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Leaders of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have ordered staff this week not to release the assessment of their experts who discovered that the risk of catching measles is high in areas in the vicinity of outbreaks where vaccination rates are left behind, according to internal records that are assessed by propublica.
In a broken plan to roll out the news, the agency would have emphasized the importance of vaccinating people against the highly contagious and potentially deadly disease that has spread to 19 states, the records show.
A CDC spokesperson told Propublica in a written statement that the agency decided not to release the assessment “because it says nothing that the public does not yet know.” She added that the CDC vaccines continues to recommend “the best way to protect against measles.”
But what the best public health agency of the nation said that a shift then shows in his long-standing reports about vaccines, a sign that it can fall under health and human service secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an old critic of vaccines:
“The decision to vaccinate is a personal one,” said the statement, which, following a column that Kennedy wrote for the Fox News website. “People must consult their caregivers to understand their options to get a vaccine and must be informed about the potential risks and benefits related to vaccines.”
Propublica shared the new CDC statement about personal choice and risk with Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. For her, the shift in messages and squelching this routine announcement is alarming.
“I am a bit stunned by that language,” Nuzzo said. “No vaccine is without risk, but that sounds like it is a very active coin throw of a decision. We have already had more cases of measles in 2025 than in 2024, and it is spread to several states. It is not currently a coin throw.”
For many years, the CDC has not chopped words on vaccines. It promoted them with confidence. One campaign was called “Get My Flu Shot”. The website of the agency told medical care providers that they play a crucial role in helping parents to choose vaccines for their children: “Instead of saying:” What do you want to do about shots? “, Say” your child needs three shots today. “
Nuzzo wishes that the predictors of the CDC would give more details about their data and evidence about the spread of measles, no less. “The growing scale and seriousness of this outbreak of measles and the urgent need for more data to guide the response, underlines why we need a fully manned and functional CDC and more resources for national and local health departments,” she said.
The Kennedy office supervises the CDC and announced on Thursday that it was ready to eliminate 2,400 jobs there.
When asked what role, if present, Kennedy played in the decision not to release the risk assessment, the HHS communication director said that the demolished announcement “was part of an ongoing process to improve the communication processes – nothing more, nothing less.” The CDC, he repeated, continues to recommend vaccination “as the best way to protect against measles.”
“Secretary Kennedy believes that the decision to vaccinate is personal and that people should consult their care provider to understand their options to get a vaccine,” said Andrew G. Nixon. “It is important that the American people have radical transparency and is informed to make personal decisions in health care.”
Nixon responded to questions about criticism of the decision on some CDC employees and wrote: “Some people on the CDC seem more interested in protecting their own status or agenda instead of aligning this administration and the true mission of Health.”
The risk assessment of the CDC was carried out by the Center Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, which were partly dependent on new disease data from the outbreak in Texas. The CDC created the center to tackle a large shortcoming that was imposed during the COVID-19 Pandemie. It functions as a national weather service for infectious diseases, the use of data and expertise to predict the course of outbreaks as a meteorologist warns of storms.
Other risk assessments by the center have been posted by the CDC, although their conclusions may seem clear.
At the end of February, for example, predictors said the distribution of the H5N1 bird flu analyzes people who “come into contact with potentially infected animals or polluted surfaces or liquids” confronted with a moderate to high risk of connecting the disease. The risk for the general American population, they said, was low.
In the case of the measles rating, modelers in the center determined that the risk of the disease is low in the US for the general public, but they discovered that the risk is much in communities with low vaccination rates that are near outbreaks or share close social ties with those areas with outbreaks. The CDC had a moderate faith in the assessment, according to an internal Q&A that explained the findings. The agency, it said, lacks detailed data about the start of the disease for all patients in West -Texas and still learns about the vaccination rates in affected communities, as well as journeys and social contact among those infected. (The H5N1 rating was also made with moderate confidence.)
The internal plan to roll out the news of the prediction called up to the expert doctor who leads the response of the CDC to measles to be the main spokesperson who answers questions. “It is important to note that at local levels the vacc coverage percentages can vary considerably and that the bags of non -vaccinated people can exist, even in areas with a high vaccination cover in general,” said the plan. “The best way to protect against measles is to get measles, mumps and rubella (mmr) vaccine.”
This week, however, since the number of confirmed cases rose to 483, in an e -mail more than 30 desk staff who after a discussion in the office of the CDC director: “Leadership does not want to pursue that this is placed on the website.”
The cancellation was “not normal at all,” said a CDC employee who spoke anonymously for fear of reprisals with showing off. “I have never seen a roll -out plan that was canceled so far in the process.”
Anxiety has built CDC employees about whether the agency will bow to its public health reports to match Kennedy, a lawyer who founded an anti-vaccine group and transferred clients to a law firm that suits a vaccine manufacturer.
During Kennedy's first week at work, HHS stopped the CDC campaign that encouraged people to get flu shots during a wild flu season. In the night that the Trump administration started to fire testing employees in the federal government, some important CDC flu web pages were removed. Remains of a few campaign features were recovered after NPR reported this.
But some at the agency had the feeling that the new leadership had sent a message loud and clearly: when no one paid attention, existing reports about public health could be silenced for long.
On the day in February that the world heard that a non -vaccinated child had died of measles in Texas, the first such death in the US since 2015, the HHS secretary tried the seriousness of the outbreak. “We have outbreaks of measles every year,” he said during a cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump.
In an interview on FOX News this month, Kennedy defended doctors in Texas who, according to him, treated measles with a steroid, an antibiotic and liver oil, a supplement that is a lot of vitamin. “They see what they describe as almost wonderful and immediately recovery from that,” said Kennedy.
While parents have stored vitamin A supplements near the outbreak in Texas in Texas, doctors racing there to ensure that only vaccination, not the vitamin, measles can occur.
Nevertheless, the CDC added a mention on vitamin A to the Mazles website for clinicians.
On Wednesday, CNN reported that various children admitted to the hospital in Lubbock, Texas, had an abnormal liver function, a probably sign of toxicity of too much vitamin A.
Texas health officials also said that the Trump government's decision to withdraw $ 11 billion in pandemic related subsidies throughout the country, will hinder their ability to respond to the growing outbreak, according to the Texas Tribune.
Measles are one of the most contagious diseases and can be dangerous. About 20 percent of non -vaccinated people who get measles in the hospital. And almost 1 to 3 of every 1,000 children with measles will die from breathing and neurological complications. The virus can stay in the air for two hours after an infected person has left an area and can spread patients measles before they even know they have it.
This week, Amtrak said it was aware that they were exposed to the disease this month when a measles passenger rode one of his trains from New York City to Washington, DC.
