WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday urged pharmaceutical companies to publicly prove that their Covid-19 products work, saying in a Truth Social post that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is “being ripped apart over this question.”
“I want the answer, and I want it NOW,” he wrote in what appeared to be his first public acknowledgement of recent tumult at the CDC.
Drug companies have long shared findings with government regulators and the public showing that their Covid-19 products are overwhelmingly safe and effective. In his post, Trump said he has been shown data demonstrating the vaccines and drugs are effective and have saved millions of lives, but he accused the companies behind the products of not sharing that information publicly — or with officials at the CDC.
Trump used the post, which comes five days after the ouster of Susan Monarez as director of the CDC and resignation of several other top officials, to urge companies to “clear up this MESS, one way or the other.”
Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has tried to move on after pushing out a CDC director, less than 30 days into her tenure, over vaccine policy. In an email to agency staff on Thursday, Kennedy pledged to continue what he has described as a mission to restore trust to the agency, touting “significant progress” already.
Public health experts, physicians, researchers, as well as current and former CDC employees, have said that Kennedy’s approach as well as cuts to both spending and staff have already hobbled the agency, warning that matters will worsen if he is allowed to continue.
Trump’s support will be crucial to the success of Kennedy’s agenda and its seismic implications for American health care — especially as the administration must choose a new nominee to lead CDC. So far, Kenedy has faced relatively little resistance from the White House, and the president appears to have gone along with the push to oust Monarez. It was the White House that announced last this week that Trump fired her, even though the announcement was initially made by Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services.
But in the Monday post, Trump appears to be torn between Kennedy and his detractors.
The president doesn’t appear to embrace Kennedy’s view that Covid vaccines were decidedly harmful. (Evidence has repeatedly shown the shots to be clearly safe and effective for most people.)
Still, Trump, despite saying he saw “extraordinary” evidence from Pfizer and others, did not appear fully convinced either — even though he has previously touted the success of Operation Warp Speed, the government-backed effort to develop Covid countermeasures, including vaccines.
“I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as ‘BRILLIANT’ as many say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, and why???” he wrote of the initiative.
Pfizer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Experienced observers of the Trump administration were uncertain what to make the Truth Social post, viewing it as being akin to a Rorschach test.
“If you look at the reactions to that weird post… maybe one begins to understand it,” said one former official, speaking on condition of anonymity to address the issue candidly. “The anti-vaxxers love it, they think he’s saying Pfizer lied to him. The public health people like it too, they think he’s trying to create daylight with RFK.”
The former official said he “would not want to be Al Bourla today,” referring to the Pfizer CEO.
Another former government official said that Trump may realize any barriers to access to Covid vaccines could hurt him politically. In that light, he said, the post could reflect both animosity on the part of Republicans toward vaccine manufacturers and Trump’s unwillingness to criticize or express regret over Operation Warp Speed.
John Maraganore, the venture capitalist and founding CEO of Alnylam, chose to be optimistic about the meaning of the post.
“I’m delighted that the President acknowledges the incredible data that has been generated with covid vaccines and the challenge is not that companies have not been able to document their data and evidence, they do it in the worlds top medical journals i think the challenge is that doubt ahs been sowed on the safety of these vaccines by the anti-vaxxer community and that is a very unfortunate force that frankly needs to be dispelled by the CDC – the government.”
The vaccines developed through Operation Warp Speed were widely considered safe and effective, with public health experts estimating they saved millions of lives through the pandemic.
Also on Monday, nine former CDC directors, spanning Republican and Democratic administrations, wrote in The New York Times that Kennedy’s moves to remake the agency are endangering the entire nation.
“We are worried about the wide-ranging impact that all these decisions will have on America’s health security,” they wrote. “This is unacceptable, and it should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings.”