Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blasted the government’s COVID-19 response in a Senate hearing this week, calling it politicized and dishonest, and urging reforms at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The whole process was politicized. Senator, I mean, we were lied to about everything,” Kennedy said.
“We were lied to about natural immunity. We were lied to about, you know, we were told again and again, the vaccines would prevent transmission. They’d prevent infection. It wasn’t true. They knew it from the start. It wasn’t true because that’s what the animal studies in the clinical trials showed. We were told that there was science behind cloth masks,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy argued that reforms are necessary at the CDC.
“As my father once said, ‘Progress is a nice word, but change is its motivator. And change has its enemies,'” Kennedy said. “That’s why we need new blood at CDC.”
Kennedy also referenced President Joe Biden’s comments on vaccines.
“President Biden said in August, I would never take that vaccine, the Trump vaccine. And he came in, he mandated it, and then he fired the two top health officials at FDA who said, hey, this thing has not been properly tested. So the whole process was politicized even today,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy said the administration’s planned changes at the CDC are intended to restore confidence in the agency, which he argued lost public trust during its pandemic response, according to Fox News.
“Most CDC rank-and-file staff are honest public servants,” Kennedy wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Under this renewed mission, they can do their jobs as scientists without bowing to politics.”