Memo to The New York Times: What Those Former CDC Leaders Didn’t Prove

On Monday, September 1, The New York Times published a guest essay entitled, "We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health," by nine former high-ranking CDC officials. It is written to sound definitive and yet it supplies no evidence to counter the realities the public knows well. It relies on status, insinuation, and catastrophic framing, and then asks the reader to treat all three as evidence.

That is not analysis. That is reputation management disguised as alarm.

The authors frontload their credentials. They tell us they are former directors or acting directors of the CDC under Republican and Democratic presidents. “Collectively,” they write, “we have spent more than 100 years working at the C.D.C., the world’s pre-eminent public health agency. We served under multiple Republican and Democratic administrations — every president from Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump — alongside thousands of dedicated staff members who shared our commitment to saving lives and improving health.”

Impressive. But that is not evidence. It’s merely preamble. The question is what did they accomplish during those 100 years and whether the public should accept their view of risk, uncritically. To do so would require forgetting not only the CDC's recent failures—from contaminated Covid-19 test kits to the masking flip-flops of 2020—but the deeper epistemic collapse of an agency that often failed to distinguish between narrative consensus and reality. It is difficult to be grateful for their “past achievements” when they are writing their own grade report without sanctifying their contributions to and tolerance of dysfunction.

Take their reference to Operation Warp Speed, which they call a “shining example.” The FDA's Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) standard is not "proven safe and effective"; it is "may be effective" based on a risk-benefit calculus under uncertainty.

Calling EUA-cleared mRNA products “highly effective and safe” as if they had already satisfied full licensure standards rewrites regulatory history. The FDA's own guidance defines EUA criteria precisely to reflect that tradeoff. It is still not clear to many what outcome thresholds justified continuation of EUA status once it became evident the products did not meet their original target. The benchmark had been 60% efficacy; transmission-blocking was the implied societal justification. When real-world data showed the vaccine failed to stop transmission, the goalposts simply moved.

More importantly, none of these directors objected. None of these directors protested. None flew a flag. Not one published an op-ed warning that scientific standards were being rewritten in real time. Not one dissented publicly when the CDC endorsed policies based on assumptions the agency's own data contradicted. Not one objected when immunity durability estimates evaporated. Not one spoke up when myocarditis signals emerged and CDC remained silent for months. Not one raised their voice when the definition of "vaccine" itself was quietly updated on CDC.gov. None of these directors objected. None protested. None flew a flag.

Further, if the authors believe Warp Speed is the model of health leadership, they must also explain its fallout: excess deaths in highly vaccinated populations in 2021–22; increasing all-cause mortality trends in the young; documented myocarditis and menstrual cycle disruption; and immune imprinting, reducing booster efficacy. These are not fringe claims; they are published findings.

On the measles, the authors cite the 2025 outbreak as if it proves a point. But it doesn’t prove what they think. The CDC’s own data show 1,408 cases as of August 2025. Over 85% were in isolated, under-vaccinated clusters. These 2-3 year cycling outbreaks are better used to target risk communication, not to tar all dissent as dangerous. Repeating the word "anti-vaccine" does not transform scientific disagreement into extremism.

They accuse HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of replacing experts with “unqualified individuals,” but offer no names. No CVs. No specific issues with the new experts. No comparison.

While failing to acknowledge the importance of shifting priorities after abysmal failures, they mention canceled research, but do not cite which studies, what topics, or what endpoints. They cite programs being "weakened," but supply no metrics. This is the crux: the op-ed asks us to accept institutional claims the way it once asked us to accept modeling estimates, test thresholds, and pandemic guidance—because they say so.

Their reference to Medicaid expansion and "millions losing coverage" is similarly imprecise. Coverage does not equal access, and they fail to note that given the chronic illness epidemic, “access” does not guarantee outcomes. The Oregon Medicaid RCT showed increased use and reduced financial strain but no significant change in most physical health outcomes in two years. We can debate policy design without resorting to fear mongering.

The same applies to global vaccine funding. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, has been a public-private, now private corporation that works to expand vaccination in low- and middle-income countries. Its tactics include working to tie together governments, global health organizations like UNICEF and the WHO, vaccine manufacturers, civil society, and donors, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to fund and coordinate vaccine programs and market development.

The authors portray the wind-down of Gavi support as a humanitarian crisis. What HHS actually did was freeze new commitments pending performance reviews and public transparency. That is a responsible governance decision, not a death sentence.

Finally, their invocation of life expectancy—”from 66 to 78 years” since the CDC's founding—ignores well-documented causes. The largest gains came from clean water infrastructure, sanitation, and refrigeration—not from modern biomedical interventions or CDC programming. Correlation is not causation. This kind of institutional hagiography erases the true history of public health.

When the CDC faltered in 2020, it was not because one leader failed to “have their back.” It was because the agency lost the public's trust by suppressing dissent, shifting goalposts, sticking to disproven and harmful narratives, and behaving more like a political actor than a scientific one.

The current restructuring under Kennedy may be uncomfortable for those who spent decades defending the status quo. But discomfort is not disproof. It’s healthy and ought to be considered American.

If the authors wish to indict new leadership, they must do more than call Kennedy “dangerous” and “unscientific.” They must name the policies, state the evidence, estimate the effect sizes, and show the math.

Their “guest essay,” part of a desperate flurry of hit pieces in the Times and elsewhere, does none of that. What it reveals is not Kennedy's failure but the authors’ complicity in the largest public health disaster in history.