Americans, especially parents, have lost trust in our public health agencies like the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC). In many cases, it wasn’t a single event but a pattern of authoritarian government actions that did great harm our children. 

Throughout the pandemic, the Biden administration has been caught: 

• Colluding with the politically powerful teachers’ unions to keep schools closed to in-person learning at the grave cost of our children’s mental health and well-being 
• Urging Big Tech to shut down free speech and silence anyone who disagreed with the liberal narrative on public health issues, such as the origins of the pandemic 
• Intentionally misinterpreting and skewing data to keep government-imposed mask mandates in place on young children who are generally not at great risk of COVID-19  
• Imposing one-size-fits-all vaccine mandates on nurses, servicemembers, and government employees, costing thousands of Americans their jobs and their livelihoods 

Despite the CDC publicly acknowledging in August the need to rebuild trust with Americans, it continues to do just the opposite. Earlier this month, the CDC moved to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the schedule of recommended vaccines for children without being transparent about what data supports their decision. Without justifying why children, particularly under the age of five, need to regularly receive COVID-19 vaccines, this decision could undermine public confidence in other more critical vaccines, such as mumps or measles. 

Recently, as Leader Rodgers urged governors not to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children, she noted in a letter to her home state governor Jay Inslee that there is no clear consensus in the medical community that healthy children under the age of 11 should be given the COVID-19 vaccine. In fact, Sweden decided it against it, with their lead health agency stating, “we don’t see any clear benefit to vaccinating them.” 

While the CDC’s recommendation isn’t itself a mandate, the reality is parents and doctors are raising the alarm that they’ve had enough of politicians using these “recommendations” to issue government-enforced mandates that have harmed children, set them back dramatically in school, and worsened the youth mental health crisis worse. 

Here’s how one doctor put it, and he’s right. 

“Parents are frustrated with the CDC and its Covid-19 guidance. And for very good reason. During the pandemic, many parents believed that CDC recommendations—on quarantine, for instance—resulted in local officials locking kids out of school for too long or unnecessarily, which resulted in devastating learning loss. But when those parents complained to the schools, education officials said they were simply following CDC recommendations.” READ MORE in Common Sense. 

As E&C Leader Cathy McMorris Rodgers said, “to give a child the COVID-19 vaccine is a decision that should be left to parents and their child’s doctor—not the government.” 

If the CDC is serious about regaining the public trust, it must take full responsibility and reform the way it issues guidance by being more transparent about its rationale and the data underlying those decisions. Energy and Commerce Republicans will continue to demand answers, hold the CDC and Biden administration accountable for its failures, and stand for policies that help keep Americans safe while preserving their freedoms. 

Don’t miss what E&C Republicans are saying: