The real-time collapse of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has picked up the pace. Following the government’s attempted firing and pressuring of several senior CDC officials to step down this week, CDC staff staged a dramatic display of support for its departing leaders this afternoon.
The action was a direct response to the Trump administration’s recent meddling at the once well-respected public health agency. The staff, which included remaining senior officials, performed a “clap-out” for their leaving colleagues. The Associated Press hosted a live stream of the event, which you can watch below.
“We have reached the tipping point and we knew it was a powerful statement for the three of us to do this together.”
Among the departures is CDC director Susan Monarez, who has alleged she was targeted for not supporting the administration’s “unscientific” agenda.
The CDC’s bloody Wednesday
The ongoing chaos at the CDC reached its breaking point Wednesday.
The Washington Post reported in the afternoon that Monarez was being ousted just four weeks into taking over the role, a decision later announced by HHS on its X page. Over the next few hours, four senior staff members, including the CDC’s chief medical officer Debra Houry, turned in their resignation notice. Some of the members posted their resignation letters online, including Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
In his letter, Daskalsis stated that he was 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.” He specifically singled out RFK Jr.’s unilateral purging of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel and the CDC’s revoked endorsement of covid-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women as examples of this harm.
This fallout only grew messier as the night went on. Lawyers speaking on Monarez’s behalf claimed that, despite the HHS announcement, she had neither been fired nor resigned from her role, as she could only be fired by President Donald Trump directly. They also stated that Monarez was pressured to fire several staff members, which may have included the four officials who resigned of their own accord.
“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,” Mark S. Zaid, one of the two attorneys representing Monarez, said in a statement posted to social media.
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