Vaccines are in jeopardy and a public health doctor resigned from CDC, openly citing the eugenics language of leadership.
There’s a succession crisis that’s apparently a perpetual part of authoritarian regimes, but seems to be building. I suspect that RFKJr is megalomaniacal enough to have designs on more power and is getting bold. RFKJr is hanging out with Pete Hegeseth pushing wellness bullshit, and a close associate of RFKJr has said that influential family members of Donald Trump also want the covid vaccines off the market.
I am due for a covid vaccine update and I tried to schedule one and got an error message on the CVS website last night, and a friend in a group video call I was on, was getting errors trying to schedule with Walgreens who said that they would have to wait for the new vaccines to arrive. I saw another person who reported the same thing with another pharmacy. So I called my local CVS today and asked why I couldn’t schedule my covid vax, and they too said they’re waiting on the new covid-19 vaccine batches and right now you can’t make an appointment, but that they’ll be available in a couple of weeks.
Even if there weren’t questions swirling around the status and future of covid vaccines, this would still be a problem because historically in my area covid surges a few weeks after school starts, and so an ideal time to get a vaccine update would be right now.
Update: Later in the day I saw a New York Times article that explained why they weren’t offering the covid vaccines yet.
The New York Times – CVS Holds Off on Offering Covid Vaccines in 16 States The country’s largest pharmacy chain said it needed a C.D.C. panel to recommend the shots before it could offer them nationwide. By Maggie Astor and Dani Blum Aug. 28, 2025 Updated 9:05 p.m. ET CVS, the country’s largest pharmacy chain, is currently not offering Covid vaccines in 16 states, including Florida, New York and Pennsylvania, even to people who meet newly restricted criteria from the Food and Drug Administration. Amy Thibault, a spokeswoman for CVS, cited “the current regulatory environment” as the reason the vaccine was not available in those states, or in the District of Columbia, emphasizing that the list could change. Legal experts said that federal decisions were creating an extremely difficult situation for pharmacies to navigate. In some states, pharmacists are forbidden to administer vaccines that are not recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel.
There’s a pdf posted scheduling a CDC ACIP meeting for September, but it’s not yet listed on the ACIP webpage.
Donald Trump pushed out the CDC director who was only sworn in less than a month prior because, her lawyers told the press, she refused to rubber stamp unscientific and reckless directives. Multiple top people have resigned from the CDC with similar concerns, and there has been a walkout at the CDC. Clearly people don’t want to be a party to what’s going on.
Breaking News: Read three top CDC officials’ resignation emails. The end of an era. Jeremy Faust, MD Aug 27, 2025 From the resignation letter of Demetre C. Daskalakis MD MPH: “I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health. The recent change in the adult and children’s immunization schedule threaten the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant people. The data analyses that supported this decision have never been shared with CDC despite my respectful requests to HHS and other leadership. This lack of meaningful engagement was further compounded by a “frequently asked questions” document written to support the Secretary’s directive that was circulated by HHS without input from CDC subject matter experts and that cited studies that did not support the conclusions that were attributed to these authors. Having worked in local and national public health for years, I have never experienced such radical non-transparency, nor have I seen such unskilled manipulation of data to achieve a political end rather than the good of the American people.” (emphasis added)
I’m not surprised that RFKJr, Jay Bhattacharya and the rest are using fraudulent appeal to authority, the practice of citing references that don’t actually back up the claim they’re supposedly providing evidence for. This is common in right-wing wellness influencers connected to all these people who’ve taken over the federal government health, and have been used to promote potentially harmful and unproven covid products that originated in the first Trump term with boondoggles. They don’t expect anyone to click through and actually read the footnoted sources, and most people don’t even click, or if they do they might not have enough subject knowledge to be able to assess the citation.
Demetre C. Daskalakis also said in his letter: “Eugenics plays prominently in the rhetoric being generated and is derivative of a legacy that good medicine and science should continue to shun.” Finally people are recognizing and stating the obvious. I’ve been attacked over and over and over again, viciously smeared, insulted, had troll armies set on me on social media, for years now for daring to use the word eugenics, but it’s absolutely the ideology that all these people believe in and want to put into practice.
I’ve been seeing a lot of criticism of the David Shor’s Blue Rose Research consultancy report for Democratic politicians to follow, and they are being rightly criticized. These political consultants are so bad that it’s hard to imagine why Democratic Party or politicians would listen to any of these entities anymore. I am continually reminded of the political consultants from some outfit called “Impact Research” who told Democrats in 2022 to stop talking about covid, say it’s fine now and move on. And then why do we wonder why covid vaccine uptake is so low, and defense of vaccines and public health measures has been lacking, or even totally missing. If you deny that covid, and anything else, is still a problem, why would anyone need to get vaccinated? The very people who are supposed to represent us have been missing in action against the onslaught of right-wing bullshit and anti-vax propaganda.
And those who claim that elite healthcare people will save us are themselves selling political snake oil. First off, the current covid restrictions are not as restricted as Paul Offit has wanted for years; he has stated wanting more restrictions and has even crapped on other vaccines in various media venues. So I wouldn’t look to him as a vaccine saviour. But make no mistake, the elite doctors and scientists speaking up now, but who months into this regime and the Great Barrington Declaration come to power, and yet who are still just floating petitions, should not be trusted. Especially the ones promising to create private orgs to “guide” local public health on vaccines… that will not exist because the federal government is controlled by anti-vaxxers. They either get banned outright or, as RFKJr wants to have them taken out of the program for vaccine compensation so that the companies just decide to stop selling vaccines, which is a ban by another name, no matter how many hotshot “debunkers” who think they’re very clever claim that they’re WELL ACTUALLY not talking about an actual ban. RFKJr has been involved in various lawsuits over vaccines, and so have others now making vaccine decisions in the federal government like Martin Kulldorff. In a functional system of government that would’ve made RFKJr and others disqualified for the positions they now hold, since it’s such an obvious conflict of interest. There ought to be a law, don’t we think?
Keeping everyone guessing about everything is typical of people who seize power to do authoritarianism. Everyone scrambling to anticipate the whims of a mad king doesn’t make for a functional society, but it can facilitate someone holding onto power. I’ve seen people like weirdo Mark Cuban, who often makes nonsense suggestions and posts really bad takes, suggesting coyly that Democratic politicians should get into the game and start dancing to the Donald’s musical chairs as well. I’m pretty sure this is not an effective or efficient way to deal with a naked emperor. And RFKJr obviously wants in on the action, given the succession crisis looming.
So what do you do? I’m writing to my representatives at all levels to let them know I want vaccines. Join me. YOU write to YOUR representatives, the elected politicians at every level, you tell them you want vaccines and you want public health, and whatever else. Self-censorship is deadly and has led us here. Because if the politicians are not hearing from their constituents, they just assume everyone’s anti-vax. And if they don’t hear from you for a while, they figure you’ve given in or given up. And even the Democrats will listen to those consultants who are likely double agents, because they are telling your Democratic party politicians stuff like: don’t talk about covid, don’t fight anti-vaxxers nobody cares, cater to MAGA voters maybe they’ll vote for you. I have been saying it for years, and I’m not the only one, you have to speak up to let them know from their actual constituents what you care about, and it’s unfortunate but you have to do so often enough to compete with the lobbyists, the political operatives, the consultants, the party insiders, and their other constituents, some who are right-wing and are not holding back, and the perennial “business stakeholders” they all love hobnobbing with at their fancy parties. But these people work for us, and it’s our responsibility to supervise them.
Unfortunately doctors like Jeremy Faust may just feel comfortable declaring this is just “an end to an era” but that’s not the only choice we have. We could make other choices. We could hold people accountable for harming Americans, for example. So of course it’s worth voicing your opinion to people in healthcare if you have the opportunity. Maybe write a letter to the editor of your newspaper for example, asking the doctors to speak up. And organize with groups of others, that’s important, and sure, support organizations doing activism and advocacy. But always remember that private organizations do not have the monopoly of power of the government, they don’t control the police or the courts and they can’t circumvent or go outside the law and government rules. Only the government has ultimate control over what’s legal and what’s possible, and the government controls all markets, whatever fantasies you might hear from aristocratic libertarians. But here’s the thing, it’s supposed to be our government, for the people, by the people. Do the by the people part now, while you can. And don’t wait for everybody else.
My letter to reps:
I want vaccines. I want a government who isn’t trying to actively kill Americans with horrendous policies. RFKJr should’ve been disqualified for conflicts of interest in the first place. We need investigations into why some people who are serving in the government want to harm Americans. I read a public health doctor’s resignation letter that stated the obvious of what we can see with our own eyes: that RFKJr and the unqualified political ideologues he’s employed, are citing sources that don’t exist or don’t actually back up their claims, and that they are weaponizing public health with eugenics rhetoric. RFKJr should be the one to resign, not that doctor. Most Americans, including most Republicans want not just vaccines for kids, but they want vaccine requirements in schools. I read that polling says most Republicans want that. It’s not surprising to me. People want cancer treatment research too, and these weirdos in the health agencies insanely tossed that out as well. What’s going on in the health agencies isn’t rational and it’s not what most Americans want. And it will get people killed. It’s shocking that people serving in government, representing the people, would be casual about this and morally disengage. I want answers. What are you doing to make sure I have covid vaccines and other vaccines?
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
Seriously, even just writing to your reps telling them you want vaccines, you want covid vaccines, is incredibly important. Otherwise, they will ignore the issue.