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On Oct. 8, Politico ran a story suggesting that U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s own advisers on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) had defied him.
“The panel voted to undo an action by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. which removed the vaccine from the immunization schedule for pregnant women,” it declared.
The article went further, asserting that the CDC and ACIP had “quietly opened the door to wider access … softening an earlier decision by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to stop recommending that pregnant women get the shots.”
But according to ACIP member and COVID-19 work group chair, professor Retsef Levi, that account was pure fiction.
He called it a “fundamental, wilful misunderstanding” of both Kennedy’s original decision and the committee’s latest recommendations.
“Politico and the people quoted in the article show fundamental wilful misunderstanding of Secretary Kennedy’s decision at the time and the recent ACIP recommendations,” Levi said.
“They appear to be too deranged about Secretary Kennedy and ACIP to acknowledge reality.”
What Kennedy actually did
In May, Kennedy announced that “as of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule.”
The move didn’t ban the vaccine. It simply withdrew the routine recommendation that every pregnant woman “should” receive it.
The goal was to restore discretion to doctors and patients — a return to medical judgment over blanket mandates — and to acknowledge what Kennedy described as the lack of robust data on safety and efficacy in pregnancy.
At the time, the National Institutes of Health director called the change “common sense and good science.”
ACIP vote
Four months later, in September, ACIP voted to recommend COVID-19 vaccines for adults under a framework of shared clinical decision-making — meaning individuals could weigh risks and benefits with their doctors.
There was no vote on specific groups such as pregnant women, no reinstatement of recommendations, and no “softening” of Kennedy’s earlier announcement.
In fact, Levi said ACIP’s recommendation was “entirely consistent” with Kennedy’s May announcement.
“We did not make a recommendation for any specific groups, including pregnant women,” he explained. Instead, ACIP supported “individual-based decision making, based on consultation with state-authorised medical providers.”
He also confirmed that the COVID-19 work group remains concerned about “the lack of robust efficacy and safety data with respect to vaccination during pregnancy,” given the limited evidence from clinical trials.
At that meeting, the group advised that the Vaccine Information Statement be updated to warn about uncertainties and potential harms related to vaccination during pregnancy.
How Politico got it wrong
Politico relied on commentary from Dorit Reiss, a law professor who frequently provides unwavering support for official vaccine policy.
Reiss told the outlet, “If they were going to change the decision about pregnancy, I would have expected them to address it expressly, since it was changed expressly [by Kennedy].”
Levi accused Reiss and Politico of deliberately distorting the truth. “It’s wilful misrepresentation,” he said. “They are just making up their own facts.”
Politico’s framing — that the CDC had “softened” Kennedy’s stance or “quietly opened the door” to wider access — implied that his own agency had tried to overrule him.
It’s part of a broader pattern in legacy health journalism, where political framing comes first, and the facts are made to fit.
Kennedy’s policy remains unchanged. ACIP’s recommendations align with it. What has changed is the media’s unwillingness to verify facts before publishing.
As Levi put it bluntly, “They’re just not being truthful.”
Originally published on Maryanne Demasi’s Substack page.
