A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official said Tuesday she was resigning from her role overseeing updates to the agency’s COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, following an order by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to force an update to the agency’s guidance.
“My career in public health and vaccinology started with a deep-seated desire to help the most vulnerable members of our population, and that is not something I am able to continue doing in this role,” Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos wrote in an email to some members of the agency’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
Panagiotakopoulos had served as one of the leads of the work group on COVID-19 vaccines within the ACIP. She sent an email to members of the work group early Tuesday morning to say she was resigning, multiple people who received the email confirmed to CBS News.
TL;DR:
CDC vaccine expert Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos resigned via email. The resignation email called out RFK Jr. for his unilateral order stripping COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for pregnant women and healthy kids, bypassing the CDC’s advisory committee.
Her resignation email criticized the administration for abandoning the vulnerable. The directive was announced via Twitter before the CDC had formally been made aware.
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I remain confused by these civil servants simply ‘resigning’. My assumption is that they forego benefits/insurance, etc by doing that, rather than forcing the inept cabinet members to try to find ‘cause’ and fire them, at which point they can collect unemployment, negotiate a severance, etc.
Government jobs work differently than corporations. There’s a lot more red tape like security clearance to getting one of these jobs than a typical business job as your usually dealing with classified information on some level every day. They can take your pension benefits away among other things I imagine if you are fired rather than resigning.
For all we know they’ve spent the last 6 months finding a good replacement job.
