Kennedy, rejecting data, fuels distrust of his own agencies

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifying before the Senate Committee on Finance on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. By promoting suspicions about the institutions he oversees, critics say Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is jeopardizing public health. He says he is pursuing transparency. (Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times)

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the U.S. death count from COVID-19 at 1.2 million. But Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. rejects his own department’s statistics.

“I don’t know how many died,” Kennedy told senators during a contentious hearing Thursday, adding, “I don’t think anybody knows, because there was so much data chaos coming out of the CDC.”

When Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said, accurately, that it was becoming harder for people to get COVID shots at pharmacies, Kennedy denied that, retorting: “Everyone can get access to them.” He also claimed mRNA vaccines “cause serious harm, including death, particularly in young people,” though the CDC found “no increased risk of death” from the shots.

Kennedy’s defiant performance at the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, his critics say, put on vivid display what happens when someone with no medical or scientific training and a conspiracy-minded approach takes charge of the nation’s public health.

Instead of being guided by rigorous research and nuanced debate over complex issues that defy easy answers, the country’s health secretary rejects facts that do not fit his theories and casts out experts who are not aligned with him. He is buoyed by the support of a vocal populist base that shares his suspicions of organized medicine and is energized by his push for a new approach.

Kennedy’s distrust of his department’s scientists and doctors has created turmoil within the nation’s public health agencies, particularly the CDC. Mass firings and restructuring have stripped the institution of expertise. And Kennedy dismissed an entire panel of vaccine experts and fired the CDC director — whom he had called a “brilliant microbiologist and a tech wizard” — just one month after the Senate confirmed her.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Health and Human Services Department said that “Secretary Kennedy was debunking numerous false claims, emphasizing that the American people deserve full transparency from the agencies that serve them,” citing his “commitment to evidence-based science.”

Kennedy has repeatedly vowed to restore trust in the agencies he leads. In an appearance on “Fox & Friends” on Sunday, he reiterated what he said at Thursday’s hearing, defending his shake-up at the CDC and accusing agency scientists of failing to document vaccine injuries and “stonewalling” him in requests to review vaccine safety data. “This is malpractice,” he said.

In making his case against the medical establishment, Kennedy has seized on widely held concerns about whether it puts profits before patients. It is true that the pharmaceutical industry is a lucrative business, raking in tens of billions in profits each quarter. Medical journals and elected officials do take financial contributions from the industry.

Like all vaccines, the COVID shots can in rare cases produce serious side effects. And the CDC has publicly acknowledged its shortcomings with respect to data gathering during the pandemic, and has moved to correct them.

But by citing such episodes without context and putting a nefarious spin on the work of mainstream institutions, Kennedy is helping fuel the current crisis of mistrust in public health, according to experts who study conspiracy theories and their role in society. His supporters don’t trust the agencies he oversees, and his detractors don’t trust him.

By “accusing powerful people of doing things in secret for their own benefit, against the common good,” Kennedy is trafficking in conspiracy theories, according to Joseph Uscinski, a political scientist at the University of Miami who studies the phenomenon.

Having a top government official contradicting science is “a serious, serious problem,” Uscinkski said, “because the hope is that, in a free society, you develop expertise and methods for developing knowledge, and you build institutions to do that, and you develop ways to find out what’s true and what’s false.” He added: “Once you pervert those institutions, now there’s no way to know what’s true or false.”

People across the political spectrum are alarmed. In recent days, Kennedy’s sister Kerry and his nephew Joe Kennedy III called for him to step down. Three former surgeons general, including Dr. Jerome Adams, who served during the first Trump administration, wrote in an essay for USA Today that Kennedy was jeopardizing the integrity of the CDC and public health.

President Donald Trump, who promised to let “Bobby go wild on health” — and who, like Kennedy, has rejected scientific evidence in asserting that vaccines are linked to autism — has not criticized Kennedy.

But Trump did contradict him and like-minded officials, such as the Florida surgeon general, who announced last week that the state would end all vaccine mandates, including for children. A memo from Republican pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Bob Ward warned Republicans before the hearing that limiting access to childhood vaccines could hurt them politically, citing “sky-high” approval for routine vaccinations among swing voters.

“It’s a tough stance,” Trump said, when asked about Florida’s action. “You have vaccines that work. They just pure and simple work. They’re not controversial at all, and I think those vaccines should be used.”

In the nearly 80 years since it was established, the CDC’s recommendations on vaccination have stood as the gold standard, nearly always accepted across the country. Now states are going their own way, with Republican states loosening vaccine requirements while Democratic states tighten them.

Before Florida’s move, the Republican governor of Idaho signed a measure this year that bans all vaccine mandates, although there are exemptions for hospitals and a provision allowing schools to send home sick children. And Democratic states such as California, Washington, Oregon and Massachusetts are adopting their own vaccine recommendations.

An August poll by KFF, a health policy research organization, found that about half the public expresses confidence in government agencies like the CDC and Food and Drug Administration to ensure the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, but only 37% “have at least some confidence” the agencies will act independently without interference from outside interests.

Kennedy, the poll found, “continues to be the least trusted source of information on vaccines,” with just 37% of the public saying they trust him at least a fair amount.

Kennedy’s recent announcement that COVID-19 vaccines are no longer recommended for healthy children or adults younger than 65 has led to confusion and conflicting policies, with pharmacies in some states requiring a prescription and others not carrying the shots at all.

“It does matter when the country’s leading health official has a conspiratorial mindset and encourages suspicion about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, among other things,” said Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College who studies misperception. “It makes it almost impossible to engage in an evidence-based policymaking process about public health.”

Kennedy’s critics say he accepts government numbers when they are convenient to him. He wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the United States has 4.2% of the world’s population but had 19% of COVID deaths — a calculation that suggests he knew how many Americans died, despite what he told senators Thursday.