MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
When President Trump made his push to shrink the federal workforce, more than a thousand employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - the CDC - lost their jobs. Well now, every Tuesday, people protest the firings at the agency's headquarters in Atlanta. Today they were raising the alarm over the removal over all 17 members from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices - that's ACIP for short. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he would like a clean sweep. Sofi Gratas with Georgia Public Broadcasting was at today's protest. She is here with us now. Hey, Sofi.
SOFI GRATAS, BYLINE: Hi.
KELLY: Hey. So I gather it was public health workers, former and current, at this protest. You were talking to them. What did you hear about this move by RFK Jr. to dissolve the panel?
GRATAS: Yeah. So after dealing with some heavy rain that was on and off all afternoon, there ended up being several dozen people out in front of the CDC campus today, and many of them truly expressed despair over the complete overhaul of the advisory committee. I heard from Emilia Pasalic, who was laid off during the reduction in force earlier this year, and she called the move to dismantle the committee a real shame.
EMILIA PASALIC: I came to CDC to work because I believe in science, because I believe in saving people's lives. And one of the things that makes science powerful is that it's not something that somebody dictates.
GRATAS: Others that I talked to called the move a last straw in what has to them felt like a really overwhelming couple of months.
KELLY: And I want to get into what specific issues they have with the gutting of this panel. This is the panel, by the way, that makes recommendations to the CDC on what vaccines people should get, when they should get them. What else were people saying?
GRATAS: Yeah. They said that they hold the committee in high regard and that it was made up of scientists really at the top of their field, so that included pediatricians, immunologists, epidemiologists and others. Kathy Cavallaro is a retired CDC worker, and she said that she worked for over 20 years helping other countries create similar vaccine advisory committees to what the U.S. had.
KATHY CAVALLARO: The U.S. committee has been a model for those committees throughout the world, and it is simply embarrassing and heartbreaking to see what's happening.
GRATAS: So she doesn't think that it's a model anymore at this point, and she's worried that the next committee is going to be made up of people who don't trust the science behind vaccines or don't support vaccination efforts overall.
KELLY: And then give us a little bit of a fuller picture of these protests. I did not realize that people were showing up in front of the CDC every week. What else have people been calling for?
GRATAS: Yeah, often outside every week are retirees from the CDC, but the group overall - that includes former employees and current ones now - they want action against the cuts being made to the CDC and to other health agencies. So many of them are actively involved in or following ongoing court cases that are aiming to reverse layoffs across federal agencies. But a lot of these folks are also asking for transparency. Some current and former CDC workers say that information has been really limited about whether certain research grants will be canceled or not and whether there are going to be more layoffs. Staff - they were actually hoping to address those concerns today, and there was supposed to be the first all-hands staff meeting since President Trump took office. But that meeting was canceled last minute and will be rescheduled soon. That's according to an internal email that a current CDC employee showed me, and it was sent out to staff from CDC Chief of Staff Matt Buzzelli. As far as they know, he's been in charge since there's been no new director confirmed to the CDC yet.
KELLY: And Sofi, before we let you go, I just want to follow up - you stressed that it's current employees who are joining - who you were talking to at the protest today, along with former. I gather that is new - for current employees to be joining the protests.
GRATAS: It is. It's out of the norm because a lot of current employees are worried about retribution.
KELLY: Sure.
GRATAS: Retired and fired workers don't have to worry about that as much. And most of them didn't want to speak on the record, but some did stand on what organizers dubbed a soapbox - it was really a ladder. But they talked about what they describe as HHS secretary's support of misinformation and overall dismantling of public health institutions. They also really want the public to know what they've lost with all of these terminations. They were holding up signs that read, the CDC saves lives - other signs that highlight the CDC's ongoing work in vaccine education, oral health, anti-smoking initiatives, and all of that work has been interrupted with these mass layoffs.
KELLY: Thank you, Sofi.
GRATAS: Thank you.
KELLY: Sofi Gratas with Georgia Public Broadcasting. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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