A word of caution to the Trump administration as it carries out much-needed reforms across the nation’s public-health agencies: Purging the arrogance and ideology that drove insane COVID policies is a must, but Health and Human Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a terribly flawed tool for doing it.
It now looks like RFK’s no. 2, Jim O’Neill, will (at least for now) replace Centers for Disease Control Director Susan Monarez, who abruptly got booted Wednesday.
President Donald Trump tapped Monarez for the job in March; the Senate finally confirmed her just a month ago (Democrats are full-court delaying all Trump nominations) — and now she’s already gone, by at least some accounts for taking issue with her boss’ firing of all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee in June and refusing to fire CDC staff Kennedy wanted out.
Now, some of these “public-health professionals” look to be anything but.
For one: Demetre Daskalakis marked the Monarez firing by quitting as director of National Center on Immunization and Respiratory Diseases — yet he’d already won notoriety with a high leather-and-feather-clad public profile, and his resignation letter referenced “pregnant people” along with one of those “my pronouns are” signoffs.
Heavily political pressure during the pandemic pushed out a lot of genuine public-health pros who wouldn’t endorse the White House’s anti-science push for universal masking everywhere, endless lockdowns and mandatory, repeated jabs for all — even kids, who (barring the immuno-compromised) were never at serious risk from COVID.
Problem is, RFK’s no great science believer himself: In particular, his decades-long fearmongering about pretty much all vaccines feeds questions and doubts even when reasonable vax-policy changes emerge from his shop.
Just look at the reaction to the CDC doing away with batty COVID shot guidelines that recommended that “all children should” receive at least one dose at 6 months old.
Because it came under RFK’s leadership, that correction of an utterly deranged policy vaccine schedule came under heavy critical fire.
As did Monarez’s firing and O’Neill’s appointment.
The good news: O’Neill is on record, during his confirmation hearing in May, as being “very strongly pro-vaccine.”
But many Americans will never trust any health policy tied to Kennedy: He can only hinder Team Trump’s efforts to restore Americans’ trust.
