Top U.S. CDC covid vaccine adviser quits after RFK Jr. ended recommendations

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos said she could no longer help vulnerable people after officials removed recommendations to immunize children and pregnant women

 

June 5, 2025

 

A top coronavirus vaccine adviser at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has resigned, citing concerns that she could no longer help vulnerable people after federal health officials rescinded long-standing recommendations to immunize children and pregnant women.

 

Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos said in an email to colleagues Tuesday that she made a “personal decision” to quit the CDC after 12 years. “My career in public health and vaccinology started with a deep-seated desire to help the most vulnerable members of our population, and that is not something I am able to continue doing in this role,” she wrote, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post.

 

She said she made her decision Friday. Her email did not further detail her reasons for leaving. It came days after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other health agency leaders said they would stop recommending coronavirus shots for healthy children and pregnant women.

 

(more)

 

Washington Post

https://archive.ph/lkrgm

 

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Background on this issue from Paul Offit, a U.S. pediatrician and expert on vaccinology:

 

The Covid Vaccine-Pregnancy Flip Flop

RFK Jr. just made it difficult for pregnant women to protect themselves against Covid. Why?

 

Because of RFK Jr. "...on May 29, 2025, the adult immunization schedule eliminated the recommendation for pregnant women to receive a Covid vaccine. The United States is now the only country in the world that doesn’t consider pregnancy to be a risk for severe Covid infection. [emphasis added]

 

Normally, a change of this magnitude would be vetted through the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP), professional groups like the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) among others, and public comment. Not this time. In fact, the CDC was completely blindsided by RFK Jr.’s announcement.

 

The decision to put pregnant women at unnecessary risk is the result of one man’s zealotry. In the years ahead, RFK Jr. will likely do everything he can to make vaccines less available, less affordable, and more feared. To believe otherwise, is to ignore everything he has said and done for the past 20 years."

 

(more)

 

https://pauloffit.substack.com/p/the-covid-vaccine-pregnancy-flip

 

 

Paul Offit is an American pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases, vaccines, immunology, and virology. He is a professor of pediatrics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and also is a member of the U.S. FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee. 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Viewpoint: Eroding trust by making COVID vaccine decisions with no transparency

Vaccine Integrity Project Staff and Advisers

June 4, 2025

A departure from practice and prudence

"On May 27, flanked by the leaders of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH), Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a 58-second video posted to X that the COVID vaccine had been removed from the CDC's recommended immunization schedule for healthy children and pregnant women. One headline splashed, "CDC removes COVID vaccine recommendation for healthy children and pregnant women." In reality, the secretary took this unilateral action without CDC leadership present, without CDC advisory engagement, and without informing the CDC in advance. [emphasis added]

 

None of the evidence that went into Secretary Kennedy's recommendations was either presented or available—contrary to HHS's slogans of "radical transparency" and "gold standard science," and in contrast to the open, public process that has been used to date, which allowed everyone to see how recommendations were developed. 

 

Announcing such a consequential shift in public health policy via social media abandoned the deliberative, evidence-based process to determine vaccine use that healthcare providers, insurers, state health departments, and, most important, the American people expect and deserve: an intentional process specifically designed to build trust."

 

(more)

 

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/viewpoint-eroding-trust-making-covid-vaccine-decisions-no-transparency

 

 

[dinsdale]

The aim of the COVID-19 immunisation programme is to prevent serious disease (hospitalisation and/or mortality) arising from COVID-19.

Over the last 4 years, population immunity to SARS-CoV-2 has been increasing due to a combination of naturally acquired immunity following recovery from infection and vaccine-derived immunity (this combination is termed ‘hybrid immunity’). COVID-19 is now a relatively mild disease for most people, though it can still be unpleasant, with rates of hospitalisation and death from COVID-19 having reduced significantly since SARS-CoV-2 first emerged. Age has always been strongly associated with the risk of hospitalisation and mortality from COVID-19, with the oldest in the population being the most vulnerable.

As COVID-19 becomes an endemic disease, and with a move towards standard assessment of cost-effectiveness, the focus of the programme is shifting towards targeted vaccination of the oldest adults and individuals who are immunosuppressed. These are the 2 groups who continue to be at higher risk of serious disease, including mortality.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccination-in-2025-and-spring-2026-jcvi-advice/jcvi-statement-on-covid-19-vaccination-in-2025-and-spring-2026

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

The UK government lately seems to be basing their COVID vaccines more on saving money (cost-effectiveness) as opposed to protecting the health of all of their citizens.

 

From the above source:

 

"In reviewing the cost-effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy, taking into account the potential health benefits in the pregnant person and the neonate including neonatal death, JCVI advised that it was highly unlikely that vaccination in pregnancy would be cost-effective"

 

In contrast, here's some pertinent data from the U.S. on COVID risk:

Why does vaccination during pregnancy matter? And why should babies get vaccinated again?

"1. To protect you.

Pregnancy puts extra stress on the body: lung function changes, blood clot risk rises, immune function shifts. Covid-19 infection adds another layer. Compared to nonpregnant people of the same age and health status, pregnant people with Covid-19 are more likely to require ICU care, need a ventilator, or die. They’re also at higher risk for complications like preeclampsia, blood clots, and cesarean delivery.

 

2. To protect your fetus before birth.

Covid-19 infection during pregnancy increases the risk of preterm birth and, during previous Covid waves, stillbirths. (During the Delta wave, a study showed a 4-fold increase in stillbirths.) It can also damage the placenta, impairing antibody transfer. While risks have gone down (largely thanks to background immunity), they’re not zero."

 

 

 

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/covid-vaccines-for-pregnancy-and

 

 

[rattlesnake]

Good.

[Red Phoenix]

https://aseannow.com/topic/1362607-amyloid-fibrils-found-in-3-year-old-after-in-utero-mrna-injection-exposure/

 

Good that the mother got the Covid-19 shot during pregnancy (1 week before giving birth prematurely), otherwise it might have been worse...

[impulse]

12 hours ago, rattlesnake said:

Good.

 

Agreed.  Especially after the disaster that saw the highest spending country in the world with 4% of the population suffer 16% of the world's Covid deaths.  They should all hang their heads in shame.  Their only success was grifting more money from Americans. 

 

And, dollars to donut holes, she's really leaving for a high paying job in Big Pharma.  Watch this space...

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Yes, and why did so many Americans die from COVID, a lot before the vaccines became available, and a lot more after? The answer is clear:

 

New Analysis Shows Vaccines Could Have Prevented 318,000 Deaths

PROVIDENCE, May 13, 2022 – A new analysis by researchers at Brown School of Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Microsoft AI for Health shows that vaccines could have prevented at least 318,000 Covid-19 deaths between January 2021 and April 2022. This means that at least every second person who died from Covid-19 since vaccines became available might have been saved by getting the shot.

...

“At a time when many in the U.S. have given up on vaccinations, these numbers are a stark reminder of the effectiveness of vaccines in fighting this pandemic”, said Stefanie Friedhoff, associate professor of the practice in Health Services, Policy and Practice at the Brown University School of Public Health, and a co-author of the analysis. “We must continue to invest in getting more Americans vaccinated and boosted to save more lives.”

...

Nationally, if states had continued to vaccinate at their internal peak rate to 100% coverage, 318,981 Covid-19 deaths could have been prevented. If all states had vaccinated at the highest peak rate across all states, 338,961 Covid-19 deaths could have been prevented. Over 1 in 2 deaths due to COVID could have been prevented had vaccine demand been sustained throughout 2021 and 2022."

 

https://globalepidemics.org/2022/05/13/new-analysis-shows-vaccines-could-have-prevented-318000-deaths/

 

People believing anti-vax views like certain posters here are a large part of why there were so many needless deaths after COVID vaccines became widely and freely available in the U.S.

 

 

 

[rattlesnake]

1 hour ago, impulse said:

And, dollars to donut holes, she's really leaving for a high paying job in Big Pharma.

 

Of course… From one department to the other within the same cartel.

[rattlesnake]

8 hours ago, Red Phoenix said:

https://aseannow.com/topic/1362607-amyloid-fibrils-found-in-3-year-old-after-in-utero-mrna-injection-exposure/

 

Good that the mother got the Covid-19 shot during pregnancy (1 week before giving birth prematurely), otherwise it might have been worse...

 

Soooooo so much worse… Now everybody together, correlation does not prove causatioooon…

 

[Lacessit]

9 minutes ago, rattlesnake said:

 

Soooooo so much worse… Now everybody together, correlation does not prove causatioooon…

 

Now everybody together, a population of one in a statistical correlation has as much meaning as a cow playing tennis.

[stevenl]

5 hours ago, impulse said:

And, dollars to donut holes, she's really leaving for a high paying job in Big Pharma.  Watch this space...

If someone like this leaves the cdc, i would expect plenty of job offers. Any issues with that?