Corporate Media Meltdown Over Trump’s CDC Director Pick Dr. Dave Weldon

A look a the possible changes ahead for the CDC under his leadership

Former seven-term congressman Dr. David Weldon was chosen by President-elect Donald Trump going into this past weekend to serve as director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Amidst the flurry of possible appointments grabbing headlines, Dr. Weldon has the opportunity to change the way America has handled public health for decades.

The Washington Post described Dr. Weldon in the second sentence of its breaking news article as “…a strong critic of the CDC, especially its vaccine program.” The reporting meant the sentence to be a negative, ironically, it’s probably now a breath of fresh air for most Americans post-COVID. 

“…increasingly we talk only to a certain elite. More and more, we talk to ourselves” wrote Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, less than a month ago when admitting most people don’t believe corporate/legacy media anymore. It’s like WAPO’s recent reporting on Weldon already forgot this warning. 

The New York Times claimed that Dr. Weldon was “skeptical of vaccine safety,” a designation that would have worked to neutralize his voice in years past when the outlet still garnered attention and respect. 

STAT News wrote, “The former Florida congressman sponsored legislation that would have carved out the CDC’s vaccine safety research…”

The Vaccine Safety Bill to ‘carve out research’ Dr. Weldon introduced in 2007 wanted to establish an independent agency within the Department of Health and Human Services to handle the nation's vaccine safety. His reasoning at the time was that the CDC had an inherent conflict of interest being responsible for both vaccine safety and promotion—an issue unchanged to this day.

In Weldon, the public also finds a rare leader who has been willing to ask politically forbidden questions about links between vaccines and autism along with the greater questions about health outcomes of children receiving HHS’s childhood vaccine schedule compared with children who had not been vaccinated. In addition to why there’s been limited investigation to determine what children may be as risk of being harmed by vaccines. 

“The thing I continue to find extremely disturbing is the fact that the CDC still does not allow researchers access to the vaccine safety data…The best way to get answers on the vaccine safety data is to open it up and let objective scientists come in and look at it.” -Rep. Dave Weldon at the Vaccines & Autism House Government Reform Committee 2002

One of the key data tranches Weldon is referring is vaccine safety datalink or VSD. A monitoring system using electronic health record data from health sites around the country to assess vaccine safety and detect adverse events in near-real time. Also a system that the public and independent researchers are blocked from accessing.

Besides the possibility of allowing the sunlight of independent researchers to comb through once-hidden vaccine data while dedicating resources to health-affirming tools outside of one-size-fits-all shots, Dr. Weldon will have veto power over the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

ACIP makes recommendations about which vaccines are added to the U.S. schedule, among other decisions. The committee needs final approval from the director of the CDC to implement their calls. Dr. Weldon would hold a power position over a committee who unanimously rubber-stamped every COVID vaccine and booster from infants to the elderly, among other questionable call throughout the years leading to reduced public trust. 

Another approach long-called for, and even once implemented by the CDC, would be to automate their Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) to instantly detect and report potential safety issues with the shots they promote. 

In 2006 this was attempted through a $1M HHS grant to create a spontaneous reporting system to VAERS at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. The researchers found that “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported” yet predictably, the CDC never followed up. 

As many new to this conversation are rushing the gates to further their careers or gain influence and power on the back of the rapid political change we find ourselves at the beginning of, there have been those holding a strong space with little fanfare. Dr. Dave Weldon is one such individual. 

His decades-long hopes to reform the CDC and, more importantly, protect American children and families from unrestrained harms brought upon so many by liability-free injectable pharmaceutical products which have enjoyed a privileged position away from full public and scientific scrutiny may soon see the light of day.

To the readers, is the CDC even salvageable at this point?

What other major areas of reform could help rapidly transform public consciousness around health and healing?