White House fires CDC director Monarez after she refuses to resign
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
> President Donald Trump nominated Monarez after withdrawing his first pick to lead the CDC, former Republican congressman Dave Weldon, hours before his confirmation hearing.
Is this a record from confirmation to firing?
The show would film him saying those infamous words, and show the reactions when the contestants were told. Likewise, in his current job he tends to fire people over Twitter.
Also: he had no idea she was actually going to try doing her job. He was hoping for another yes-woman and got someone semi-competent. I doubt they'll make that mistake a second time, expect some reality-TV star to be the next nomination.
Scaramucci wasn't in a Senate-confirmed position, so while perhaps useful as a unit of longevity measure, he’s not a relevant confirmation–firing competitor.
Other sources of guidance, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics' immunization schedule[0] and the WHO recommendations[1] are gaining prominence instead.
If you are an opponent of vaccines or a supporter of "MAHA", who is happy with what the CDC/FDA is doing, you might want to consider that the way they're doing it has utterly failed to convince the vast majority of people who are responsible for actually executing their guidance, and therefore will have limited impact.
As I am neither of those things, I am just glad these other options exist.
[0] https://publications.aap.org/redbook/resources/15585/AAP-Imm... [1] https://www.who.int/teams/immunization-vaccines-and-biologic...
(And no, I am not looking to debate vaccines or whatever else with you. I'm making a point about how fringe movements who get into power then have to solve the same problems the powerful movements did originally.)
"Nineteen states have laws or regulations that only let pharmacists administer vaccines recommended by ACIP, according to the American Pharmacists Association.
In those states, pharmacies may not be able to dole out shots even for people who fit the FDA’s narrowed range until the committee makes its recommendation."
https://apnews.com/article/covid-19-vaccine-insurance-covera...
Not to mention that common vaccines are not very expensive, even if you're paying out of pocket.
I get frequent emails from both my employer and my insurance plan reminding me to get flu shots, annual physicals, etc. because it's cheaper for them if I stay healthy vs. having to pay (potentially a lot) for treatment of preventable illness or health problems.
These companies act in lockstep and the service is socialized - you pay for everyone else. Its the most shitty approach imaginable to healthcare.
You get all the greed and ass fucking of private healthcare, with all the choice (or lack thereof) of huge socialized medicine. And, cherry on top, the private sector has WAY less rules than the public sector.
Your health insurance here is also responsible for paying your sick leave, so they are SUPER motivated for you not to get the flu or covid.
The risk in this implicitly will be that some vaccines may be declared illegal, or not permitted in some other licencing model, which means physicians will be at risk of their professional registration to make them available.
I could imagine a similar risk in the prescribing of Mifepristone/Misoprostol. Not to actually declare 'day after' pill illegal, but withdraw licence to use the drugs, and put doctors at risk if they go ahead.
Incorrect.
A lot of scientists believe the Covid vaccinations should never have been approved in healthy young children. Omitting the Covid vaccine from the childhood schedule, in fact, is the position of the WHO, and many European countries, including the UK [1], Germany [2] and France [3]. The USA was an outlier [4].
[1] https://www.nhs.uk/vaccinations/covid-19-vaccine/
[2] https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/en/coronavirus/f...
[3] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/health/article/2023/02/25/covid-19...
[4] https://archive.ph/aD00n (NYT link)
The Covid vaccines for children (and especially infants) were approved with essentially no proof of effectiveness because bad outcomes from Covid are so incredibly rare in these age groups. They would have needed to run gigantic trials in order to have any hope of catching any signal, and that was deemed expensive and/or impractical. Instead, the trials used use (poor) proxies for effectiveness, such as antibody titres. In some cases, even these proxies barely showed a signal.
Subsequently, there have been real signals of bad side-effects from the vaccine in children (i.e. myocarditis, particularly in young boys), that make the risk/reward trade-off incredibly cloudy. A great many people don't know this, because the issue has become political on both sides of the debate.
The chance of harm to children from the Covid vaccine is small, but so is the benefit. Unfortunately, one side of the US political spectrum only knows the former part of that statement, and the other side only knows the latter. Both are half the story.
That the FDA didn't even use the supposed safety concerns also pints to the scientific weakness of those concerns. All the scientists are being forced out of the FDA and they are not being consulted by leadership on scientific decisions, and even in that situation the fake science safety concerns were not cited in the decision.
Same here.
And personally, as someone who isn't in the medical field in any way, what's been done to these agencies has removed pretty much all trust I have in their recommendations. They look like they are being run by political hacks for political purposes now, and actively disregard things like evidence and truth.
Covid vaccines seem like they are going to be more of a pain to get because I will have to go to a doctor instead of the pharmacist. Flu and pneumonia vaccines don’t seem to be affected yet.
I am paying more attention to other country’s health departments since you can no longer trust the US.
On the other hand, the US was one of the last countries to admit that the COVID vaccines - especially the non mRNA variants effectiveness wore off. I got a booster off label a couple of months before it was officially recommended in the US based on credible evidence from other country’s health departments
There's some intense irony here that "vaccine tourism" used to be an active economic boost for the US (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/covid-shot-tourism-latin...), and now it's going to be very much the other way around.
I could literally scream until my lungs bled over the credulousness and willful ignorance of the broader populace. I understand there will always be esoteric areas of science and technology that no layperson should be expected to meaningfully comprehend, but why doesn't that still induce the natural response of "Ask my doctor,"? The lack apparent lack of critical thinking skills is frankly appalling.
Or was she put in that position for the purpose of being fired, just for the news story, and this is all going to plan?
:(
Old owners sell the business, become the C team with profit targets for a big payout.
Minutes after the payout the old C team resign to be with family/visit foreign country.
New C team comes on board.
New C team cant figure out how the numbers work.
New C team realises that the books arent as in the black as described.
New C team refuses to go down with the ship, resign to be with family etc.
Owner manages the business for a few months, sells it back to one of the original owners for pennies on the dollar.
The owner was very prideful and I think could not accept he had been conned, the only way out for him to keep his pride was to sell the business back to them.
> Weldon, a Florida representative from 1995 until 2009, has been critical of the federal government’s oversight of vaccine safety. While in the House, he sponsored a bill that would have taken vaccine safety oversight from the CDC and created a separate “Agency for Vaccine Safety Evaluation” under HHS, and as recently as 2019 repeated the disproved claim that “some children can get an autism spectrum disorder from a vaccine” in an interview.
This way maybe a real scientist will need to step in from the ranks instead of a Trump lackey.
Yeah, I know: we don't have a majority... but we can hope.
In politics, we saw what happens when the republicans can't agree with each other and failed to elect a majority leader. We also designate 1 person to control a significant part of our government, not a committee people with opposite view points.
Inconsistent messaging from leadership creates distrust amount the workers/population and prevents people from accomplishing anything.
Biden also fired Rodney Scott for disagreement on immigration strategy.
Obama fired General Stanley McChrystal for critical comments about Obama.
What year did it suddenly not become ok to fire people that disagree with you?
Dissent is an important part of good collaborative decision-making. Demanding that everyone "sing the same song" or get out eliminates the ability to adapt, improve, and correct.
- Musk, Zuckerberg, Trump, Bezos, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Travis Kalanick,
In politics:
- Trump, Xi, Putin, Biden [0], Obama [1]. When the republican party couldn't elect a chair, they were seen as dysfunctional.
If you can't sing together, the purpose fails:
- Quibi: founders disagreed. company failed.
- The Beatles (Lennon vs. McCartney)
- Soviet Union: Central Communist Party wanted to preserve the union, but republics (Baltic states, Ukraine, Georgia, etc.) demanded independence.
- Yugoslavia: Deep ethnic, religious, and national divides (Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Slovenes, etc.), each with different visions of the future.
[0] - Biden fired Gerald B. Wright for loyalty to Trump. Rodney Scott disagreed with Biden's immigration strategy and was also fired.
[1] - General Stanley McChrystal was fired for critical comments about Obama.
If the purpose of the organization is based in science, what does it matter if you accomplish anything if you've fired all the scientists and all you have left are the politicians and spokespeople?
And if the acts of Congress that created your organization mandate that science be conducted, is it maybe time to do some soul searching about why no one wants to sing your terrible song?
How can an organization learn, recognize new facts, adapt to change, and synthesize knowledge if everyone is constrained to singing one song?
But yes. Getting hired and directly opposing the direction your boss wants to take isn’t a recipe for a long career.
The only hope we have here is if Trump is following the advice of RFK Jr. personally as closely as possible.
He may very well be, have you seen his current condition?
How on earth do you have any standing to make any pronouncement? "You've done your research"? You know better with your 5 minutes of googling than scientists that spent their careers studying these things?
Sigh ...
I despair for how stupid our discourse has become, and how loud and and proud are people's public displays of stupidity and ignorance.