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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday that the American public has lost faith in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and outlined his plan to rebuild trust in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal.
Kennedy blamed decades of bureaucracy, politicized science and “mission creep” for eroding the CDC’s core role of protecting Americans from infectious disease and squandering public confidence.
Kennedy pointed to the CDC’s response to COVID-19 as an example of dysfunction that “produced irrational policy” and further eroded trust in the agency.
“Cloth masks on toddlers, arbitrary 6-foot distancing, boosters for healthy children, prolonged school closings, economy-crushing lockdowns, and the suppression of low-cost therapeutics in favor of experimental and ineffective drugs,” he wrote. “The toll was devastating.”
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Although some may see the agency’s missteps during the pandemic as a one-off mistake, Kennedy asserted that this failure was “no anomaly,” citing declining life expectancy and declining trust from the public as evidence.
“Trust has collapsed: Only one-third of health care workers participated in the 2023-24 fall COVID booster program, and fewer than 10% of children under 12 received boosters in 2024-25. The American people no longer believe the CDC has their best interests at heart,” he wrote.
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On an operational level, the HHS secretary was critical of the CDC’s budget allocation and staffing. He ripped the agency for having only half of its total budget support its infectious-disease mission, and for the fact that fewer than 1 in 10 employees are epidemiologists—which he blames for the CDC’s “disastrous” pandemic response.
Despite his sharp criticisms, Kennedy expressed hope that the agency could be restored to its former effectiveness. He noted that the CDC’s response to a measles outbreak this year showed how the agency can “act swiftly with precision when guided by science and freed from ideology.”
Kennedy highlighted some of the actions already taken by the Trump administration to tackle the issues impacting the CDC, such as replacing leaders who’ve resisted reform and eliminating conflicts of interests and bureaucratic complacency.
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“First, the CDC must restore public trust—and that restoration has begun. It won’t stop until America’s public-health institutions again serve the people with transparency, honesty and integrity,” he concluded.
Fox News Digital reached out to the CDC for further comment.
More than 1,000 current and former employees of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) signed a letter calling on Kennedy to resign on Wednesday.
The employees cited Kennedy’s recent ousting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Susan Monarez. They also accused Kennedy of appointing “political ideologues” to positions of authority.
That followed nine former directors and former acting CDC directors who wrote Monday in The New York Times that Kennedy’s leadership was endangering all Americans, accusing him of downplaying vaccines and focusing on unproven treatments.
HHS didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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