EXCLUSIVE: Retsef Levi hits back after attacks on his leadership from departing CDC officials
Several top CDC officials quit in protest, denouncing Retsef Levi’s leadership of the Covid vaccine work group. Now, in an exclusive interview, Levi reveals what really happened behind closed doors.
Last week, Dr Demetre Daskalakis, a top official who abruptly resigned from the CDC, posted his resignation letter on X, now viewed more than 19 million times, declaring his position at the agency “untenable.”
He wrote that he could no longer “serve in an organization that is not afforded the opportunity to discuss decisions of scientific and public health importance.”
He pointed to the sudden change in Covid-19 recommendations for children and pregnant “people,” as well as the sweeping overhaul of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
Some of his sharpest words were aimed at the new Terms of Reference for ACIP’s Covid vaccine work group, chaired by Levi, whom he attacked as a figure of “dubious intent and more dubious scientific rigor” who had “ignored all feedback from career staff at CDC.”
But what most people don’t know is that in the weeks leading up to his resignation, Daskalakis had been working with Levi and other members of ACIP, locked in a tense tug-of-war over how broad the work group’s remit should be.
As Chair, Levi pushed for a wide lens that would follow the evidence wherever it led. Daskalakis, on the other hand, pressed to narrow the scope of the review, and sought to populate the group with CDC loyalists intent on preserving the status quo.
Senior CDC officials, opposed to Levi’s broader approach, were reluctant to sign off on the Terms of Reference.
For years, Daskalakis thrived in a CDC culture where the previous ACIP committee largely rubber-stamped agency presentations. Reformers like Levi, however, are now demanding tougher scrutiny.
Levi, for his part, is not interested in taking pot shots or fuelling a social media brawl. Nor will he be drawn into a public slanging match with former CDC staff. But he is prepared to set the record straight.
When we sat down to talk, Levi was calm and deliberate, weighing his words carefully — but there was steel behind them. The attack, he told me, didn’t faze him.
What it revealed, he said, was an attempt to delegitimise the work of an entire committee charged with scrutinising vaccine policy at one of the most fraught moments in the CDC’s history.
“I am just focused on the data now,” Levi said. “I’m not going to engage in personal attacks.”
“With the team,” he added, “I plan to focus on the work so that people can finally have a transparent and honest view of the data regarding the risk and benefits, including the vaccine injured, who’ve been ignored and gaslighted for years.”
The new Terms of Reference, he insists, are designed to do exactly that, even if it means asking questions those who have now resigned from the CDC would have preferred to keep buried.
In this exclusive interview, Levi responds to the attack on his integrity, describes what really happened behind closed doors, and sets out how he intends to move forward amid open conflict inside the nation’s top public health agency.