Washington D.C. — “The secretary would never ask me to do that,” Dr. Erica Schwartz repeatedly insisted during her confirmation hearing for CDC Director when asked how she would deal with prolifically anti-vax health secretary Robert Kennedy Jr’s inevitable interference in the CDC’s vaccine-related matters. Dr. Schwartz seemingly pretended to be unaware the last Senate-approved Trump CDC director was forced out in less than a month because she refused RFK Jr.’s demands to “pre-approve vaccine recommendations for the public and fire career scientists” – or that RFK Jr. had flatly refused to commit to Congress that he will not interfere with the new CDC director’s vaccine guidance.
Now it is confirmed it took only a matter of days for that predictable scenario to play out, with Dr. Schwartz going along “without objection” with RFK Jr’s blatant effort to cover up measles deaths amid a record-breaking outbreak exacerbated by the Trump administration’s aggressive anti-vax agenda.
Per new reporting from Reuters: Secretary Kennedy “asked his new CDC director to remove a reference to two Pennsylvania deaths from the agency’s online measles tally after he questioned whether the disease contributed to the fatalities … Kennedy’s request came after CDC staffers had already accepted the state’s characterization of the deaths as linked to measles … Despite that, Erica Schwartz, the recently appointed director of the [CDC], agreed with Kennedy’s directive and implemented it without objection.”
Despite pledging to speak “truth to power” in her new role and despite the PA Health Department’s insistence that the two recent measles deaths in the commonwealth were “meticulously investigated” and “meets the [CDC] case definition for a measles case,” Dr. Schwartz made the “unheard of” decision to skirt CDC reporting protocols after her new boss baselessly suggested the measles deaths were “fabricated” to deflect from his own culpability in the tragedy.
“The CDC Director’s credibility is now in the same toilet RFK Jr. used to snort cocaine off of,” said Brad Woodhouse, President of Protect Our Care. “Dr. Schwartz’s first order of business should have been using all available CDC resources to aggressively promote the MMR vaccine to combat the historic measles crisis. Instead, she’s busy breaking every pledge she made to Congress to help Donald Trump and RFK Jr. deflect blame for the measles vaccine disinformation they sowed and the consequences it reaped. It sure seems like the Trump CDC will keep right on putting science-denialism before public health on Director Schwartz’s watch.”
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