This CDC Resignation Should Scare You

Fiona Havers resigned because she feared that RFK Jr. would suppress or manipulate CDC data. “A lot of Americans are going to die from vaccine-preventable diseases,” she warned.

On April 15, 2025, Dr. Fiona Havers, an epidemiologist at the CDC, presented her findings to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Havers led the respiratory diseases team at the CDC that assessed the impact of viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Havers’ presentation focused on the impact of Covid on children in the United States this past year. She found that at least 7,000 children were hospitalized with Covid. About 20 percent of those hospitalized were admitted to the intensive care unit, half were previously healthy, virtually none had been vaccinated, and 152 had died, most less than 4 years of age. The conclusion was clear; all children in the United States, whether they were previously healthy or not, should receive the primary series of Covid vaccines. For these reasons, the CDC recommended the Covid vaccine for all children.

Six weeks later, on May 27, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), made a surprise announcement. In a video posted on X, he said that Covid vaccines would no longer be recommended for healthy children. “I couldn’t be more pleased,” enthused Kennedy. “We’re now one step closer to realizing President Trump’s promise to Make America Healthy Again.” Almost immediately, the CDC’s Childhood Immunization Schedule changed to reflect RFK Jr.’s unilateral, unsupportable, behind-closed-doors decision to leave children vulnerable to Covid. Rather, then clearly recommending the vaccine, the CDC weakened its recommendation to “shared clinical decision making.” Parents should now discuss with their physician whether the Covid vaccine was right for their child, suggesting that a choice not to vaccinate a child who had neither been vaccinated nor naturally infected was a reasonable one. When it wasn’t. Several facts were indisputable: 1) SARS-CoV-2 virus continues to circulate in the United States and the world; 2) all children will be fully susceptible to the virus by the time they are 6 months of age ; and 3) children are still being hospitalized and killed by Covid.

On June 16, devastated by RFK Jr.’s inexplicable decision to put children at unnecessary risk, Fiona Havers, a 13-year veteran, quit the CDC. “I no longer have confidence that these data will be objectively evaluated with appropriate scientific rigor to make evidence-based vaccine policy decisions,” she wrote to a colleague. Later, she told the New York Times, “CDC processes are being corrupted in a way that I have never seen before. If it isn’t stopped, and some of this isn’t reversed, like, immediately, a lot of Americans are going to die from vaccine-preventable diseases.”

The week before Fiona Havers quit, on June 9, RFK Jr. fired all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), replacing them with several people who, like him, had disdain for vaccines. Many had either testified for him as expert witnesses against vaccine makers, lobbied states to remove all vaccine school requirements, published critically flawed papers about vaccine harms, or lacked any expertise or experience in vaccines. The public health community responded by setting up parallel committees to advise the country about vaccines. But they were ignoring one important fact. Advice is based on data presented by the CDC. If those data are manipulated or suppressed, their advice will be ill-informed.

The CDC’s collection and reporting on the impact of various diseases is “a very transparent, rigorous process,” said Havers. “And they have just taken a sledgehammer to it in the last several weeks.” The CDC is one of the country’s largest data-gathering organizations. If we can’t trust data coming out of the CDC, we can’t trust advice based on those data. That’s why the resignation of Fiona Havers is particularly frightening.