When the government becomes a health misinformation superspreader

Washington Post

25-03-2025

Kevin Griffis was director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's office of communications from 2022 until last week.
Friday was my last day leading communications at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I left my job because I believe public health policy must always be guided by facts and not fantasy.
Upon his confirmation last month, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. inherited a reformed and revamped CDC. As we moved past the height of the covid-19 pandemic, the agency took stock of its shortcomings and launched initiatives to improve its communications (among other areas), with a particular focus on internal coordination. Our goal was to communicate faster and more clearly.
America's federal public health messaging has not always gotten everything right, but health-care providers and the broader public could have confidence that recommendations were made after careful effort to understand and apply the best available science.
Consider the case of the Missouri resident who tested positive for avian flu in August.
The individual, who had no known exposure to livestock or wild birds, was hospitalized for gastrointestinal symptoms. The patient had a history of chronic respiratory illness. A test in the hospital was positive for Flu A, which was later confirmed to be avian flu. The state then traced everyone the patient could have exposed and who had symptoms around the same time. They turned up six health-care workers and a family member who was also sick.
The facts raised a critical question: Were we seeing, for the first time in the United States, human-to-human transmission of a virus that historically kills about half of infected people? The case was complex, but it was vital to convey what we knew — and did not know — about the answer.
CDC scientists painstakingly tested the blood of the exposed individuals, using multiple types of assays. The health-care workers tested negative, but the results from the positive individual and the family member were complicated. CDC communicators worked with the agency's infectious-disease experts to prepare materials that told the story of the case. We walked reporters through the details, spending hours answering questions. We also held a call for scientists and livestock health experts across the country to talk through the details with CDC scientists and key leaders.
The results of the testing and the epidemiological data gathered about the family members supported a single, common exposure to avian flu and not human-to-human transmission. That meant the CDC's risk assessment for the general public remained low. All this was done to help providers and the public better understand a mystery involving a dangerous virus.
It's hard to overstate how different things are today.
Now, public health communications have slowed to trickle. The CDC hasn't held a public briefing, despite multiple disease outbreaks, since President Donald Trump's inauguration. Instead of seeking guidance about how to combat the measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico from the world-leading epidemiologists and virologists he oversees, Kennedy is listening to fringe voices who reinforce his personal beliefs. Kennedy has promoted unproven treatments for measles, such as the antibiotic clarithromycin — a drug that has no effect on viral infections. He also suggested distributing Vitamin A, which does not prevent measles.
Meanwhile, in my final weeks at the CDC, I watched as career infectious-disease experts were tasked with spending precious hours searching medical literature in vain for data to support Kennedy's preferred treatments.
All this misdirection is a waste of federal dollars that will do nothing to control the outbreak. It also could cost lives.
Public health communications should be about empowering people with reliable, science-based information, so they can make their own health decisions. Unfortunately, we can't count on Kennedy's HHS for that anymore.
It is painful to say this, given my time in government service, but the United States urgently needs a strong alternative to the government public health guidance it has relied on in the past. I urge public health experts to come together to invest in organizations that provide independent, trustworthy sources of information on vital public health matters.
This could take on many forms. But to be successful and durable, it's essential that any such effort foster two-way communication. Without feedback from affected communities, it's harder to know what concerns people have and where information is missing. Also needed are accessible online resources, written in language that's clear and easy to understand. Finally, given how people seek and consume health information, we need coordinated networks of experts, scientists and providers willing to share and amplify accurate information in real time via their social media platforms.
In short, the effort needs to match the scope and energy of the entities spreading bad information — including, unfortunately, parts of the U.S. government.
My first-hand experience over the recent troubling weeks convinced me thatKennedy and his team are working to bend science to fit their own narratives, rather than allowing facts to guide policy. Let's act now to ensure that the American people continue to have access to reliable, reality-based information they need to protect their health.