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Following RFK Jr.'s purge of vaccine consultants, a CDC virus expert resigns

HorrorOrigins
16 Jun, 2025

Overseeing CDC respiratory virus data, Fiona Havers warned colleagues she was no longer certain the data would be used impartially to determine vaccine policy.

In 2022, a small infant in Massachusetts gets vaccinated against COVID-19. A CDC specialist on vaccines and respiratory illnesses has stepped down.

As Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. challenges the agency's long-standing vaccination policy, a top scientist who supervised respiratory virus surveillance at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has resigned and expressed worries about the direction of vaccine policy.


The CDC's surveillance of hospitalizations for coronavirus and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a common respiratory virus that is the primary cause of hospitalizations in newborns, was conducted by Fiona Havers, a physician regarded as a senior subject-matter expert on respiratory infections and vaccines.

In a Monday morning email to colleagues that The USA NEWS TODAY Post was able to get, Havers stated, "Unfortunately, I no longer have faith that this data will be used honestly or reviewed with proper scientific rigor to inform evidence-based vaccine policy decisions."

Havers and other CDC employees provide hospitalization statistics at almost all of the agency's vaccine advisory committee's public sessions. Kennedy dismissed the whole Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices panel last week and replaced it with individuals of his choosing, including at least three individuals who have opposed the use of mRNA coronavirus vaccinations. Two of his appointees served on the board of the oldest anti-vaccine organization in the country, while another appeared as an expert witness against vaccine producers in court cases.

Requests for response from Havers, a physician specializing in infectious diseases, were not immediately answered.


A request for comment from HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon was also not immediately answered. Nixon stated last week that "Secretary Kennedy has replaced vaccine groupthink with a plurality of opinions on ACIP" in response to criticism of the vaccine committee's reform.

The 17 members of the vaccine committee who were let go last week stated in an opinion piece in JAMA on Monday that the sudden terminations, the hiring of new members, and the reduction of CDC personnel working on vaccinations "had left the US vaccine program gravely weakened."


They wrote, "The acts have raised issues about competency and deprived the program of institutional expertise."


They wrote: "We are extremely worried that these destabilizing decisions, made without a clear justification, may undo the progress accomplished by U.S. vaccination policy, affect people's access to life-saving vaccines, and eventually expose U.S. families to risky and avoidable diseases."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), the top member of the Senate panel that oversees federal health agencies, said Monday he called for a bipartisan investigation into the terminations.

In the email announcing her resignation, Havers said statistics she and her colleagues presented at nearly every ACIP meeting since 2020 were significant drivers of covid and RSV vaccine policy.

"I am thankful to have contributed to such significant and productive work that has given decision-makers up-to-date, meticulous, and high-quality scientific evidence that has been used to monitor disease severity over time, target vaccine messaging to populations most at risk for severe disease, and provide vital inputs for vaccine cost-effectiveness analyses," Havers wrote.
Havers, a 13-year veteran of the organization, collaborated with hospitals and healthcare systems to pinpoint significant patterns regarding respiratory viruses like influenza, COVID-19, and RSV during the past few years. Experts in infectious diseases claim that this surveillance aids in identifying individuals who are at a high risk of developing a serious infection, which is essential for focusing vaccination recommendations.

She provided the vaccine panel with data in April that indicated the highest rates of hospitalizations related to COVID-19 were among infants younger than six months. According to her research, the majority of infants under the age of two who were admitted to the hospital with COVID had no underlying medical issues.

Kennedy ordered the CDC to remove healthy pregnant women and children from its recommendation for the coronavirus vaccine three weeks ago.
Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, another CDC expert, resigned two weeks ago as a result of those changes. In an email to colleagues, vaccination adviser Panagiotakopoulos expressed concern that she would no longer be able to assist those in need after government health officials revoked long-standing advice to vaccinate pregnant women and children.

Last Friday, Melinda Wharton, the top CDC vaccine official in charge of ACIP operations, was fired. She oversaw the employees that collected and displayed immunization data.




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