Officials in California, Oregon and Washington have formed a vaccine and health alliance as Florida becomes the first state to end all vaccine mandates in schools.
The West Coast Health Alliance, announced Wednesday, is “a unified regional response to the Trump Administration’s destruction of the U.S. CDC’s credibility and scientific integrity,” according to a statement from the states’ governors. The alliance is designed to provide residents with “evidence-based unified recommendations” for immunizations.
The states’ Democratic governors cited President Donald Trump’s “mass firing of CDC doctors and scientists.”
“The CDC has become a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences,” the governors said. “California, Oregon, and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk.”
In response to the newly formed alliance, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon accused Democratic-led states of having “completely eroded the American people’s trust in public health agencies” during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“[The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices] remains the scientific body guiding immunization recommendations in this country, and HHS will ensure policy is based on rigorous evidence and Gold Standard Science, not the failed politics of the pandemic,” Nixon said in a statement.
Few specifics have been offered as to how the new alliance could influence which vaccines are available in their states, according to OPB.
One option is a bulk vaccine purchasing, according to the outlet.
Dr Sejal Hathi, head of the Oregon Health Authority, said the alliance is “exploring all possible avenues for expanding access and coverage of vaccines, including coordinated purchasing and access programs.” She added the goal is to ensure continued access to vaccines with no out-of-pocket costs.
These three states aren’t the only ones considering their own vaccine guidance in response to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who has promoted conspiracy theories, including false claims about Covid-19. Health officials from several northeastern states — including Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont — met two weeks ago to discuss formulating their own vaccine recommendations for residents, NBC Boston reports.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo also announced Wednesday that the state will move to no longer require students to receive certain routine and safe vaccines to attend K-12 school, marking the end of a decades-old public health practice that’s still used in every other U.S. state and Washington, D.C.
Many Democrats slammed the move, and some Republicans even joined in. Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican and a physician, called the move “a terrible thing for public health,” according to The New York Times. Cassidy supported Kennedy’s nomination earlier this year.
“We’re going to start having vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks at school, you’re going to have children who come to school with measles and infect other people who either have not been vaccinated or have some sort of disease, like cancer,” Cassidy said.
States are scrambling to issue their own vaccine guidelines as federal health officials decry changes to the CDC under Kennedy.
Last week, Kennedy ousted CDC Director Susan Monarez and replaced her with his deputy, Jim O'Neill. A flurry of resignations hit the agency soon after, with four top agency leaders departing last Wednesday. The ex-leaders all slammed the administration’s changes to the CDC, and warned that public health could suffer as a result.
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who left his post leading the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, condemned Kennedy in his resignation letter.
“I am not sure who the Secretary is listening to, but it is quite certainly not to us,” Daskalakis wrote. “Unvetted and conflicted outside organizations seem to be the sources HHS use over the gold standard science of CDC and other reputable sources.”
“The intentional eroding of trust in low-risk vaccines favoring natural infection and unproven remedies will bring us to a pre-vaccine era where only the strong will survive and many if not all will suffer,” he added.
Nine former CDC directors then published a guest essay Monday in The New York Times, accusing Kennedy of “endangering every American’s health.”
“What the health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has done to the C.D.C. and to our nation’s public health system over the past several months — culminating in his decision to fire Susan Monarez as C.D.C. director days ago — is unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our country had ever experienced,” the ex-directors wrote.
Kennedy, in an apparent response to this wave of criticism, published an op-ed Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal claiming the CDC “must restore public trust—and that restoration has begun.” Kennedy said he plans to “restore the CDC’s focus on infectious disease, invest in innovation, and rebuild trust through integrity and transparency.”
More than 1,000 Health and Human Services employees also signed an open letter published Wednesday morning demanding Kennedy’s resignation.
“Should he decline to resign, we call upon the president and U.S. Congress to appoint a new secretary of health and human services, one whose qualifications and experience ensure that health policy is informed by independent and unbiased peer-reviewed science,” the letter reads. “We expect those in leadership to act when the health of Americans is at stake.”
