CDC staff walks out in protest of Trump administration’s opposition to controlling disease

It’s bad, you know:

Hundreds of employees and supporters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lined the sidewalks outside the agency’s Atlanta headquarters Thursday for a “clap out” rally to honor three senior leaders who resigned a day earlier in protest of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine attacks on the agency and public health at large.

Dr. Deb Houry, former deputy director and chief medical officer; Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; and Dr. Daniel Jernigan, former director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, walked through the crowd, hugging former colleagues and accepting bouquets of flowers.

They resigned Wednesday after HHS announced that Kennedy had fired CDC Director Susan Monarez, who had been in her post for less than a month. Monarez’s lawyers disputed her firing, saying that only the president had the authority to fire her and claiming that she had been pushed out for refusing “to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.”

Kennedy defended the firing Thursday on Fox News, citing a nonspecific “deeply embedded malaise at the agency.”

According to reporting in the Washington Post, the White House has tapped HHS deputy secretary Jim O’Neill to serve as Monarez’s interim replacement. O’Neill, who the Post calls a “close ally” of tech investor Peter Thiel, criticized the CDC during the pandemic, but has not echoed Kennedy’s attacks on vaccines. He is expected to lead the agency while continuing to advise HHS.

Houry, Daskalakis and Jernigan — who were escorted off the CDC’s Atlanta campus by security earlier Thursday — gave impromptu speeches in support of their former agency, promising they would continue to fight from the outside.

In response, a Man of Principle is making vague gestures toward closing the barn door when the cow is five parishes over, because he decided to open the door in the first place:

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician and leading voice on public health in the chamber, called for a key government vaccine panel to postpone its upcoming meeting after the stunning exodus of top leaders Wednesday at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“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 Thursday, referencing the Department of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

If only you had been in a position to, say, offer binding advice and consent to presidential appointments. Speaking of which:

Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said the Trump administration’s firing of the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Susan Monarez late Wednesday warrants congressional oversight, echoing bipartisan leaders of the Senate committee dealing with health policy.

“While I recognize that the CDC Director serves at the pleasure of the President, I am alarmed that she has been fired after only three weeks on the job,” Collins said in a statement.

I believe that is two brow furrows and a small frown on the Collins Do Nothing Index.