Former CDC CMO: RFK Jr. Is Doing ‘Irreparable Harm’

from the alarm-bells dept

I’m not sure who out there is in RFK Jr.’s corner anymore, beyond some unfortunately powerful people in seats of federal power at the moment. That Kennedy’s tenure at HHS has lasted even this long is as absurd as it is dangerous, given the mountains of chaos he’s created in a mere year and change thus far. All of this anti-vaxxer nonsense, the seemingly random attacks on Tylenol of all things, an ongoing measles outbreak he’s mismanaging, and an inability to follow proper governmental procedure has produced a sample size of sucking that really should have been enough to get him booted from office at this point. Whatever you might think of Kennedy’s conspiracy theories and policies, there is simply no arguing that he doesn’t completely suck at his job.

The public polling around Kennedy has reflected this reality. Spineless senators who once supported him in the role are turning their backs. And then there are the warning bells being rung from people who were very recently insiders at CDC, such as its former Chief Medical Officer.

Dr. Debra Houry, the former chief medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), decried the direction of the agency under Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

“I think the secretary has caused a lot of irreparable harm, and when you look at many of the polls out there, the trust in public health, specifically CDC, has decreased dramatically, over 20 points in many polls,” Houry told host Margaret Brennan in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”

“That’s really difficult to recover from, and when states are removing links to the CDC website and following other medical organizations, I don’t know how you build back that trust overnight,” she added.

You absolutely don’t and this is a point I’ve been making for many months. It doesn’t take much skill or time to destroy the trust the public has in federal health officials. That part is very fast and very easy, as Kennedy is demonstrating. But to rebuild that trust, to win back the faith of the public, is going to take years, or decades, or perhaps may never really happen at all. The consequences of the idiotic placement and confirmation of RFK Jr. to lead HHS is going to span decades. The nihilists who managed to put this current cadre of clowns into federal office may not understand that, or may simply not care. But that is the reality.

A poll conducted by Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the de Beaumont Foundation’s Public Health Listening Lab from March 19 through April 1 found that 50 percent of 2,205 U.S. adults said they trust health recommendations from the CDC. 

In spring 2025, 77 percent of respondents to a similar survey conducted by the joint pollsters said they trust recommendations from the agency.

Whenever this country moves past the MAGA era, it’s going to have what might be the Sisyphean task of repairing all of this damage. And not just in terms of reestablishing good, sane health policies. That’s just part of the task. The other will be the public messaging that must go along with it. That is equally, if not more important to repairing all of the damage Kennedy has and is doing. It’s not enough to have good policy built on science. Someone has to actually get the public to buy into and trust in those policies.

And the public is going to be in a very reasonable place when they ask why they should trust the next government to not be anymore idiotic than this one.

Filed Under: cdc, debra houry, health, health & human services, rfk jr.