by Ty Tagami | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Former leaders of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gathered at the Georgia Capitol Tuesday at the invitation of Democratic lawmakers to express their concerns about the future of the Atlanta-based disease-fighting agency and the potential impact on the public.
The timing follows President Donald Trump’s decision last week to fire CDC Director Susan Monarez one month after the U.S. Senate confirmed her to the role.
Her termination came after U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ousted the scientific advisors who make vaccine recommendations to the CDC. Kennedy appointed new members to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Policy, which then raised questions about historic vaccination regimens that Kennedy had also questioned.
Dr. Debra Houry, who was the agency’s chief medical officer, was among several who quit last week after Monarez’s firing.
Houry worried that her former agency’s pending recommendations about the COVID-19 vaccine could make it more difficult to get immunized. She said vaccine skepticism is already having an impact.
“This past year, we saw over 200 pediatric deaths from the flu. That’s unacceptable. We shouldn’t be seeing kids dying from the flu,” Houry said.
Houry exited the CDC with Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who spent three decades at the agency and supervised the center for emerging diseases and vaccine safety.
Jernigan said he quit because he felt Kennedy was not being transparent about the process for developing vaccine policy. He said he believed Monarez was fired because she wanted to let science drive public health policy.
Jernigan also said the Trump administration had disrupted CDC funding that goes to states and local health agencies and that it could undermine local programs.
“That could be impacts on foodborne illness, detection of problems with restaurants, problems with giving vaccinations to kids … not knowing if your food is safe, if the water is safe,” he said.
Tuesday’s event was convened by Democrats in the state House and Senate who, with some of their eight CDC guests, blamed the Aug. 8 shooting at the agency’s headquarters near Emory University on misinformation and political rhetoric.
Rep. Saira Draper, D-Atlanta, called on Gov. Brian Kemp to publicly back the federal agency and to create a multi-state public health alliance. The governor declined to comment.
Despite the concerns expressed Tuesday about transparency under Sec. Kennedy, the CDC had already earned mistrust from a significant swath of the public. A woman named Melinda Hicks underscored that sentiment when she peppered Houry and Jernigan with questions about vaccine safety. A friend had died of “brain bleed” after taking a COVID-19 vaccine, said Hicks, who lives in Atlanta.
Houry and Jernigan tried to answer as she interrupted them, saying the CDC had multiple monitoring systems and tracked vaccine-related deaths.
Hicks said in a brief interview later that she had not been vaccinated herself and that she supported the firing of Monarez.
