pandemic than we were four or five years ago in terms of risks to healthy older kids,” Sean O’Leary, chair of the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases (COID), said in a statement. However, “the risk of hospitalization for young children and those with high-risk conditions remains pretty high.”

According to CDC data, the rate of COVID-19 hospitalization in children under 2 is the highest among any pediatric group. Further, the rate of hospitalization among children 6 months to 23 months is comparable to that of adults ages 50 to 64. Critically, more than half of children ages 6 months to 23 months who are hospitalized for COVID-19 have no underlying medical condition that puts them at high risk for severe infection.

For children 2 to 18, the AAP recommends COVID-19 shots for children who have a medical condition that puts them at high risk, are residents of care facilities, have never been vaccinated, or have household contacts who are at high risk of severe COVID-19. All other children and teens should also have access to updated seasonal shots if they desire them, the AAP says.

“The AAP will continue to provide recommendations for immunizations that are rooted in science and are in the best interest of the health of infants, children, and adolescents,” Kressly said. “Pediatricians know how important routine childhood immunizations are in keeping children, families, and their communities healthy and thriving.”

Coverage questions

With school starting, COVID-19 cases ticking up around the country, and cold-weather respiratory virus season looming, the question now is how the conflicting recommendations will be interpreted by insurance companies. Insurers are required to cover vaccines recommended by the CDC. But there is no such obligation for recommendations from medical groups.

AAP has been holding meetings with insurers to press for continued coverage of evidence-based vaccine recommendations.

O’Leary told The Washington Post that insurers are “signaling that they are committed to covering our recommendations.” The Post also noted that AHIP, the major insurance lobby, released a statement in June saying its members are committed to “ongoing coverage of vaccines to ensure access and affordability for this respiratory virus season.”

Top pediatricians buck RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine meddling on COVID shot guidance Read More »

“Red meat allergy” from tick bites is spreading both in US and globally

Alpha-Gal Syndrome, CDC, health, red meat allergy, syndication, ticks / Mike M. / August 5, 2025

Remember to check for ticks after your next stroll through the woods or long grasses.

Hours after savoring that perfectly grilled steak on a beautiful summer evening, your body turns traitor, declaring war on the very meal you just enjoyed. You begin to feel excruciating itchiness, pain, or even swelling that can escalate to the point of requiring emergency care.

The culprit isn’t food poisoning—it’s the fallout from a tick bite you may have gotten months earlier and didn’t even notice.

This delayed allergic reaction is called alpha-gal syndrome. While it’s commonly called the “red meat allergy,” that nickname is misleading, because alpha-gal syndrome can cause strong reactions to many products, beyond just red meat.

The syndrome is also rapidly spreading in the US and around the globe. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates as many as 450,000 people in the US may have it. And it’s carried by many more tick species than most people realize.

Map showing alpha-gal syndrome prevalence. — Cases of suspected alpha-gal syndrome based on confirmed laboratory evidence. Credit: CDC

What is alpha-gal syndrome?

Alpha-gal syndrome is actually an allergy to a sugar molecule with a tongue-twisting name: galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose, shortened to alpha-gal.

The alpha-gal sugar molecule exists in the tissues of most mammals, including cows, pigs, deer, and rabbits. But it’s absent in humans. When a big dose of alpha-gal gets into your bloodstream through a tick bite, it can send your immune system into overdrive to generate antibodies against alpha-gal. In later exposure to foods containing alpha-gal, your immune system might then launch an inappropriate allergic response.

Picture of lone star tick — A lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum). The tick can cause alpha-gal syndrome as well as carry other diseases, including ehrlichiosis, tularemia, and Southern tick-associated rash illness. Credit: wildpixel/Getty

Often this allergy is triggered by eating red meat. But the allergy also can be set off by exposure to a range of other animal-based products, including dairy products, gelatin (think Jell-O or gummy bears), medications, and even some personal care items. The drug heparin, used to prevent blood clotting during surgery, is extracted from pig intestines, and its use has triggered a dangerous reaction in some people with alpha-gal syndrome.

Once you have alpha-gal syndrome, it’s possible to get over the allergy if you can modify your diet enough to avoid triggering another reaction for a few years and also avoid more tick bites. But that takes time and careful attention to the less obvious triggers that you might be exposed to.

Why more people are being diagnosed

As an entomologist who studies bugs and the diseases they transmit, what I find alarming is how rapidly this allergy is spreading around the globe.

Several years ago, experts thought alpha-gal syndrome was primarily limited to the Southeastern US because it was largely associated with the geographical range of the lone star tick.

However, both local and global reports have now identified many different tick species across six continents that are capable of causing alpha-gal syndrome, including the prolific black-legged tick, or deer tick, which also transmits Lyme disease.

These ticks lurk in yards and urban parks, as well as forests where they can stealthily grab onto hikers when they touch tick-infested vegetation. As tick populations boom with growing deer and human populations, the number of people with alpha-gal syndrome is escalating.

Why ticks are blamed for alpha-gal syndrome

There are a few theories on how a tick bite triggers alpha-gal syndrome and why only a small proportion of people bitten develop the allergy. To understand the theories, it helps to understand what happens as a tick starts feeding on you.

When a tick finds you, it typically looks for a warm, dark area to hide and attach itself to your body. Then its serrated teeth chew through your skin with rapid sawing motions.

As it excavates deeper into your skin, the tick deploys a barbed feeding tube, like a miniature drilling rig, and it secretes a biological cement that anchors its head into its new tunnel.

A tick’s mouth is barbed so it can stay embedded in your skin as it draws blood over hours and sometimes days. Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Once secure, the tick activates its pumping station, injecting copious amounts of saliva containing anesthetics, blood thinners, and, sometimes, alpha-gal sugars into the wound so it can feed undetected, sometimes for days.

One theory about how a tick bite causes alpha-gal syndrome is linked to the enormous quantity of tick saliva released during feeding, which activates the body’s strong immune response. Another suggests how the skin is damaged as the tick feeds and the possible effect of the tick’s regurgitated stomach contents into the bite site are to blame. Or it may be a combination of these and other triggers. Scientists are still investigating the causes.

What an allergic reaction feels like

The allergy doesn’t begin right away. Typically, one to three months after the sensitizing tick bite, a person with alpha-gal syndrome has their first disturbing reaction.

Alpha-gal syndrome produces symptoms that range from hives or swelling to crushing abdominal pain, violent nausea, or even life-threatening anaphylactic shock. The symptoms usually start two to six hours after a person has ingested a meat product containing alpha-gal.

Due to a general lack of awareness about the allergy, however, doctors can easily miss the diagnosis. A study in 2022 found that 42 percent of US health care practitioners had never heard of alpha-gal syndrome. A decade ago, people with alpha-gal syndrome might go years before the cause of their symptoms was accurately diagnosed. Today, the diagnosis is faster in areas where doctors are familiar with the syndrome, but in many parts of the country it can still take time and multiple doctor visits.

Unfortunately, with every additional tick bite or exposure to food or products containing alpha-gal, the allergy can increase in severity.

Chart showing tick relative sizes — The lone star tick isn’t the only one that can cause alpha-gal syndrome. Black-legged ticks have also been connected to cases. Credit: US Army

If you think you have alpha-gal syndrome

If you suspect you may have alpha-gal syndrome, the first step is to discuss the possibility with your doctor and ask them to order a simple blood test to measure whether your immune system is reacting to alpha-gal.

If you test positive, the main strategy for managing the allergy is to avoid eating any food product from a mammal, including milk and cheese, as well as other potential triggers, such as more tick bites.

Read labels carefully. Some products contain additives such as carrageenan, which is derived from red algae and contains alpha-gal.

In extreme cases, people with alpha-gal syndrome may need to carry an EpiPen to prevent anaphylactic shock. Reputable websites, such as the CDC and alphagalinformation.org, can provide more information and advice.

Mysteries remain as alpha-gal syndrome spreads

Since alpha-gal syndrome was first formally documented in the early 2000s, scientists have made progress in understanding this puzzling condition. Researchers have connected the allergy to specific tick bites and found that people with the allergy can have a higher risk of heart disease, even without allergy symptoms.

But important mysteries remain.

Scientists are still figuring out exactly how the tick bite tricks the human immune system and why tick saliva is a trigger for only some people. With growing public interest in alpha-gal syndrome, the next decade could bring breakthroughs in preventing, diagnosing, and treating this condition.

For now, the next time you are strolling in the woods or in long grasses, remember to check for ticks on your body, wear long sleeves, long pants, and tick repellent to protect yourself from these bloodthirsty hitchhikers. If you do get bitten by a tick, watch out for odd allergic symptoms to appear a few hours after your next steak or handful of gummy bears.

Lee Rafuse Haines is associate research professor of molecular parasitology and medical entomology at University of Notre Dame.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation is an independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community. Our team of editors work with these experts to share their knowledge with the wider public. Our aim is to allow for better understanding of current affairs and complex issues, and hopefully improve the quality of public discourse on them.

“Red meat allergy” from tick bites is spreading both in US and globally Read More »

Senate confirms CDC director as top FDA official resigns under political pressure

CDC, fda, health, Monarez, Prasad / DJ Henderson / July 31, 2025

As of yesterday, Susan Monarez is in and Vinay Prasad is out among top federal health officials.

In a 51–47 vote along party lines, the Senate confirmed Monarez as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is the first nominee for CDC director to be required to get Senate confirmation, following a 2022 law requiring it. She is also the first person to serve in the role without a medical degree since 1953.

Monarez has a PhD in microbiology and immunology and previously served as the deputy director for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) under the Biden administration. Monarez quietly helmed the CDC as acting director from January to March of this year but stepped down as required when Donald Trump nominated her for the permanent role. Before that, Trump had nominated Dave Weldon, but the nomination was abandoned over concerns that his anti-vaccine views would torpedo his Senate confirmation.

In contrast, Monarez aligns with the evidence-based public health community and has support from health experts. Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, told NPR that she has known Monarez professionally for more than a decade. “She’s a loyal, hardworking civil servant who leads with evidence and pragmatism and has been dedicated to improving the health of Americans for the entirety of her career,” Nuzzo said of Monarez.

Similarly, Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told the outlet that Monarez “values science, is a solid researcher, and has a history of being a good manager. We’re looking forward to working with her.”

It remains to be seen how Monarez will balance evidence-based public health guidance with the ideologically driven choices of health secretary and fervent anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Senate confirms CDC director as top FDA official resigns under political pressure Read More »

“It’s shocking”: Massive raw milk outbreak from 2023 finally reported

California, CDC, Features, health, infections, outbreak, raw milk / Kelly Newman / July 30, 2025

The outbreak occurred in 2023–2024, but little information had been shared about it.

On October 20, 2023, health officials in the County of San Diego, California, put out a press release warning of a Salmonella outbreak linked to raw (unpasteurized) milk. Such an outbreak is not particularly surprising; the reason the vast majority of milk is pasteurized (heated briefly to kill germs) is because milk can easily pick up nasty pathogens in the farmyard that can cause severe illnesses, particularly in children. It’s the reason public health officials have long and strongly warned against consuming raw milk.

At the time of the press release, officials in San Diego County had identified nine residents who had been sickened in the outbreak. Of those nine, three were children, and all three children had been hospitalized.

On October 25, the county put out a second press release, reporting that the local case count had risen to 12, and the suspected culprit—raw milk and raw cream from Raw Farm LLC—had been recalled. The same day, Orange County’s health department put out its own press release, reporting seven cases among its residents, including one in a 1-year-old infant.

Both counties noted that the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), which had posted the recall notice, was working on the outbreak, too. But it doesn’t appear that CDPH ever followed up with its own press release about the outbreak. The CDPH did write social media posts related to the outbreak: One on October 26, 2023, announced the recall; a second on November 30, 2023, noted “a recent outbreak” of Salmonella cases from raw milk but linked to general information about the risks of raw milk; and a third on December 7, 2023, linked to general information again with no mention of the outbreak.

But that seems to be the extent of the information at the time. For anyone paying attention, it might have seemed like the end of the story. But according to the final outbreak investigation report—produced by CDPH and local health officials—the outbreak actually ran from September 2023 to March 2024, spanned five states, and sickened at least 171 people. That report was released last week, on July 24, 2025.

Shocking outbreak

The report was published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a journal run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report describes the outbreak as “one of the largest foodborne outbreaks linked to raw milk in recent US history.” It also said that the state and local health department had issued “extensive public messaging regarding this outbreak.”

According to the final data, of the 171 people, 120 (70 percent) were children and teens, including 67 (39 percent) who were under the age of 5. At least 22 people were hospitalized, nearly all of them (82 percent) were children and teens. Fortunately, there were no deaths.

“I was just candidly shocked that there was an outbreak of 170 plus people because it had not been reported—at all,” Bill Marler, a personal injury lawyer specializing in food poisoning outbreaks, told Ars Technica in an interview. With the large number of cases, the high percentage of kids, and cases in multiple states, “it’s shocking that they never publicized it,” he said. “I mean, what’s the point?”

Ars Technica reached out to CDPH seeking answers about why there wasn’t more messaging and information about the outbreak during and soon after the investigation. At the time this story was published, several business days had passed and the department had told Ars in a follow-up email that it was still working on a response. Shortly after publication, CDPH provided a written statement, but it did not answer any specific questions, including why CDPH did not release its own press release about the state-wide outbreak or make case counts public during the investigation.

“CDPH takes its charge to protect public health seriously and works closely with all partners when a foodborne illness outbreak is identified,” the statement reads. It then referenced only the social media posts and the press releases from San Diego County and Orange County mentioned previously in this story as examples of its public messaging.

“This is pissing me off”

Marler, who represents around two dozen of the 171 people sickened in the outbreak, was one of the first people to get the full picture of the outbreak from California officials. In July of 2024, he obtained an interim report of the investigation from state health officials. At that point, they had documented at least 165 of the cases. And in December 2024, he got access to a preliminary report of the full investigation dated October 15, 2024, which identified the final 171 cases and appears to contain much of the data published in the MMWR, which has had its publication rate slowed amid the second Trump administration.

Getting that information from California officials was not easy, Marler told Ars. “There was one point in time where they wouldn’t give it to me. And I sent them a copy of a subpoena and I said, ‘you know, I’ve been working with public health for 32 years. I’m a big supporter of public health. I believe in your mission, but,’ I said, ‘this is pissing me off.'”

At that point, Marler knew that it was a multi-county outbreak and the CDPH and the state’s Department of Food and Agriculture were involved. He knew there was data. But it took threatening a subpoena to get it. “I’m like ‘OK, you don’t give it to me. I’m going to freaking drop a subpoena on you, and the court’s going to force you to give it.’ And they’re like, ‘OK, we’ll give it to you.'”

The October 15 state report he finally got a hold of provides a breakdown of the California cases. It reports that San Diego had a total of 25 cases (not just the 12 initially reported in the press releases), and Orange County had 19 (not just the seven). Most of the other 171 cases were spread widely across California, spanning 35 local health departments. Only four of the 171 cases were outside of California—one each in New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington. It’s unclear how people in these states were exposed, given that it’s against federal law to sell raw milk for human consumption across state lines. But two of the four people sickened outside of California specifically reported that they consumed dairy from Raw Farm without going to California.

Of the 171 cases, 159 were confirmed cases, which were defined as being confirmed using whole genome sequencing that linked the Salmonella strain causing a person’s infection to the outbreak strain also found in raw milk samples and a raw milk cheese sample from Raw Farm. The remaining 12 probable cases were people who had laboratory-confirmed Salmonella infections and also reported consuming Raw Farm products within seven days prior to falling ill.

“We own it”

In an interview with Ars Technica, the owner and founder of Raw Farm, Mark McAfee, disputed much of the information in the MMWR study and the October 2024 state report. He claimed that there were not 171 cases—only 19 people got sick, he said, presumably referring to the 19 cases collectively reported in the San Diego and Orange County press releases in October 2023.

“We own it. It’s ours. We’ve got these 19 people,” he told Ars.

But he said he did not believe that the genomic data was accurate and that the other 140 cases confirmed with genetic sequencing were not truly connected to his farm’s products. He also doubted that the outbreak spanned many months and into early 2024. McAfee says that a single cow that had been purchased close to the start of the outbreak had been the source of the Salmonella. Once that animal had been removed from the herd by the end of October 23, subsequent testing was negative. He also outright did not accept that testing identified the Salmonella outbreak strain in the farm’s raw cheese, which was reported in the MMWR and the state report.

Overall, McAfee downplayed the outbreak and claimed that raw milk has significant health benefits, such as being a cure for asthma—a common myth among raw milk advocates that has been debunked. He rejects the substantial number of scientific studies that have refuted the variety of unproven health claims made by raw-milk advocates. (You can read a thorough run-down of raw milk myths and the data refuting them in this post by the Food and Drug Administration.) McAfee claims that he and his company are “pioneers” and that public health experts who warn of the demonstrable health risks are simply stuck in the past.

Outbreak record

McAfee is a relatively high-profile raw milk advocate in California. For example, health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is reportedly a customer. Amid an outbreak of H5N1 on his farm last year, McAfee sent Ars press material claiming that McAfee “has been asked by the RFK transition team to apply for the position of ‘FDA advisor on Raw Milk Policy and Standards Development.'” But McAfee’s opinion of Kennedy has soured since then. In an interview with Ars last week, he said Kennedy “doesn’t have the guts” to loosen federal regulations on raw milk.

On his blog, Marler has a running tally of at least 11 outbreaks linked to the farm’s products.

In this outbreak, illnesses were caused by Salmonella Typhimurium, which generally causes diarrhea, fever, vomiting, and abdominal pain. In some severe cases, the infection can spread outside the gastrointestinal tract and into the blood, brain, bones, and joints, according to the CDC.

Marler noted that, for kids, infections can be severe. “Some of these kids who got sick were hospitalized for extended periods of time,” he said of the some of the cases he is representing in litigation. And those hospitalizations can lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expenses, he said. “It’s not just tummy aches.”

This post has been updated to include the response from CDPH.

“It’s shocking”: Massive raw milk outbreak from 2023 finally reported Read More »

Anti-vaccine group founded by RFK Jr. sues RFK Jr. over vaccine task force

CDC, children's health defense, health, HHS, Robert F. Kennedy, vaccines / 9u50fv / July 24, 2025

Now that Kennedy has moved on to politics, stepping down from his role at Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and joining the Trump administration, CHD has not let go of the issue.

Ray Flores, senior outside counsel to CHD, filed the lawsuit, which is being funded by CHD. In it, Flores notes that on March 15, 2025, he sent Kennedy a 60-day notice about the task force issue, and Kennedy did not respond.

Overall, the lawsuit contains anti-vaccine talking points and false claims, such as that childhood vaccines have not gone through safety testing (they have). Flores justifies the lawsuit saying that, without the task force, he “and his family can’t make informed decisions in light of the onslaught of current and seemingly never-ending outbreaks.”

In a social media post from CHD on Tuesday, Flores criticized Kennedy directly. “Why is he not dealing with vaccines? This is not the Bobby we know,” he said in the posted video. “Is he being held captive in the swamp? And it kind of feels that way sometimes, doesn’t it?”

It remains unclear why Kennedy has not set up the task force. HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Ars Technica.

Otherwise, Kennedy has not shied from unilaterally rolling back access to vaccines and continuing to spread anti-vaccine misinformation as the country’s top health official. His hand-selected vaccine advisory committee has already announced its intention to question the entire childhood vaccine schedule.

Potential explanations

However, there is one clear detail that could potentially explain Kennedy’s delay. The 1986 law that sets up the task force is specific about who should be on it. The task force “shall consist of the Director of the National Institutes of Health, the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and the Director of the Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention],” the law reads. Currently, the CDC has no director.

Anti-vaccine group founded by RFK Jr. sues RFK Jr. over vaccine task force Read More »

RFK Jr. wants to change program that stopped vaccine makers from leaving US market

anti-vaccines, CDC, health, rfk jr, robert f kennedy jr, syndication, vaccines / Mike M. / July 19, 2025

RFK Jr. is targeting a little-known program that underpins childhood immunizations in the US.

US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on Capitol Hill on May 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty | Tasos Katopodis

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

Five months after taking over the federal agency responsible for the health of all Americans, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to overhaul an obscure but vital program that underpins the nation’s childhood immunization system.

Depending on what he does, the results could be catastrophic.

In his crosshairs is the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a system designed to provide fair and quick payouts for people who suffer rare but serious side effects from shots—without having to prove that drugmakers were negligent. Congress created the program in the 1980s when lawsuits drove vaccine makers from the market. A special tax on immunizations funds the awards, and manufacturers benefit from legal protections that make it harder to win big-money verdicts against them in civil courts.

Kennedy, who founded an anti-vaccination group and previously accused the pharmaceutical industry of inflicting “unnecessary and risky vaccines” on children for profits, has long argued that the program removes any incentive for the industry to make safe products.

In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Kennedy condemned what he called corruption in the program and said he had assigned a team to overhaul it and expand who could seek compensation. He didn’t detail his plans but did repeat the long-debunked claim that vaccines cause autism and suggested, without citing any evidence, that shots could also be responsible for a litany of chronic ailments, from diabetes to narcolepsy.

There are a number of ways he could blow up the program and prompt vaccine makers to stop selling shots in the US, like they did in the 1980s. The trust fund that pays awards, for instance, could run out of money if the government made it easy for Kennedy’s laundry list of common health problems to qualify for payments from the fund.

Or he could pick away at the program one shot at a time. Right now, immunizations routinely recommended for children or pregnant women are covered by the program. Kennedy has the power to drop vaccines from the list, a move that would open up their manufacturers to the kinds of lawsuits that made them flee years ago.

Dr. Eddy Bresnitz, who served as New Jersey’s state epidemiologist and then spent a dozen years as a vaccine executive at Merck, is among those worried.

“If his unstated goal is to basically destroy the vaccine industry, that could do it,” said Bresnitz, who retired from Merck and has consulted for vaccine manufacturers. “I still believe, having worked in the industry, that they care about protecting American health, but they are also for-profit companies with shareholders, and anything that detracts from the bottom line that can be avoided, they will avoid.”

A spokesperson for PhRMA, a US trade group for pharmaceutical companies, told ProPublica in a written statement that upending the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program “would threaten continued patient access to FDA-approved vaccines.”

The spokesperson, Andrew Powaleny, said the program “has compensated thousands of claims while helping ensure the continued availability of a safe and effective vaccine supply. It remains a vital safeguard for public health and importantly doesn’t shield manufacturers from liability.”

Since its inception, the compensation fund has paid about $4.8 billion in awards for harm from serious side effects, such as life-threatening allergic reactions and Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune condition that can cause paralysis. The federal agency that oversees the program found that for every 1 million doses of vaccine distributed between 2006 and 2023, about one person was compensated for an injury.

Since becoming Health and Human Services secretary, Kennedy has turned the staid world of immunizations on its ear. He reneged on the US government’s pledge to fund vaccinations for the world’s poorest kids. He fired every member of the federal advisory group that recommends which shots Americans get, and his new slate vowed to scrutinize the US childhood immunization schedule. Measles, a vaccine-preventable disease eliminated here in 2000, roared back and hit a grim record—more cases than the US has seen in 33 years, including three deaths. When a US senator asked Kennedy if he recommended measles shots, Kennedy answered, “Senator, if I advised you to swim in a lake that I knew there to be alligators in, wouldn’t you want me to tell you there were alligators in it?”

Fed up, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical societies sued Kennedy last week, accusing him of dismantling “the longstanding, Congressionally-authorized, science- and evidence-based vaccine infrastructure that has prevented the deaths of untold millions of Americans.” (The federal government has yet to respond to the suit.)

Just about all drugs have side effects. What’s unusual about vaccines is that they’re given to healthy people—even newborns on their first day of life. And many shots protect not just the individuals receiving them but also the broader community by making it harder for deadly scourges to spread. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that routine childhood immunizations have prevented more than 1.1 million deaths and 32 million hospitalizations among the generation of Americans born between 1994 and 2023.

To most people, the nation’s vaccine system feels like a solid, reliable fact of life, doling out shots to children like clockwork. But in reality it is surprisingly fragile.

There are only a handful of companies that make nearly all of the shots children receive. Only one manufacturer makes chickenpox vaccines. And just two or three make the shots that protect against more than a dozen diseases, including polio and measles. If any were to drop out, the country could find itself in the same crisis that led President Ronald Reagan to sign the law creating the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in 1986.

Back then, pharmaceutical companies faced hundreds of lawsuits alleging that the vaccine protecting kids from whooping cough, diphtheria, and tetanus caused unrelenting seizures that led to severe disabilities. (Today’s version of this shot is different.) One vaccine maker after another left the US market.

At one point, pediatricians could only buy whooping cough vaccines from a single company. Shortages were so bad that the CDC recommended doctors stop giving booster shots to preserve supplies for the most vulnerable babies.

While Congress debated what to do, public health clinics’ cost per dose jumped 5,000 percent in five years.

“We were really concerned that we would lose all vaccines, and we would get major resurgences of vaccine-preventable diseases,” recalled Dr. Walter Orenstein, a vaccine expert who worked in the CDC’s immunization division at the time.

A Forbes headline captured the anxiety of parents, pediatricians, and public health workers: “Scared Shotless.” So a bipartisan group in Congress hammered out the no-fault system.

Today, the program covers vaccines routinely recommended for children or pregnant women once Congress approves the special tax that funds awards. (COVID-19 shots are part of a separate, often-maligned system for handling claims of harm, though Kennedy has said he’s looking at ways to add them to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.)

Under program rules, people who say they are harmed by covered vaccines can’t head straight to civil court to sue manufacturers. First, they have to go through the no-fault system. The law established a table of injuries and the time frame for when those conditions must have appeared in order to be considered for quicker payouts. A tax on those vaccines — now 75 cents for every disease that a shot protects against — flows into a trust fund that pays those approved for awards. Win or lose, the program, for the most part, pays attorney fees and forbids lawyers from taking a cut of the money paid to the injured.

The law set up a dedicated vaccine court where government officials known as special masters, who operate like judges, rule on cases without juries. People can ask for compensation for health problems not listed on the injury table, and they don’t have to prove that the vaccine maker was negligent or failed to warn them about the medical condition they wound up with. At the same time, they can’t claim punitive damages, which drive up payouts in civil courts, and pain and suffering payments are capped at $250,000.

Plaintiffs who aren’t satisfied with the outcome or whose cases drag on too long can exit the program and file their cases in traditional civil courts. There they can pursue punitive damages, contingency-fee agreements with lawyers and the usual evidence gathering that plaintiffs use to hold companies accountable for wrongdoing.

But a Supreme Court ruling, interpreting the law that created the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, limited the kinds of claims that can prevail in civil court. So while the program isn’t a full liability shield for vaccine makers, its very existence significantly narrows the cases trial lawyers can file.

Kennedy has been involved in such civil litigation. In his federal disclosures, he revealed that he referred plaintiffs to a law firm filing cases against Merck over its HPV shot in exchange for a 10 percent cut of the fees if they win. After a heated exchange with Sen. Elizabeth Warren during his confirmation proceedings, Kennedy said his share of any money from those cases would instead go to one of his adult sons, who he later said is a lawyer in California. His son Conor works as an attorney at the Los Angeles law firm benefiting from his referrals. When ProPublica asked about this arrangement, Conor Kennedy wrote, “I don’t work on those cases and I’m not receiving any money from them.”

In March, a North Carolina federal judge overseeing hundreds of cases that alleged Merck failed to warn patients about serious side effects from its HPV vaccine ruled in favor of Merck; an appeal is pending.

The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program succeeded in stabilizing the business of childhood vaccines, with many more shots developed and approved in the decades since it was established. But even ardent supporters acknowledge there are problems. The program’s staff levels haven’t kept up with the caseload. The law capped the number of special masters at eight, and congressional bills to increase that have failed. An influx of adult claims swamped the system after adverse reactions to flu shots became eligible for compensation in 2005 and serious shoulder problems were added to the injury table in 2017.

The quick and smooth system of payouts originally envisioned has evolved into a more adversarial one with lawyers for the Department of Justice duking it out with plaintiffs’ attorneys, which Kennedy says runs counter to the program’s intent. Many cases drag on for years.

In his recent interview with Carlson, he described “the lawyers of the Department of Justice, the leaders of it” working on the cases as corrupt. “They saw their job as protecting the trust fund rather than taking care of people who made this national sacrifice, and we’re going to change all that,” he said. “And I’ve brought in a team this week that is starting to work on that.”

The system is “supposed to be generous and fast and gives a tie to the runner,” he told Carlson. “In other words, if there’s doubts about, you know, whether somebody’s injury came from a vaccine or not, you’re going to assume they got it and compensate them.”

Kennedy didn’t identify who is on the team reviewing the program. At one point in the interview, he said, “We just brought a guy in this week who’s going to be revolutionizing the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.”

The HHS employee directory now lists Andrew Downing as a counselor working in Kennedy’s office. Downing for many years has filed claims with the program and suits in civil courts on behalf of clients alleging harm from shots. Last month, HHS awarded a contract for “Vaccine Injury Compensation Program expertise” to Downing’s firm, as NOTUS has reported.

Downing did not respond to a voicemail left at his law office. HHS didn’t reply to a request to make him and Kennedy available for an interview and declined to answer detailed questions about its plans for the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. In the past, an HHS spokesperson has said that Kennedy is “not anti-vaccine—he is pro-safety.”

While it’s not clear what changes Downing and Kennedy have in mind, Kennedy’s interview with Carlson offered some insights. Kennedy said he was working to expand the program’s three-year statute of limitations so that more people can be compensated. Downing has complained that patients who have certain autoimmune disorders don’t realize their ailments were caused by a vaccine until it’s too late to file. Congress would have to change the law to allow this, experts said.

A key issue is whether Kennedy will try to add new ailments to the list of injuries that qualify for quicker awards.

In the Carlson interview, Kennedy dismissed the many studies and scientific consensus that shots don’t cause autism as nothing more than statistical trickery. “We’re going to do real science,” Kennedy said.

The vaccine court spent years in the 2000s trying cases that alleged autism was caused by the vaccine ingredient thimerosal and the shot that protects people from measles, mumps, and rubella. Facing more than 5,000 claims, the court asked a committee of attorneys representing children with autism to pick test cases that represented themes common in the broader group. In the cases that went to trial, the special masters considered more than 900 medical articles and heard testimony from dozens of experts. In each of those cases, the special masters found that the shots didn’t cause autism.

In at least two subsequent cases, children with autism were granted compensation because they met the criteria listed in the program’s injury table, according to a vaccine court decision. That table, for instance, lists certain forms of encephalopathy—a type of brain dysfunction—as a rare side effect of shots that protect people from whooping cough, measles, mumps, and rubella. In a 2016 vaccine court ruling, Special Master George L. Hastings Jr. explained, “The compensation of these two cases, thus does not afford any support to the notion that vaccinations can contribute to the causation of autism.”

Hastings noted that when Congress set up the injury table, the lawmakers acknowledged that people would get compensated for “some injuries that were not, in fact, truly vaccine-caused.”

Many disabling neurological disorders in children become apparent around the time kids get their shots. Figuring out whether the timing was coincidental or an indication that the vaccines caused the problem has been a huge challenge.

Devastating seizures in young children were the impetus for the compensation program. But in the mid-1990s, after a yearslong review of the evidence, HHS removed seizure disorder from the injury table and narrowed the type of encephalopathy that would automatically qualify for compensation. Scientists subsequently have discovered genetic mutations that cause some of the most severe forms of epilepsy.

What’s different now, though, is that Kennedy, as HHS secretary, has the power to add autism or other disorders to that injury table. Experts say he’d have to go through the federal government’s cumbersome rulemaking process to do so. He could also lean on federal employees to green-light more claims.

In addition, Kennedy has made it clear he’s thinking about illnesses beyond autism. “We have now this epidemic of immune dysregulation in our country, and there’s no way to rule out vaccines as one of the key culprits,” he told Carlson. Kennedy mentioned diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, seizure disorders, ADHD, speech delay, language delay, tics, Tourette syndrome, narcolepsy, peanut allergies, and eczema.

President Donald Trump’s budget estimated that the value of the investments in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program trust fund could reach $4.8 billion this year. While that’s a lot of money, a life-care plan for a child with severe autism can cost tens of millions of dollars, and the CDC reported in April that 1 in 31 children is diagnosed with autism by their 8th birthday. The other illnesses Kennedy mentioned also affect a wide swath of the US population.

Dr. Paul Offit, a co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, for years has sparred with Kennedy over vaccines. Offit fears that Kennedy will use flawed studies to justify adding autism and other common medical problems to the injury table, no matter how much they conflict with robust scientific research.

“You can do that, and you will bankrupt the program,” he said. “These are ways to end vaccine manufacturing in this country.”

If the trust fund were to run out of money, Congress would have to act, said Dorit Reiss, a law professor at University of California Law San Francisco who has studied the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Congress could increase the excise tax on vaccines, she said, or pass a law limiting what’s on the injury table. Or Congress could abolish the program, and the vaccine makers would find themselves back in the situation they faced in the 1980s.

“That’s not unrealistic,” Reiss said.

Rep. Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican, last year proposed the End the Vaccine Carveout Act, which would have allowed people to bypass the no-fault system and head straight to civil court. His press release for the bill—written in September, before Kennedy’s ascension to HHS secretary—quoted Kennedy saying, “If we want safe and effective vaccines, we need to end the liability shield.”

The legislation never came up for a vote. A spokesperson for the congressman said he expects to introduce it again “in the very near future.”

Renée Gentry, director of the George Washington University Law School’s Vaccine Injury Litigation Clinic, thinks it’s unlikely Congress will blow up the no-fault program. But Gentry, who represents people filing claims for injuries, said it’s hard to predict what Congress, faced with a doomsday scenario, would do.

“Normally Democrats are friends of plaintiffs’ lawyers,” she said. “But talking about vaccines on the Hill is like walking on a razor blade that’s on fire.”

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