CDC 911
Nine former CDC directors from both parties took the unusual step of writing a joint essay in the New York Times warning that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has turned the CDC into a political machine.
NINE!
They called out his firing of Susan Monarez after barely a month on the job, his appointment of loyalists with no public health expertise, and his dismantling of key programs that track outbreaks, violence, and drug resistance. The resignations that followed were not symbolic. They were alarms.
Public trust in health institutions has already collapsed. Covid shredded confidence. The opioid epidemic showed us whose side government protects.
And now the CDC, the agency that should be boring and competent, is being gutted in full view. Patients will pay for this with their lives. Every day of dysfunction means another outbreak spreads, another community loses access to prevention, another family gets blindsided.
I feel fury. I feel fear. I have seen this before.
When AIDS activists had to drag the FDA into action. When young adults with cancer had to build their own movement. Patients always end up doing the work government refuses to do. We organize when leadership abandons us. That is the only reason progress ever happens.
Politics cannot vaccinate your kid. Political theater will not stop a superbug. Public health requires science, competence, and trust. Kennedy is burning all three. And history will record the deaths that follow.
So I ask: what happens when patients stop waiting for protection and start acting like a political force? Suppose we organized like industries do.
Suppose we stopped settling for scraps and demanded real influence. What does rebellion look like when patients finally decide we will not be ignored?
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SOURCE ➡️ https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/opinion/cdc-leaders-kennedy.html?unlocked_article_code=1.i08.r4dG.8G1XWCDBwdXl&smid=url-share