Newly released internal emails show that officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) strategized how to soften public concerns about COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness, deliberately steering clear of direct comparisons to natural immunity and prioritizing public relations messaging over full transparency.

The cache of nearly 600 pages of communications, obtained by the Public Health Reform Alliance through a Freedom of Information Act request, paints a damning picture of how the nation’s top health agency managed public trust during the pandemic.

In one Sept. 22, 2023, message, members of the CDC’s COVID Coordination Unit discussed how to present Americans with risk comparisons without being “too precise.” “Don’t want it to be too precise of a visualization such that people can infer an exact risk or protection score,” one email read, referring to a planned “COVID Harm Reduction Visualization Tool.”

The emails surface amid a series of reversals by the CDC on pandemic guidance — including mask efficacy, airborne transmission, the role of natural immunity, and breakthrough infections. A January 2022 CDC study itself acknowledged that natural immunity offered stronger protection against reinfection than vaccination alone by late 2021, yet agency messaging largely continued to emphasize vaccines.

The revelations also come on the heels of political fallout inside the agency. Trump-appointed CDC Director Susan Monarez was fired in August by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policy disputes. Meanwhile, a House Republican panel report last fall blasted HHS for spending $911 million on a vaccine promotion campaign that it said misrepresented the benefits of masking and boosters and overstated the risks COVID posed to children.

The documents detail how, even into January 2024, CDC communications staff rehearsed talking points to deflect state-level inquiries into mRNA vaccine safety. Internal meeting notes show officials dismissing Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo’s warnings about potential risks from residual DNA fragments in mRNA vaccines as “misinformation,” while offering no evidence the agency had investigated those concerns.

“The CDC wasn’t acting like a scientific body. It was operating as a PR arm of the vaccine manufacturers and federal policy agenda,” said Public Health Reform Alliance Director Martin Hoyt. “It reflexively and unprofessionally ignored legitimate safety concerns, dismissed them without inquiry, and actively worked to prevent the public from knowing the truth. That’s not science. That’s propaganda.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)