[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
The Trump administration is firing Centers for Disease Control (CDC) director Susan Monarez after about a month on the job. The dismissal, which Monarez is contesting, prompted resignations from Dr. Jen Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance and Technology; Dr. Daniel Jernigan, the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; and Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. He gave the people cause to wonder why he had been hired in the first place.
“I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponizing of public health,” Daskalakis told reporters. The CDC boss claimed he could not continue to work in an administration with policies that “do not reflect scientific reality.” Health and Human Services director Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had changed vaccine scheduling, which “threatens the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant people.” Like Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the NYU medical school grad, with an MPH from Harvard, can’t bring himself to say “woman.”
Daskalakis describes himself as a “trusted voice for the LGBTQ community when it comes to critical health topics,” and he objects to “the recklessness of the administration in their efforts to erase transgender populations.” That raises another issue.
As Bruce Bawer has pointed out, homosexuality and transgenderism are “utterly different phenomena” and “queer” can mean anything. The LGBTQ formulation is every bit a construct as Lawyer, Gynecologist, Baker, Trucker, Quaker, and there is no LGBTQ “community” of any kind. The people have a right to wonder how someone who fails to recognize biological reality gets hired and promoted at the CDC. Daskalakis’ prior career as “New York City’s ‘Gay Health Warrior’” is also of interest.
“Do I love high-risk sexual behavior? No,” Daskalakis told the Atlantic in 2014. “But is it important to acknowledge it exists and not be scared of it? Yes.” He spends nights at a club called Paddles wearing a tight black shirt reading “Witch, Don’t Kill My Vibe.” It is as though an official at Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms considered it his duty to hang out in bars.
For details on Daskalakis in New York, see Mia Kathel’s “Meet Biden’s New Monkeypox Expert” at Towhall, from 2022. For background on high-risk sexual behavior see How to Have Sex in an Epidemic, Randy Shilts’ And the Band Played On, Peter Duesberg’s Inventing the AIDS Virus, and David Horowitz’s revelations about AIDS, bathhouses and politicized medicine in Radical Son. The Freedom Center founder was one of the first to challenge white coat supremacy.
Daskalakis is a disciple of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who claims to represent science but also accepts the LGBTQ construct. Fauci praised the experience and leadership of Daskalakis, who would get his chance under Joe Biden. In 2022, Biden hailed Daskalakis as “a national expert on health issues affecting the LGBGQIA+ communities,” and tapped him for “White House National Monkeypox Response Deputy Coordinator.”
In 2023 Daskalakis told the nation. “You know, one person’s idea of risk, is another person’s idea of a great festival or Friday night, for that matter. So, we have to sort of embrace that with joy and make sure that folks know how to keep themselves safe.” No word of any replicated scientific studies backing that approach.
When a physician accepts a post with the government, his MD and MPH become the equivalent of an EdD, a bureaucratic credential. Deskalakis was an activist from the start and that surely aided his rapid rise in the government medical establishment. Biden’s monkeypox man also managed the Covid reponse for the NYC Department of Health in 2020. The following year, he served as deputy incident manager for the CDC’s vaccine task force. The vaccines failed to prevent infection or transmission of Covid, which the fully boosted Dr. Fauci confirmed by testing positive.
Dr. Daskalaskis played a role in the weaponizing of the CDC, and its departure from scientific reality. The LGBTQ construct gives the left another way to divide the people into oppressor and victim classes. Biden’s monkeypox man retires, many years too late, as director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. As it happens, NCIRD director Dr. Nancy Messonnier also played a key role in the pandemic.
In early 2020, Dr. Messonnier delivered a series of press briefings that faithfully echoed China’s talking points. According to Messonnier, the “novel virus” emerged in the “Wuhan market” and would quickly spread across the country. When reporters asked about individuals returning from Wuhan, Dr. Messonnier said that was “not something that I’m at liberty to talk about today” but did not reveal which official was laying down the rules.
Dr. Messonnier began her career with the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), the CDC’s medical CIA, tasked to prevent viruses from arriving on American soil. The CDC did not reveal what the EIS knew about the Covid virus and how it was vectored to America. Proclaimed a “true hero” by Biden CDC boss Rochelle Walensky, Dr. Messonnier suddenly retired in May of 2021.
On his way out of the White House, Biden pardoned Dr. Fauci but not Dr. Messonnier. Congress must find out what she and the EIS knew and when they knew it. In the meantime, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at Health and Human Services and National Institutes of Health director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya are stepping up the battle against white coat supremacy. The people will be watching.